DIABLO IV: VESSEL OF HATRED

The Diablo IV has been released to huge relief for both Blizzard and fans of the series by comparison. Adopting a more grimdark aesthetic than its predecessor, it managed to lay a proper foundation for its evolution. Sources, relying on a Blizzard employee's Linkedin, claimed that it managed to raise over $1 billion in revenue from microtransactions of the game's season passes and cosmetics shop, maintaining its circle of support. That support/evolution has now culminated to the game's first major expansion, Vessel of Hatred. As with the previous title, we received the review code on the day of the expansion's release, so we've approached this presentation accordingly by looking at all the elements that the new expansion brings to the Games as a Service (GaaS) framework.

The story continues...

As expected, the story of the expansion picks up where the main body left off. Neyrelle, the most unlikable character we are forced to like, was driven to a decision, as a moral compass, that resulted in her stealing Mephisto's soulstone. Meanwhile Inarius and Lilith are dead, which led to a noticeable vacuum gap and a crisis of purpose for the organizations that blindly followed them. And the Church of Inarius seems to have a whole power shift as the most intriguing character in terms of writing in many moons makes an appearance, a mysterious knight named Urivar. The early clues will lead us back in Neyrelle's footsteps and into the jungles of Kurast, where we will seek to save her from the choice we ourselves forced her to make.

And that's how the story begins, which is the worst thing Blizzard has ever written in every respect. Fresh off a narrative epic both in terms of the technical aspects and the story itself, I was left with my mouth literally hanging open for over five minutes when I saw that I'd finished the expansion's main story. Looking at the pre-release reviews from journalists and influencers who had the opportunity to see the story in depth, I got the impression from their writings and words that we were playing something completely different. My main objections to the game revolve around three main pillars: its plot, its exposition through dialogue, and finally how lacklustre it is.

As the story begins, we find ourselves constantly one step behind Neyrelle, driven by guilt and a genuine interest in saving her from Mephisto's influence. It's all good so far, after all the name of the expansion alludes to someone being the "vessel" of Hate, perhaps even winking at the author of this review once he saw the end credits... Besides that, the point is that the expansion's narrative path is all wrong. While we are geographically in the footsteps of Act 3 from Diablo 2, the topography bears no resemblance to the landscape setting of the infamous Act. Let's assume that this error is fairly negligible, given the world-altering events that occurred with the destruction of Worldstone, and as far as anyone can digest that Travincal is literally ten steps below the Kurast Docks. The fact remains that the plot progression is completely disjointed. The most interesting antagonist (Urivar), who could be a driving force for at least one more expansion, disappears just as it appeared, all of a sudden... Meanwhile, we're trying to do a mad goose hunt with no payoff. I understand the angst of getting across to the audience that everything we're doing is part of the extremely scheming Mephisto's plan, but the execution is way of the target...

We shall also skip the big fan service that is sometimes done in the most inelegant way, namely just demonstrating Act III (D2) items. The main problem of the story is that it ends where you think the prologue should have ended... You read that right, at the end of the expansion there is no climax and a showdown with Mephisto as you would expect. On the contrary, throughout the entire time we're trying to track down clues to save (in any way possible) Neyrelle by following the story of Diablo-Jesus, Akarat (the prophet who fought Mephisto, followed by the Crusaders from Diablo 3). Combine all of the above with a completely boring worldbuilding that nullifies the golden rule of "show, don't tell" and you have the most irritating exposition in a game I can remember in recent years. As part of a more realistic depiction of the jungle, Blizzard made all the local inhabitants speak a fictional dialect that simulates Central American cultures (elements of Aztec and Mayan). The result is a hole in the water, as all the locals speak the dialect without translation, dissociating the player. To maximize this dissociation, they also insert constant in-game cutscenes that interrupt the flow of gameplay, making the whole campaign a rather tedious affair.

