Trivia / Diablo IV

• Author's Saving Throw:
  • The development team took to heart the criticisms that Diablo III was too light and soft compared to its predecessors, with one of the earliest design pillars established by project head Luis Barriga being "embrace the darkness", getting rid of anything that was considered cartoony in Diablo III in the process. Despite Barriga's Role-Ending Misdemeanor, the design pillar he established is still kept intact by his successor Joe Shely.
  • Blizzard made it very clear during development that while Diablo IV would feature microtransactions, it would not be featuring any way to buy power or gameplay advantages, and that all purchasable content would be strictly cosmetic in nature, no doubt made in response to the widespread criticisms against Diablo Immortal for its intense pay-to-win mechanics.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: In 2021, director/project head Luis Barriga and lead game designer Jesse McCree (no, not him), were fired in light of the lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, where they were implicated in being involved with systemic sexual harassment throughout the company, with Barriga's position being taken over by Joe Shely.
• Troubled Production:
  • According to several employees, the game experienced many internal delays that were attributed to the lack of direction by director Luis Barriga and lead designer Jesse McCree, who were both micromanaging yet noncommittal, constantly suggesting and throwing around ideas before throwing them out, burning out much confidence among developers. When they were fired and replaced with new management, several of the ideas they suggested had been reverted.
  • The COVID-19 Pandemic also resulted in production delays. In some ways, this was actually treated as a blessing in disguise due to it pushing Blizzard to test the game on consoles much earlier and for much longer than anticipated (it had always been their plan to develop for both PC and consoles, but the extra time to focus on the latter presented more opportunities to focus on older platforms in order to reach as many players as possible).
• What Could Have Been:
  • Around 2019, the game's story experienced an extensive revision by Sebastian Stępień — brought in the same year as creative director, having previously worked on The Witcher games and Cyberpunk 2077 — who across the span of several months added in repeated mentions of the rape of a love interest, referring to the female character as "the raped woman" as her primary description. This was widely criticized by the rest of the development team who felt that rape had no place in Diablo (they wanted to make the game "dark and gritty", not tone-deaf), and after much protest mixed with general outcry about the representation of women in the game, the infamous "rape script" was reverted and the character written out.
  • Monsters originally appeared in denser numbers across the open world, but were scaled down over time as it made it difficult to traverse while mounted.
  • Among the early ideas that Barriga and McCree tossed out during development was a battle royale game mode, but it was quickly discarded.
• Working Title: The game originally kicked off production in 2016 as Project Fenris.

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