Diablo 4’s Season of Witchcraft is underway, and moreover all the brand new darkish powers you may wield, there’s a very reworked wardrobe for making your character as sizzling as potential — which, as everyone knows, is the true endgame.
Whereas most of it really works the identical means because it did in earlier seasons, the redesigned menus put a bigger deal with truly watching your character change as you swap your gear and dye it varied colours. Diablo 4 has at all times had a formidable quantity of choices for customizing your look, greater than even Path of Exile 2, which locks its gender and physique sorts to every of its lessons and has no transmog function in any respect. Blizzard has discovered from years of creating massively social RPGs that video games about loot are simply dress-up video games with numbers.
It’s no Infinity Nikki: Sanctuary version, however the brand new wardrobe is a component of a bigger shift Diablo 4 has been making since launch to turn into a bit extra foolish, a bit extra attractive, and quite a bit much less bleak. There was a time when the builders would deny requests for Diablo 3’s pets to return again in Diablo 4 — and now, two years later, everyone seems to be operating round with a tiger cub in Diablo 4. Final season’s battle go rewarded a pirate outfit; you may journey a lion as a mount. Diablo 4 has lastly loosened up on its devoted recreation of the gothic horror aesthetic of Diablo 2 to embrace a wider, extra fashionable strategy.
That’s fantastic for gamers like me, who spend a number of time within the wardrobe in search of the armor that greatest represents what sort of character I’m taking part in every season. In the course of the vampire-themed season, I drenched my necromancer in blood utilizing one of many sport’s surprisingly glorious tattoos. And on my sorceress, whose construct construct surrounded her with pulsing orbs of lightning, I made it so she seemed like all that vitality had consumed her. And now, within the witch season, I’m making an attempt to embody the occult in any means I can.
It’s a behavior for me to finish each session tweaking my outfit, which is even simpler now that the wardrobe may be accessed straight out of your stock display anyplace on the planet. The brand new interface has a cleaner, muted look and places a literal highlight in your character. Now, if you click on into a particular physique half, the digicam zooms in mechanically, and you’ll see what dye you might have utilized to every one always.
As an alternative of filling the facet of the display with a protracted grid of menu choices, every part is damaged out into its personal tab. Technically, it takes extra clicks to get round, however I discover that I are likely to swap between every part like a unique mode. After I’m biking by way of totally different gloves, I wish to see every part accessible, however once I’m utilizing dyes, I solely wish to deal with the general look of my character.
It additionally helps that every part has flipped to the other facet, which simply feels proper to me. Different cosmetics, like mounts and city portals, at the moment are throughout the identical menu and provide you with a greater preview of what they’ll truly appear like in motion. Every part is extra accessible and does a greater job at encouraging you to experiment.
However for all of the enhancements, there’s nonetheless a disappointing lack of latest transmog choices that don’t require shopping for skins within the real-money store, and even these typically really feel ridiculously over-designed. I don’t want my character to be on fireplace and I don’t must appear like 20 totally different variations of Sauron. Gamers have yelled about this since day one, and even when I don’t suppose the issue is as extreme as some say, it might be good to have extra choices, particularly now that it’s much more handy than ever to decorate your character up within the most interesting gear.