Blizzard made the surprise announcement during BlizzCon 2026 that Diablo 5 is officially in the works, with its 2029 release set for six years after Diablo 4. That may seem like a long way off, but it's a huge reduction in the time between entries; Diablo 3 launched 12 years after Diablo 2, and Diablo 4 followed 11 years after.
You might expect that stunted development cycle to result in a sequel that's narrower in scope compared to previous entries. Actually, Diablo 5 sounds like the biggest departure for the series so far, leaving players to navigate a world fallen and enslaved by the series' namesake. That's incredibly depressing – and I think it's the only way to pay homage to the original Diablo just in time for the ARPG's 30th anniversary.
See you in Hell
With its iconic opening cinematic showing a ruined town, bodies swinging from a tree, and a crow pecking out the eyeball of a fresh corpse, 1996's Diablo is still one of the darkest games I've ever played. We see a hero dressed in heavy armor, hopelessly overwhelmed by darkness, and that sense of doom carries over seamlessly into the explorable map. Upon entering the town of Tristram, you're told "dark riders" came and destroyed your village, killing or enslaving everyone who was brave enough to rise up in defense of their hometown.
I was probably way too young to be playing it as a child in the late '90s, but Diablo changed my life. Every day for years, I would saunter over to my neighborhood friend's house to mooch off his coveted internet connection and play Diablo, and it felt like being transported to an entirely different universe.
And in a way, it was. Diablo was a portal to my first-ever shared, online video game world. I remember being transfixed by the idea of playing a game with random strangers from different countries, tackling dungeons before bed with someone who was just waking up and starting their day on the other side of the planet.
I made close friends I would never meet in real life, trudged through vertical layers of progressively bleaker places, and ultimately developed a morbid curiosity for unrelenting horror. It paved the way for me to become a video game journalist who would one day attend BlizzCon in person and watch Diablo 5 be revealed, smiling gleefully as flames engulfed a snarling demon on-screen.
"Sanctuary has been destroyed, and Diablo has won," says senior game director Joe Shely of Diablo 5's central premise. There are no more towns or safe zones, almost every human on Earth has either bowed to the Lord of Darkness or been turned into a demonic follower, and the lone few resistors have been enslaved. Now that's Diablo.
Of course, there's no such thing as a chipper Diablo game, but the visually bright Diablo 3 marked a low point for the series. Diablo 4 turned things around for the better, with a representation of Sanctuary that's much truer to the spirit of the original game. Still, capital cities like Kyovashad are completely shielded from dangers outside its walls; their streets are lively, bustling with players and vendors, and one would almost think humanity is thriving within these safe areas. Everything is pretty awful outside, but inside city limits, you'd be forgiven for thinking good has a fighting chance against evil. Diablo 5 makes it very clear that's not the case by explicitly handing the win to the dark side before the story even starts.
Diablo 5 is shaping up to be an exercise in doommaxxing
The snapshots we've seen and heard of Diablo 5 so far give little away in terms of gameplay, or major narrative beats. Thematically, though, it sounds like Blizzard knows what we all want: a tortured protagonist fighting back in the face of hopelessness, fire, blood, cracking bones, sons and daughters turned into snarling abominations, darkness, fear, and back-to-basics horror.
What that looks like in a next-gen (assuming 2029 is next-gen) Blizzard release remains to be seen, but I'm hoping it isn't purely a bloodier, nastier, more gruesome ARPG. Don't get me wrong, I want that too, but there's more to good horror than that. In Diablo 1, there's a burdening sense of longing in Tristram hinted at by grassy fields, lights still spilling out of abandoned homes, and even those timelessly haunting guitar chords that seem to vocalize, 'Things were pretty OK here once upon a time, but not anymore.' That adds a weight of real-world human sadness and emotional depth that can't be conveyed by traditional depictions of Hell alone, and we all know from movies like Hereditary and Bring Her Back that sadness amplifies horror.
Assuming Blizzard is walking the walk when it says it's "doubling down on darkness," Diablo 5 is shaping up to be an exercise in doommaxxing, a term that could've spawned out of the original 1996 Diablo rather than 2020s internet culture. And in the wake of Diablo's 30th anniversary, I can't think of a better way to honor the series' roots than by returning straight to them, burrowing ever further into the rotting ground, and bringing players closer to Hell itself than ever. Diablo 5 could be the darkest ARPG since the original, and that's music to my pointy little devil ears.
