Ironing out Diablo 4’s first new class, Blizzard went through “like 60” prototype skills: “What feels fun? What’s different? What’s working for people?”
Diablo 4’s developers went through 60 different prototype skills trying to figure out how the new Spiritborn class should play.
The Spiritborn is Diablo 4’s first brand-new class, never-before-seen in Blizzard’s action RPG series, and it’s landing as part of the Vessel of Hatred expansion later this year. GamesRadar+ recently spoke to Diablo 4 class designer Bjorn Mikkelson about how the development team at Blizzard designed the Spiritborn, and it was more difficult than you might think.
“The question was always like, ‘what is a Spiritborn?’ because it’s not a name you necessarily immediately recognize,” Mikkelson says, rightly pointing out that, unlike other classes like a Warlock or Rogue, you don’t have a preconceived notion of what a Spiritborn is. That’s largely because it’s not a typical class you can play in Dungeons & Dragons.
“And so it was always more of a question of like, ‘what kind of Aspects, what kind of gameplay would it have,’ that sort of thing,” the Diablo 4 class designer continued. “To figure that out, we did a few different processes for for class design, kind of part of our normal process, and you know, making the Rogue or something like that, we go, ‘hey, we’re going to make a Rogue.’ Like, you know what it is.”
Mikkelson says Blizzard’s development team did “massive brainstorms” to figure out a class like the Rogue, but the Spiritborn doesn’t really work like that because, as Mikkelson says, if one says ‘hey, let’s make a Spiritborn,’ it could be literally anything. “So instead, the ideation was more around the jungle,” he says. “Like, how do we draw these elements from the jungle? How do we draw them from the spirits? What kind of resonates with people in that, what are they looking for?
Even then, Blizzard’s teams still “probably made like 60 different prototype skills,” as Mikkelson recalls, just to figure out “what feels fun? What feels different? What’s working for people?” It turns out that there’s a lot that goes into designing Diablo 4’s first new class since it launched well over a year ago.
The Diablo 4 DLC, Vessel of Hatred, launches later this year on October 8. You can read our complete Diablo 4 Spiritborn interview for a deeper dive into how the new class came about.