Diablo 4 announced the theme of its upcoming Season 2 this week at Gamescom, dubbed Season of Blood. The vampire-centric era will be ushered in this fall, placing players in the new role of a daywalker just in time for Halloween. The Season of Blood will begin October 17, ending the current Season of the Malignant that began this July.
One of the biggest coming features with the new Diablo Season 2 is the addition of character Erys, a vampire hunter played by Eternals’ actress Gemma Chan that will aid the protagonist in eradicating the new vampire threat facing Sanctuary. Though the player won’t become a vampire themselves exactly, they will gain special new vampiric powers; however the exact mechanics of these are still under wraps for now. The new Season will also come with a host of other quality of life improvements, including a better inventory interface, updated elemental resistance systems, and how things like Paragon Points will carry over between seasons.
Screen Rant sat down with Diablo 4‘s associate production director Chris Wilson and Diablo general manager Rod Fergusson at Gamescom to discuss the upcoming update, new character Erys, and what will surprise players about Season of Blood.
Screen Rant: First I would just love to hear a little bit about what the creative process was like behind coming up with this new season. Where did it first start and were there any especially big hurdles or anything like that along the way?
Chris Wilson: Sure. So, for season two, it’s The Season of Blood. It really starts with our design team. So, they always start with ideas. They try to come up and brainstorm different ideas that will A, provide for fun power fantasies for your character classes, but B, also will allow for a really strong and exciting story that we can tell as part of the season.
We really want to be able to set the player off with a strong narrative wrapper to kind of like, “Okay, what’s going to kick me off of my next adventure? And then also again, going to lead to really fun mechanics and a power fantasy that I can really lean into as I develop my character.” So, with The Season of Blood, we really leaned into vampires as that theme, and we felt like that really hit all of those boxes because the player’s going to have new vampiric powers that you’ll have access to.
So, when you think about the five classes for Diablo, you now have this vampiric twist on it, right? So it’s like if I’m playing as a barbarian now, what does it mean to be a barbarian that wields vampiric powers or as a rogue? Same question. And so it’s really going to allow our players to come up with brand-new ways to build their character and really go on that journey.
And then from a story perspective, we have a new quest line that players will be able to go on. You’ll be partnering with a new character named Erys and she’s a vampire hunter being voiced by Gemma Chan. So, we’re super excited with that partnership. Having someone of her ilk bring her talents to the voice cast is really exciting. And then beyond that, new legendary weapons to collect, new uniques, new enemies to fight. So, it’s going to be a lot of new content to really drive engagement for players.
Rod Fergusson: Yeah, I think Chris said it all. Basically, in terms of the design, I think we are always looking for the two pieces, which is what are the cool mechanics? What are the things that are going to allow, as Chris said, the power fantasy of what your play is? Then also what is a compelling theme wrapper to make it sort of interesting from a narrative perspective? And so that was sort of that idea of blood and what blood means to the characters and what it means to the world and how we could wrap that around with vampires is really how it all came to be through the design team.
And what was it like collaborating with Gemma Chan for this project? That’s really, really exciting that you guys got her as Erys.
Rod Fergusson: Yeah. She’s a great actor. And so, having her voice felt like the right texture we wanted. You can hear it in the trailer because Erys is this, she’s a little bit of a colder, bitter sort of character that warms up over time because she’s a vampire hunter and she’s helped train other people to be vampire hunters, but they get bit and turn on her. And so, she ends up having to put down her friends essentially.
And so, with you having vampire powers, she doesn’t quite trust you. And so, there’s a darkness and a cool edge to Gemma’s voice that I thought was really good for Erys to play into. And so, she was very excited about the project. We were very excited to have her. We think it’s a great collaboration.
Yeah. I would love to hear a little bit more about Erys. You gave a really good snippet overview just now, but I’d love to hear any little more details you can share about her character.
Rod Fergusson: I think we’ll have more to share later in terms of depth because this is – we’re announcing season two because it’s Gamescom and it’s a great moment to announce something. But the first week of October we’ll have a really big deep dive into the season and what the story means, what are all the mechanics, what are your vampiric powers. We’ll go over all that at the beginning of October.
Awesome. And in terms of the new bosses, is there anything you can give a window into in terms of what players can expect on that front?
Rod Fergusson: Oh, absolutely. Do you want to talk about it?
Chris Wilson: Yeah. So as part of season two, we’re going to have five new boss encounters that players in the later stages, as you start to level up, level 50 to 100, you’ll have these touchpoints where it’s going to really test your build, test your character’s power. And so staggered throughout that progression from 50 to 100, you can essentially farm these new bosses for an opportunity to get rare drops like uniques.
That’s something that we heard from player feedback that like, “Hey, there’s these really unique items, ultra uber uniques rather, but they’re hard to get.” And it’s like, how do I more reliably go after it? And so, by having these five bosses staggered through the end game, it gives you a way to go after and farm those things that are coveted by the players while also really testing and giving you these milestone challenge points for your ability.
