New 'Diablo 4’ Art, Character Creation And Enemy Designs Revealed By Blizzard

New conceptual and in-game art assets for “Diablo 4” were recently released by Blizzard, which showed off more of the game’s dark and gritty style as well as some new character-related features that have never before been used in a “Diablo” game.

This rather lengthy update was released as part of Blizzard’s quarterly update posts that help keep the community up to date on “Diablo 4’s” development. Key members of the game’s art team shared their insights on the work they’ve done and what’s coming to the game.

The biggest change in the art style for “Diablo 4” is the return to the bleak and grimy atmosphere of the first couple of “Diablo” games, and as such, character and monster models were redesigned and reimagined to better fit this design choice.

“When I think back to the beginning, I think at the highest level, our goal was to make the characters in Diablo 4 look as artistic and as hand-crafted as possible,” art director John Mueller said.

Players will also be able to actually create unique-looking characters thanks to a new character creator. Instead of simply picking from pre-made character models, players will now be able to change their characters’ gender, body features and class-specific options.

The old armor transmogrification system in “Diablo 3” will still be present in the new game, allowing players to freely mix, match and recolor armor pieces without compromising item stats and bonuses.

Enemies in “Diablo 4” are receiving the same realistic treatment, with many monsters featuring more macabre and grotesque designs like a corpse piloted by a giant scorpion or an undead bishop made of pulsating flesh and blood.

Associate art director for characters Nick Chilano said that they designed enemies to fit two perspectives: the game camera and the full body size camera. With these perspectives in mind, they were able to create enemy designs that were easy to distinguish from an isometric perspective while retaining each model’s details from an upfront perspective.

All of the game’s new assets are supported by modern rendering techniques and updated technology to accurately depict minute details of every material in the game, from textures to lighting behavior and more, to create a realistic and immersive game experience.