At long last, it’s time to take down Diablo in Diablo Immortal. The story threads of Blizzard’s mobile ARPG have been building to this moment since the game’s launch in 2022, and it all will culminate not only in the game’s largest new zone to date, but also its biggest boss battle yet–against none other than the Lord of Terror himself.
Yes, Diablo is finally at full strength in the Shattered Sanctuary update, and it will be up to players, armed with the angelic blade El’druin, to put an end to his world-altering efforts. To the far north of Sanctuary at World’s Crown, Diablo has unleashed the power of the Worldstone Shard in his possession and started Sanctuary’s unmaking. After battling Diablo’s armies through an increasingly surreal hellscape, players will confront “Big Red” himself for the first time since the end of Diablo 3’s story 12 years ago.
GameSpot chatted with Diablo Immortal lead content designer Scott Burges and senior narrative designer Ryan Quinn ahead of the Diablo’s return in the December 13 update to learn more about how Blizzard approached bringing back the iconic villain and where the game’s story will go next.
“One thing we really wanted to do was bring back the nostalgia, and the monstrous size of Diablo, like you see in D2 [Diablo 2],” Burges said. “We have some classic attacks, he has the lightning hose, some hellfire attacks. But we’re also saying ‘Hey, this Diablo is holding basically a weapon of mass destruction, one of the Worldstone Shards, and this is allowing him to be bigger and more dangerous than ever.’ He is literally bending reality as he fights you, and that allows us to have some new mechanics to the fight.”
Burges isn’t kidding when he said bigger. The Diablo boss battle is the game’s most elaborate yet, with three distinct phases, one of which sees a giant-sized Diablo hovering over the battlefield as players dodge his attacks.
“This is our biggest fight yet,” Burges said. “This is taking what we’ve done before and making it even bigger.”
Since Diablo Immortal takes place between the events of Diablo 2 and 3, Quinn said the team knew it needed to “play the hits” in terms of Diablo’s design and attacks, but also wanted to leave room for something new. That made for a fun challenge, as the team worked to make it so Diablo’s new reality-altering abilities felt as true to the character as classic moves like lightning breath.
Battling Diablo won’t just be a one-off story moment. Players will be able to continue challenging him after the story in the form of a replayable boss challenge, which can be taken on with up to four players. While the main story boss fight is intended to be accessible to all players, it will still feature intricate mechanics, Quinn said, with those mechanics being further amplified in the challenge version of the boss to be more comparable to the game’s current Helliquary-raid bosses. Those who brave Diablo again on his higher difficulty will be rewarded with El’druin-inspired cosmetics and Set items.
As for what comes next for Diablo Immortal, defeating Diablo himself isn’t the end, even if everything up to this point has been leading to it. The team had been planning elements of Diablo’s return in Diablo Immortal for the last four years, and it already has the game’s story mapped out for the next two. Diablo’s defeat will just mark the end of the first chapter of the game’s ongoing story, and players will no doubt notice some narrative seeds in the update pointing to where the story will go next. A massive power vacuum will form both in hell and on Sanctuary following the Lord of Terror’s defeat–a story angle Quinn said the team is eager to explore.
“Seeing what forces and who rush in to fill those vacuums on these two different fronts…that’s an underexplored story in Sanctuary in my opinion,” Quinn said.
The climactic battle against Diablo isn’t all that’s coming in the game’s last update for 2024. It will also bring changes to Diablo Immortal’s endgame in the form of Challenge Dungeons. These dungeons not only make enemies much stronger (they have 500% more life and deal 200% more damage) but also add two random modifiers, like faster monsters or random pools of lava to avoid. Some modifiers can even affect players directly, making it so skills cost health or making players physically smaller (and enemies bigger). Thankfully, braving these dungeons will have a higher chance to reward sought-after gear, with the first Challenge Dungeon completed each week awarding a guaranteed Set item.
That’s not all coming in the update. Shattered Sanctuary will additionally introduce new Helliquary bosses to tackle in order to unlock additional Torment difficulty tiers, three new Legendary gems, a host of balance changes, and a new feature in the form of Familiar Expeditions, where players can send pets off to complete certain activities and bring back rewards as if the players’ themselves had done them.
Diablo Immortal’s Shattered Sanctuary update caps off a busy year for Blizzard’s mobile game. Earlier in 2024 Diablo Immortal introduced a new class to the franchise–the Tempest–dove into Deckard Cain’s past, celebrated its two-year anniversary, and crossed over with World of Warcraft in the form of a Lich King boss battle.