Last weekend the open beta of Diablo IV took place, one of the most anticipated games of the moment, and as a fan of the franchise I couldn’t resist trying it. Unfortunately I couldn’t dedicate much time to it, but was enough to draw important conclusions and to collect information that today I want to share with you in this article.
I had thought of writing the classic article focusing on the technical level, but the truth is that Diablo IV does not have any important mystery in this sense, at least in its beta state, and for this reason I have preferred to approach it as a special dedicated to reviewing Five things that are important and that you should be clear about. As always, if after finishing reading this special you have any questions, you can leave them in the comments and we will help you solve them.
Before we start, I would like to remind you that, although the Diablo IV open beta has already ended, there are still a few months to go before the launch of the game. This It will not arrive until June 6 of this year, as long as Blizzard’s forecasts are met and no further delays occur. There are no indications that point to a possible delay, so in principle that is the final release date.
1.-Diablo IV is not a graphic prodigy
This was something that was already quite clear to me when I found out that it was a intergenerational developmentand that it was going to reach PS4 and Xbox One. The truth is that Diablo III wasn’t any wonder graphically either, but it made up for its shortcomings on that level with a very careful setting and fantastic design at all levels.
As soon as you start playing the Diablo IV beta I really liked the modeling and quality of the characters on the selection and customization screen. Of course there is an important improvement compared to Diablo III in this sense, and also in the complexity of the geometry and in the quality of the light and shadow effects, but nothing that surprises or places this title as something truly innovative.
The truth is that it is a pity, because a Diablo IV could have looked much better if it had been raised as a PS5, Xbox Series S-Series X and PC exclusivebut in any case it must be recognized that the Blizzard saga has never been revolutionary on a technical level, and in this title Blizzard has complied graphically without much fanfare, giving shape to a remarkable technical section that does not disappoint.
If someone tells me that Diablo, the original, was a revolution on a technical level, it is because this person clearly does not know Crusader No Remorsea great game with an isometric perspective that came to compatibility in 1995, long before the first Diablo, and that was the true precedent for this marvel and others like Fallout.
2.-It has an excellent artistic direction
And this greatly compensates for its deficiencies at the graphic level, as was the case with Diablo III. Blizzard is known for taking maximum care both in the design of the characters and the enemies, as well as the scenery, the decoration of each area, and the light and shadow effects to create a unique atmosphere capable of catching the player.
In Diablo III the execution was so good that it made Westmarch look great despite its low polygonal load and its technical simplicity, and In Diablo IV I have lived that same experience again. For example, in the first village that we visit we find a totally oppressive aesthetic and setting that have been taken care of in detail to fully immerse us in the action.
That careful setting and the artistic direction of Diablo IV are another example of Blizzard’s genius, and it takes this title to another level compared to Diablo III. It should also be noted that this is a game with a much more adult tone, more serious and according to what we saw in Diablo II, which I really appreciate, since I never quite liked that informal touch of Diablo III that, in certain aspects, reminded me of World of Warcraft.
The icing on the cake in that careful setting is the level of detail of the settings, which are perfectly recreated to tell stories with their simple presence. This is something that we have also seen in previous installments of the franchise, and that Blizzard knows how to do masterfully. Thanks to this, we also feel the need to stop more to contemplate the scenarios, and it breaks the monotony between combats a bit.
3.-The gameplay has changed a lot and has a “Souls” touch
In Diablo IV we have something that would have been unthinkable in previous installments, although it was already present in Diablo III in a passive way, the dedicated dodge moves. As soon as we start the game we realize, especially when we reach the first boss, that dodging and knowing when we should attack and when we shouldn’t is essential to get out of the fight alive.
We also have another major change that affects health potions. The amount we can carry is limited, but we can recharge them by eliminating enemies and hitting bosses. If we exhaust all the potions we will be “sold”, and for this reason we must plan the toughest fights well and be extremely careful when exchanging attacks.
In my case I had no problem adjusting Due to this new method of play, I didn’t find myself in a difficult situation at any time and as soon as I grasped the mechanics of the first boss I ended up killing him without having to spend any more potions (I only used two at the beginning while learning his mechanics). Some friends weren’t as lucky, but because they were too used to the mechanics of Diablo III and/or Diablo II.
I think that Blizzard has succeeded with some changes, but at the same time I think that the increase in resistance and toughness of enemies and bosses has a slowing effect on gameplay that in fact we already saw in Diablo III, and that not everyone ended up liking it either. Be clear that you are not going to find that extremely fast game style of Diablo II, because Diablo IV builds on the base of Diablo III and reinterprets it to make it even a little slower.
4.-It is very well optimized and is very affordable
This is something that was already made clear when Blizzard confirmed the minimum and recommended requirements for Diablo IV, but seeing it on paper is not the same as checking it. To play the beta I used my personal PC, which is comprised of a Ryzen 7 5800X, 32GB of 3200MHz DDR4, a GeForce RTX 3090 Ti and I installed it on a PCIe Gen3 x4 SSD.
Configured in 1440p resolution, with maximum quality and DLSS2 in quality mode, I recorded an average of 285 frames per second, and I had maximum peaks above 300 FPS that, at times, came close to 400 FPS. I can also confirm that at the CPU level it pulls more IPC than cores, and that With a chip with 4 cores and 8 threads you won’t have any problem playing it.
The SSD greatly reduces load times and makes there are no interruptions or stoppages. New information assures that it will be compatible, in its final version, with DirectStorage technology, something that has not been officially confirmed, but the information is quite credible, and of course it would be good news, since if said technology is correctly implemented, the storage times load will be practically nil.
Starting with a Core i5 4000 series, Ryzen 3 1000 series, 8 GB of RAM and a GeForce GTX 960 or Radeon R9 285 you will be able to play it in 1080p without problems, as long as you adjust the graphic quality to medium level to maintain a good and stable rate of frames per second. Fluency in this game matters, and a lot, so it’s better to reduce quality than to drop below 60 FPS, be clear.
5.-Supports NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR and will have ray tracing
In the Diablo IV beta you could use DLSS2 and FSR2. Both technologies use upscaling to improve performance, but they do it in different ways. In order to activate DLSS2 we need a GeForce RTX 2060 or higher, since this technology uses tensor cores and deep learning to rescale and rebuild the image intelligently.
The FSR2 lacks said acceleration and that smart sideand obviously the results obtained are inferior both in image quality and improvement in terms of performance, but as a counterpart supports many more graphics cards. We can use it, for example, with a Radeon RX 570, and also with a GeForce GTX 970.
Thanks to both upscaling technologies performance can be improved, and with the FSR2 we can give a breath of air to models with less power and improve stability to maintain 60 FPS. In 1080p, the ideal would be to not go down from the quality mode, and in 1440p we should not go beyond the balanced mode, since the performance mode is very aggressive and reduces image quality a lot.
I can confirm that FSR2 has some problems and graphic glitches, but since it is a beta we imagine that they will be resolved in the final version. And speaking of the final version, this will be compatible with DLSS3 and frame generationwhich means that we can further increase the FPS rate if we have a GeForce RTX 40, and it will also incorporate in the future ray tracing.
With how well optimized it is, and how undemanding it is hardware-wise on PC, it’s clear that ray tracing will really make some sense out of using DLSS and FSR with mid-range graphics cards and high-end, since it will consume a significant amount of resources and significantly reduce performance, something that we will be able to compensate with the DLSS and the FSR.
