Diablo 4 is a "re-emergence of the franchise," says series boss

Diablo general manager Rod Fergusson says Diablo 4 will mark "a re-emergence of the franchise" when it launches into early access later this week.

In an interview with GamesRadar+, Fergusson explained in detail exactly what Diablo 4 represents in Blizzard's eyes as it continues supporting the mobile Diablo Immortal and gears up to sunset the now 11-year-old Diablo 3. 

"Diablo 3 is on season 28 right now," Fergusson said. "And that's been the game for the last 11 years that's been keeping everybody playing and keeping people coming back. And we still have millions of people show up for every season. And then to be able to bring back Diablo 2 but make it more approachable again, by bringing it to console, modernizing it, letting you play with a controller to again, to reignite that core.

And then Diablo Immortal was that next step where it was like, 'we need to go where the players are, and the majority of players are on mobile ... We wanted to have a free-to-play mobile game to be able to reach a broader audience to have more people playing Diablo and knowing what Diablo is.

And so all of these other games are also sort of this rolling snowball that's rolling downhill and getting bigger and bigger to this moment we're eight days away from, which is the launch of Diablo 4 and the re-emergence of the franchise."

With an unending drip of "launch trailers," several betas, and one final server slam test, Diablo 4 has enjoyed a healthy pre-release hype campaign, and its forthcoming launch is one of the most anticipated of the year. Even so, Fergusson said in the same interview that Diablo 4's servers are prepared for launch, admitting that "it might be a little bumpy on the first day."

Here's our full Diablo 4 review in case you want to see what we make of the long-awaited sequel.