Rod Fergusson: And they’re not just bosses. When he talks about farming a boss, it’s not like Diablo II where you would just go in and kill the boss, pop out, come back in, kill the boss, pop out. So, the notion of the way that some of the five work is that they actually rely on each other to be able to be summoned into the world. So, you actually have to work to be able to summon one of these bosses in to be able to a farm an uber unique. So, it adds even more gameplay to it. So, it’s not just about, “I’m just going to keep cranking on this boss over and over you.” Actually, there’s a sequence of steps to be able to summon them so you’ll be able to take them on and go after that unique.
Awesome. And then there’s also going to be a host of quality of life changes in this new update from what I understand.
Rod Fergusson: Yep.
Are you able to talk about those at all?
Rod Fergusson: Oh, for sure. I’ll do the Renown and you can do the other one?
Chris Wilson: Sure. Go ahead.
Rod Fergusson: I’ll just do the renowned one real quick. So when I always talk about at launch even in the renowned system where as you’re completing things in the world, finding altars of Lilith or you’re exposing the map or you’re doing side quest, we would give you all this Renown that you’ve used to unlock aspects of the game. Well, when we started at launch, we expected every season that people would do all that renowned over and over again.
And what we heard was in the preseason, “Oh, I don’t want to go find these altars. They’re very hard to find. There’s a lot of them. Could I just carry that over?” And so, for season one, we actually did that. We said, “Okay, we’ll give you credit for the altars and we’ll give you credit for the Fog of War you’ve lifted off the map.”
And now as we’re in season one, we’ve heard, “Well actually I’m putting a lot of effort into these side quests and these dungeons and the strongholds to fill this all out. Can’t I just carry the whole thing over?” And so, listening to our players, that’s part of one of the quality of life that when you start season two, all of your renowned that will be progressed that you’ve done either in the eternal realm or in the seasonal realm. So, when you start off, you’re going to have your opals and your paragon points and your XP and your money, so you’ll be good to go on the first level. So that’s one of the examples.
Chris Wilson: Another area where we got a lot of feedback was around the inventory system, particularly around gems. So, when you play the game currently, you’re getting a lot of gems that drop off of enemies and it takes up a lot of your inventory space. So as part of season two, we’re going to be taking steps to essentially make that a lot easier for players to manage. You won’t have as many gems, they’re going to be treated differently in your inventory, so it won’t take up all of the space.
Similarly, we’re going to have the ability to filter and also search in your inventory as well, just as quality of life improvements. Beyond that, we’re also making changes to our resistances system. So, we’ll be doing a lot to essentially make resistances more meaningful to players. So, if you have a build where you’re heavily resistant to lightning or to fire, it’s going to have more impact after the changes.
Rod Fergusson: That’s not everything that’s. That’s just, we’re announcing at Gamescom and we’re giving some sort of high-level guidance. But again, when we get to the beginning of October, we’ll have a lot more detail. There’s a lot more quality life stuff coming.
And what inspired that? Were you getting a lot of feedback online? Was it from certain testing that you were doing or?
Rod Fergusson: Yeah, both. We did a lot. There’s a lot of telemetry or data we collect, and so we analyze that. But we also do things like surveys. We look at social media, we look at the forums, we watch the videos. How we feel while we’re playing. All that goes in. So, I always talk about we have qualitative data, how people feel about it, and quantitative data, which we can actually see all the reports and graphs.
And so, based on that, we always look at, okay, we’re getting all this feedback. Now when we look at our priorities and the team that we have, is this something we can do quickly? And sometimes we hot fix things overnight sometimes, and then sometimes it’s like, oh, it can be in a patch two weeks from now, or maybe it needs to go into a future season. And so that’s part of the balance process we have to do that Chris has to do as part of running the live service.
And I know you can’t go too much into detail, but I’m curious what you think will be most surprising to players about this new season?
Rod Fergusson: Most surprising? I don’t know if we have a surprise yet that we want to reveal. It wouldn’t be a surprise, but I do think the notion of being … The concept is to become a day walker. The idea that you are gaining vampire powers and without yet becoming a vampire. And so that idea of if you ever watched the movie Blade, right?
So, it’s this vampire who hunts vampires. And I think it’s really interesting when you think about our character classes like a barbarian, as Chris was talking about, what does it mean to be a vampire barbarian? And so, I think that’s going to be really surprising when you start to take what does it mean to be a necromancer? What does it mean to be a sorcerer and a ward druid and then have vampiric powers on top of that and become a vampire, I think is going to be really fun way to play through the season.
And similarly, what are you most excited to see players react to with this new season?
Chris Wilson: React to? I think, honestly, I don’t want to say the same answer, but I think it’s the builds, the power fantasy of leveraging the vampiric powers in new ways and how that complements the different classes, I think would be interesting for players. Beyond that, I think it’s those boss encounters. Being able to then take your powers and even challenge these new milestone challenges as you level up, I think will also be interesting for players as well.
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