Needless to say, by the end of the story I was literally stunned unable to believe that this thing was signed by Blizzard. And I'll agree that the company games never had total originality, but damn did they have a strong plot and acute delivery performances. And here, dear readers, you will say okay this guy is paranoid, he sits and devotes so many lines to a point of gameplay that no average player will bother with for over 6-7 hours. You may be right, but I personally think the issue is deeper and a result of GaaS stipulating that a major update/product has to come out every year. Don't give people more than you can charge them. We've reached the end of the first expansion, and the only hint that the game is properly called "Diablo" and not "MTX-dopamine-clickaway" is when Diablo-Jesus, Akarat, uttered the word "fear" towards the end. My guess is that at this rate, we'll see Diablo in 4 expansions, suspecting that in the very next one they'll let Mephisto thresh around the continent and we'll see the reintroduction of Zakarum along with a Paladin/Crusader class. The story from me gets a 2/10, with no honest hope for anything better in the future.

Endgame: Diablo 3.5

My strictness is limited to the story which has been slowly and steadily building over the last 1.5 years. Through successive seasons, Blizzard was testing out endgame recipes and incorporating them with parallel, small progression of world change. So we saw, a whole redesign of itemisation with Loot Reborn (Season 4), which brought better balance to the game, while Season 2 (Blood) along with Season 5 which brought the Infernal Hordes mode were highly entertaining. The biggest shortcoming I found in the Diablo IV review, namely the anemic endgame, has been completely fixed.

Two things contribute to this: the addition of two new modes that help a little by limiting the RNG of the holy grail loot hunt (whatever that may be), combined with the harmony and synergy of the different endgame activities. Vessel of Hatred brings Undercity and Dark Citadel, two dungeons of different philosophy and execution. The Undercity is a small, neat and tidy three-level dungeon with a small leader at the end. Depending on our performance over time and if we manage to fill a bar, slaying monsters of course, we increase our rewards at the end of the run. Each run takes no more than 5-10 minutes, and we can target what we receive at the end (equipment, runes, crafting materials).

Dark Citadel currently consists of three wings, and is a completely optional co-op mini-raid dungeon. It requires at least 2 players to complete it with the mechanics ranging from simple to demanding in execution, otherwise there are one-shot mechanics, making Dark Citadel very challenging for hardcore characters. The team's choice to not tie Dark Citadel as an activity with loot, but only with some cosmetics, is the right one, in my opinion. The only extra incentive a player has to complete the dungeon is tied to secondary endgame systems, specifically in the conversion of boss summoning materials (to poison difficult bosses) and crafting.

More generally, streamlining every endgame activity is the great success of the patch/expansion. By charting a strange circular trajectory, Diablo IV has gradually reverted back to Diablo III, e.g. the greater rifts (dungeons of increasing difficulty) have now been renamed The Pit, in a successful attempt of which we can upgrade Paragon Glyphs. Nightmare dungeons offer crafting materials for improving (masterworking) our equipment, while access to the bosses that have the best chance of dropping the best equipment has been simplified to the best possible degree, without unnecessarily complicated systems. The introduction of the party finder enhances the experience by improving access to this content (without of course excluding some players who are pretentious, non-contributing leeches, but tha's more reflective of the community itself). Similarly, the reintroduction of progressive difficulty is a welcome setback compared to the previous state of the game.

Despite all this, playing always-online Diablo IV is still a largely solitary process. Most players, except for those looking to rack up XP and wanting the bonus that party play brings, play solo. For those players, another innovation comes straight out of Diablo III: mercenaries. With a slightly different implementation, we have the ability to utilize one mercenary at a time out of the four available. At the same time, a secondary mercenary can be thrown into the battle depending on the conditions we've drawn up (e.g. a skill trigger). Essentially, the system offers another small layer of customization without necessarily being tied to our character's skill trees.

