Diablo4
Diablo 4 is now showing off Vessel of Hatred’s new Spiritborn class in its entirety with a new series of hands-on tech demos, trailers, interviews, and more. While I wasn’t able to attend the demo in person, I had the chance to sit down with Game Director Brent Gibson and Class Designer Bjorn Mikkelson to discuss the number one question everyone was asking when the Spiritborn was revealed.
Why this class? Why create an entirely new class at this point when so many fans are still clamoring for old reprisals from Paladin/Crusader to Amazon to Monk and beyond? Well, they had a lot to say and it’s mostly about the freedom that an entirely new class offers, rather than forcing you to use old roles and movesets, even though that’s what they did with the base game.
“When we started,” Gibson said, “we were still developing the base game, which was interesting because we were really happy with the direction that the original five classes were going, and we knew that they would really capture the archetypes that those existing classes represented in the previous games.”
“There were a couple of things we wanted to make sure of,” Gibson continued. “The first was we wanted it to feel fresh, we wanted it to feel new, rather than just rehashing what we’ve done before. This is an opportunity to look at the holes in our fighting style, look at the power fantasies that we haven’t done yet and develop something that was fresh and could stand alongside those original classes. The other thing was we wanted it to come from the place where we were going, and we knew we were going to the jungle… and that led us on the journey of creating something brand new.”
Diablo4
They confirmed to me that the Spiritborn will indeed play a major role in the Vessel of Hatred story, rather than just being handed to you and kept on the sidelines. They will also have a low-level specialization mission that will unlock the ability to combine spirit bonuses from the four main summoned spirits, the fire-based Jaguar, physical Gorilla, venomous Centipede, and lightning-shooting Eagle. These spirits will assist you in combat rather than you turning into them like a Drruid.
One of the key points of creating a new class like the Spirtborn was that they could make it exactly what they wanted instead of having to borrow from older classes. In that case, they wanted it to excel in “hybridization.”
“It’s a bit of a cop-out to say that the role we’re filling is the ‘flex’ role, which is basically all the slots,” Mikkelson said, “but the big experiment was what can we do if we start from the top down and think what if we make a character that is really able to hybridize? A lot of our classes can be a little bit more like ‘stick to your lane’ and do one or the other, and those all have their place.
“The relationship with the spirits is a very personal choice, a very self-expressive choice where everyone is different,” Mikkelson continued. “Being able to choose your spirits and what combination you want felt like a very natural connection between making it very personal and giving you options for hybridization.”
Diablo4
There’s a lot of Spiritborn footage floating around the internet. Gibson says Monk fans will be happy with the focus on martial arts. But yes, it will feel unique from all the previous classes, with the giant spirits you can summon into battle.
It’s certainly not out of the question that previous classes that are still missing from Diablo 4 could be added in future content, including expansions, though nothing has been confirmed yet. They did mention that creating a brand new class from concept to execution takes longer than re-imagining a previous class, but either way, I wouldn’t expect to see more than one of these per year.
Blizzard has shown a lot of interest in new Diablo classes lately, between this one and Diablo Immortal’s Blood Knight. I’d bet they go back to an old class next time around (I’m still putting money on Paladin), but if Spiritborn blows everyone away, maybe not. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it when Vessel of Hatred comes out on October 8th.
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Pick up my science fiction novels Herokiller series And The Earthborn Trilogy.