At the IGN FanFest 2023, Blizzard has shown new information and images about Diablo 4, including the first cutscene of the game. This tells a little about the story of the action RPG and shows your own character.
What is this scene? Diablo 4’s intro cinematic shows your character riding a horse through a snow-covered mountainous landscape until surprised at night. He loses his horse and has to seek shelter.
For almost 4 minutes, a narrator tells you a little more about the story of Diablo 4 and what it’s actually about. The hero finally fights his way to a cave to spend the night there. When he wakes up, the scene ends and the game apparently begins.
In the scene you don’t see a placeholder, but your own character. Diablo 4 features an extensive character editor for each of the game’s 5 starting classes, unlike Diablo parts before.
According to lead designer Joe Shely, something like this should happen more often in Diablo 4. Your character keeps popping up in cutscenes, as is now standard in modern RPGs.
Diablo 4: The in-game opening cinematic
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When can I play myself? The scene was first shown during the IGN FanFest on February 18, 2023. Shely also announced the start of the open beta on March 17th for pre-orders and a week later for everyone.
From then on you can watch the opening scene for yourself, or at the latest when the game is released on June 6th. The beta contains the entire prologue with the first act, but it is limited to level 25. Some more information about the game:
Overall, Diablo 4 should take 180 hours to even get to the max level – a lot longer than the beta will be possible. Then comes the actual endgame. However, we cannot yet say how many cutscenes will appear during this time.
What else you need to know about Diablo 4 can be found in our overview of the upcoming game:
Diablo 4: Everything about the release, classes, beta and gameplay