On the contrary, the introduction of the rune system radically changes the dynamics and the way the game is played. Unlike Diablo 2, where we had runewords and eventually a system that came to replace the entire economy of the game, runes in Vessel of Hatred operate more simply. There are two categories, runes of Ritual and runes of Incantation. The former fill an extra resource (offering) depending on the actions that activate them. When enough offering is filled, then the rune of incantation attached to the ritual is activated, usually offering several powerful skills or buffs. The latter depend on the rune rarity. I found the system quite clever in its conception, but it has a few problems in its implementation. Runes besides their rarity, similar to that of items, do not have any scaling and are also tied to crafting extremely rare and powerful items (the Mythic Uniques). I would prefer the rune crafting system to have a side-route where we can craft the targeted runes for a higher trade-off. Otherwise, I can see the systems slowly leading to a big powercreep (a problem Diablo III had), despite the simplification all the stats (attributes, life, etc) received with the advent of the expansion.

As you can see, there have been leaps and bounds of improvements over the original situation, but the itemisation can be improved. I consider it a very big plus that now everything can be dropped from anywhere. For some reason I had decided to explore the map and a common monster dropped a Mythic Unique which was also a great upgrade. However, items seem to have variables that no longer make any sense in the game (e.g. Life per Hit) and seem to exist simply because they haven't been removed yet.

A new class, but not by much

You may have noticed that I deliberately haven't made any mention so far of the new class coming with the expansion, the Spiritborn. Fully aligned with the Mayan/Aztec setting of the game, I'm in the category of players who feel that despite the minor differences and skill flair, the Spiritborn is a decent thematic reskin of the Diablo III Monk class. Extremely fast with a heavy emphasis on evade, it's hard to evaluate in terms of potential at the moment because it's overpowered in the game's meta (to the point that various sites have created S+ rankings for builds of the class). Therefore, in a not so well-disguised marketing move (strong class > FOMO > bigger sales during the immediate period post-release) Spiritborn for this season is simply reaping the rewards in the fastest and most efficient way possible. As a player who usually tries one class per season (and not always), I think Spiritborn is one of the most fun builds I've played, behind Druid and Rogue (each for different reasons). Their immense strength in the meta resulted in me clearing all of the season's content in around 50 hours, and then getting into the full refinement of either equipment, or trying to get more paragon levels up.

Clearly better but with room for improvement

Vessel of Hatred was a bittersweet experience. Getting over the initial big shock of the crappy campaign, and trying to find redeeming features (like the soundtrack that is gloomy and appropriately miserable) I have to admit that the Nahantu area (as the wider Kurast suburbs were renamed) is beautiful with excellent art. I'd like to see more expressions of artists rendering temples in a Slavic Orthodox style in future expansions, for me it's probably one of the highlights of dungeon interiors.

At the same time and beyond the major improvements Diablo IV is quite weak in some areas of the user experience (UX) that could make the experience even better. Two easy examples I have in mind are the gameification of endgame systems that gives the player the illusion of progression over the course of the season, and minor improvements to the UI and dungeons. For the former, I always have the Atlas of Path of Exile as a reference point because it breaks the grind into small chunks, gives the player a goal, and makes them feel like they are making progress without ticking off a seasonal list of objectives as is currently the case in Diablo IV. The second point is simple UI improvements, such as marking materials for Nightmare Dungeons that give rewards to Whispers/Bounties. And itemisation needs even more simplification by removing unnecessary modifiers, as it seems to have established a way of acquiring and improving loot. Finally, a total redesign of the dungeons to the standards brought by the new dungeons in the expansion area may be a grand project, but I suspect it will contribute positively to the overall experience.

Ever since we were kids reading the greek outlet PC Master there has been the axiom that we can't rate an MMO with a static, sterile rating because the game improves (or deteriorates) as it changes in perpetuity. After two and a half decades this premise holds true more than ever before both in single player titles (with quick patches) let alone GaaS games like Diablo IV that change every three months to ensure maximum engagement. It seems that the time since its release to date has been beneficial to the game's lifecycle, with design decisions in the right direction. Vessel of Hatred comes to add additional gameplay elements to now solid foundations, and it does so with full achievement. Ignore the lacklustre, disappointing campaign and you'll have a blast.

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