Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred Gamescom Q&A – ‘Diablo Is the Healthiest It’s Been Since Launch’

At Gamescom 2024, Blizzard showcased Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred, the first of a series of expansions coming to the action RPG with a scheduled annual cadence.

Originally announced during the BlizzCon 2023 Opening Ceremony, Vessel of Hatred is set to add the Spiritborn class, which is brand new to the Diablo franchise. You can check it out in action in our gameplay capture video available below.

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During the German convention, I had the chance to interview Game Director Brent Gibson and Systems Designer Aislyn Hall to discuss not only Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred but also the future of the live service game at length. Here's the full transcript of our chat. As a reminder, the expansion is out on October 8 on all platforms.

To start off, which feature from Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred do you think is most important for the future of the game since you plan to support it for years to come?

Brent Gibson: The most important new feature, well, we're adding new ways to play, we're adding new forms of power. I think Mercenaries is going to have a really big impact on gameplay. Not only is it going to give players who like to play solo a small taste of playing in a party, where they can take the weaknesses of their class build and supplement it with a follower that comes along, but they can also use this whole new feature that we have called reinforcements.

With this one, you can take a mercenary and slot them into come into the fight for a moment, pull off the power of me. The cool thing about that is that you can actually define the condition, like, my health is getting low, come in and tank some of my damage, for example. It essentially starts to address the feedback that people want more skills and abilities on their bar. Now you can actually use reinforcement as kind of an additional ability that you normally wouldn't have.

Aislyn Hall: Another feature in Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred that I think is