Diablo 4: Lord Of Hatred Brings Back Everyone’s Favorite “Hot Mom,” Amazons, And Lorath

Eleni Rivera: The fun part is that we get to reinvent the Paladin. While they recognize the past, they know about the Zakarum, they know about other Paladins that have existed… They get to redefine who they are, what they are, and what The Order is. That’s who they are. They even choose a new name when they join The Order, and their name is directly connected to what they find the most important within it. It’s so cool. You get a chance to see this new form of who they are.

Burns: And what’s interesting about them too is they–due to their close connection with the light–are also aware of angels and the heavens. They know that angels are beings of light. And so they don’t worship angels or anything like that, but they see them as these embodiments of light and embodiments of values that are associated with the light, like valor.

GameSpot: Could you tell us a bit more about the region that’s coming with the expansion? Are there any real-life locations that inspired it, or parts of history?

Burns: Skovos is really cool, really unique, and interesting to Sanctuary. We mentioned earlier that Skovos is where Lilith, Inarius, and these other rebel angels and demons created Sanctuary, and then they hung out in Skovos. It wasn’t necessarily called Skovos back then, but they lived there at the dawn of the world. This is where they created humans, or rather where they created the first humans: the Firstborn. When you think about this saga as a story of family, as Eleni said, or maybe as one about what humanity’s fate is, it makes sense to bring this culmination with Mephisto to where humanity itself began. There’s tons of Firstborn ruins and, sometimes, not even ruins–it’s the modern-day people, the Askari. They’ve maintained this architecture, they live within it, and they see the Firstborn as part of their heritage in a way, even though it’s distant.

There’s a lot of different environments throughout these different islands. Each one of them has a unique theme and flavor. We explore a lot of the culture of this place, so you have the Amazons and you have this oracle order, this Order of Seers. We get to see how they work together and how they rule over this island nation to help it function and survive all this terrible stuff that’s happening in other parts of Sanctuary.

But the big interesting point of conflict is that now the bad stuff that was happening in Sanctuary–the stuff that we saw in base game and Vessel of Hatred–now it’s coming to Skovos. Mephisto, in the body of Akarat, has gathered a bunch of followers, he’s brought them all to Skovos, and he’s disrupting the order and the piece of this place. Anything you want to add to that, Eleni?

Rivera: I feel like you covered a lot of it, but it’s really beautiful. It’s stunning and it’s a place that you haven’t seen before, so I think that’s really exciting. And there’s just a lot to look at. There’s water that you get to look at, and I know that’s very small, but it’s just… the environment team did a really good job. And in general, there’s a lot of deep lore that we got a chance to explore there. I think that’ll be really exciting for players who really love lore and players who are also just diving into Diablo for the first time.

GameSpot: And compared to Vessel, how large is Lord of Hatred? How many hours of story can we expect?

Rivera: I would say it’s comparable to Vessel of Hatred. The map is pretty big. Like Matt said, there’s a lot of lore stuff you get to explore in Skovos, so it’s got quite a bit of content that the players get to dive into.

PC Gamer: How do you approach creating a villain like Mephisto in a way that feels like a threat to the player, given that our player characters have just killed tons of demons that were already very powerful?

Rivera: It’s narrative. It’s understanding what a player’s weakness is, right? And it’s building that up and connecting the player to people like Neyrelle and Lorath. You have these stakes that get bigger and bigger because you care about them more. So when it comes to someone who’s so powerful, or someone who can defeat all these demons, what really is the thing that will get them to crack? It’s the people that they love, the people that they want to fight for, and Sanctuary. And when it comes to creating a really big villain, it’s building off that.

Burns: When we first introduced [Mephisto] in the base game, part of the reason we introduced him that way is because he’s not the antagonist in the story yet. We’re hunting Lilith and he’s helping us, and so it’s creating this feeling of, “Yeah, I don’t know if I should trust him or I shouldn’t trust him, but he’s sort of useful to me, so at what point will the usefulness wear out or will he turn the tables on me?” Because it’s going to happen eventually, right? I think we wanted to introduce him that way just so that it would feel a little different than suddenly there’s a prime evil sitting in front of you and you just want to fight him.

I mean Eleni said it perfectly: It’s how his effect on the characters we care about–and on the world at large–raises the stakes. And again, we’re continuing this thread of him always being a bit of a devil on our shoulder. We’re not always working with the best characters–sometimes our allies are a little shifty, too. He exploits that reality. He makes us doubt, maybe sometimes our actions, and the people around us.

IGN: How do you make side quests feel like an organic part of the story when there’s literally Satan running around?

Burns: One thing that we’ve done is there are a number of side quests where it’s a continuation of a character story that you meet in the main campaign. There are quests that follow an important character that you’re around for some amount of time, and now you get to see what has happened to them after all these big events have unfolded. Yeah, Mephisto is running around and the stakes are so high, but what’s going on with these other characters? It’s about showing the aftermath of those big events, or showing the repercussions of the devil running loose.

Rivera: Yeah. I mean, the main story is so specific to our main characters, but the side quests are what breathe life into Sanctuary. They show us what everybody else is doing while the world is crumbling, and seeing intimate stories–seeing what other characters who maybe we know but they’re not in the main quest–I think that gives us a chance as writers to dive deeper, and gives players get the chance to understand what these people are doing while there is this chaos. Life keeps on life-ing even when you’ve got Mephisto running amok. And I think that’s the cool part about writing side quests.

