Diablo 4's new Season 3 companions were inspired by RPGs a lead dev plays, and they're in a "whole other ballpark" to Diablo 2 and 3's Followers

Diablo 4's new Season 3 companions were inspired by all the RPGs that the designer behind the game's Druid plays, and they're a lot different from followers in Diablo 3.

Blizzard just unveiled Diablo 4 Season 3: Season of the Construct earlier this week, and it's out real soon. As part of our big Diablo 4 Season 3 interview, GamesRadar+ spoke to game systems designer Sean White about the Seneschal, the new companions set to debut in the action-RPG with the new season later this month.

"One of my design goals for The Seneschal was player expression – player expression, player different builds, player choice," White said of the inspiration for the new companion. "It is very, very important to me when you approach a system like The Seneschal, players have many different options.

"Inspiration came from a number of places, I played a ton of games and a ton of ARPGs," White continued. The designer says a lot of the "most fun" games have plenty of "theory crafting and player expression," and that's something White wanted to capture with the Seneschal.

"You'll notice that The Seneschal has a ton of different builds – things that are obvious choices like 'This Seneschal will heal you, that's super cool,'" the Diablo 4 designer added. "But then there's a lot of other interactions where you're like, 'Oh, wait a minute, this can synergize with my build.' So things like that I geek out on."

However, White downplayed comparisons to Diablo 3's Followers. "I guess you could say maybe it's Follower-lite or like, but Seneschal is a whole other ballpark. It's almost as if you're customizing its own mini-class that's following you around," White said of the comparisons.

The Diablo 4 designer also said the Seneschal has "way more customization options" than you would've seen with Followers, from either Diablo 2 or 3. "I think that's one of the things that really sets it apart," White concluded.

Elsewhere in our interview, Blizzard confirmed Diablo 4's seasonal stories won't feed into