GameSpot: It seems like this idea of generational trauma is really at the core of this saga. Is that something that was intentional to this story? Are there some other ideas and themes that you were really hoping to get across and explore?

Burns: Yes. One of the themes that’s present throughout is this idea of the passing of the torch, or like you said, it’s sort of a generational… Maybe trauma is part of it, but also how you pass on legacy, and whether you can even pass it on at all. And in passing on a legacy, what kind of burden are you putting on the new people?

For Lilith wanting to protect Sanctuary, or for the Horadrim wanting to do their thing, these are not easy jobs, right? They require a lot of sacrifice. Sometimes the goal is noble, but passing it on can be hard because you know that you’re dooming these people to a tough life. That’s definitely a theme that we played with in base game and Vessel, and also we explore in Lord of Hatred as well.

There’s also this prophecy in the base game, and I think it shows up in Vessel of Hatred too, that Rathma had. He had these visions and saw the Great Serpent, and this is still a part of the story. As Eleni said, fate is a big theme and so is this prophecy, how it’s unfolding, what it actually means, and whether it must happen or can be avoided. This thing will unfold and be fulfilled, but maybe not in the way the characters necessarily suspect. There will be a lot of sacrifices and choices made by characters that there are no coming back from. [Lord of Hatred] is going to be a big, exciting culmination of everything that started in the base game.

PC Gamer: Could you talk a little bit more about Lilith coming back to the story and what her role is? I know there are quite a few players that really, really enjoyed her in the first game.

Rivera: We all love Lilith, right? She’s cool, she’s hot, she’s our mom. I think it’s really exciting we get a chance to see her in a new way. There’s a lot of intimacy that we get to have with Lilith, and I think that we’ve always wanted to–or at least I’ve always wanted to–partner up with her. But Lilith will always be a demon at the end of the day. She has her own motivations and she’s always going to have her own idea of what she wants in the world. So she has to decide whether or not she wants to ally with us for this bigger problem.

Burns: The only thing I’d add is, again, it’s about bringing these different threads to a close. In the base game, we were fed Lilith’s blood petals–fed her blood. She’s been a part of us this whole time. And though we defeated her in Hell, something of her has lived on in us. There’s a presence inside of us that is slumbering basically. And now that we’re going after Mephisto and the stakes are high and the fate of the world hangs in the balance, her presence within us really becomes a key to figuring out how to stop Mephisto. Like she said in the base game, “There would be no victory without me.” That sort of idea, it’s true–we will need her to fix this and to save Sanctuary from Mephisto.

GameSpot: What inspired the decision to bring back Lilith so soon? Were you a bit worried about bringing her back or was it just something that seemed like, “Oh no, we have to do this?”

Burns: Like when I mentioned earlier, before the base game actually released and we were planning out future stories, we always did want to bring her back. Then it became a question of when. It was about finding the right opportunity to do it and make it feel the most impactful to the story.

During [Vessel of Hatred’s] development, we were toying around with the idea. We actually made some of these scenes where you heard her speaking. There was a scene where you saw her reflection or something like that too, but we cut those things out of Vessel because we were just trying to figure out, “Okay, where’s the place where we should highlight that so that it feels like something really juicy and impactful and not just a little thing that happens and then there’s no payoff for it yet?” You know what I mean?

Rivera: I feel like one of the biggest things is deciding how much payoff we want. We talk a lot about how this expansion is going to be super satisfying and everything will feel like it’s tied together. Vessel of Hatred was the story of Neyrelle, it was a story of Mephisto, and it was about seeing what he could do without the power of being in Sanctuary. Now that he’s out, it’s seeing what he’s going to do with this free will back in Sanctuary but masked as this major religious figure.

Burns: One fun thing we’re doing in Lord of Hatred that we didn’t really do before is, with Lilith, you have different dialogue options for how you want to respond to her about certain things. We know that people have different feelings for her–whether she was right, whether she was wrong or whether they would’ve wanted to join her or not–and so we wanted to explore that through some of the dialogue you can have with her. Now, you get to see different ways she’ll respond to you as well based on your decisions.

Rivera: I feel like Lilith is so nuanced and so complex. You get a mix of seduction and horror all at the same time and it’s so cool and fun. And now we get a chance to really see her in a different way. When we last saw her we were fighting against her, but now there’s a bigger issue. There’s more at stake here, so it’s her deciding what’s important to her.

GameSpot: You brought up that you now have options for how you want to interact with Lilith, and I thought that was really interesting because, right now, choice-driven, branching CRPGs are becoming more of the standard in the industry. Is that something that you’ve ever thought about exploring with Diablo? Having more choice throughout the story, exploring maybe different endings, different stories, and branching paths? Is that even possible in the structure of the game?

Burns: I think it’s cool and I enjoy that kind of stuff too. For Lord of Hatred, it’s more in line with the base game and Vessel of Hatred. We don’t do that kind of branching stuff. The choices I mentioned earlier, there’s a number of places in the campaign where you have these different options of what to say, or how someone might respond to you, but it’s more about giving the moment some interesting flavor. It’s about allowing you to imagine your own story in this–who you are, your choices, or your opinion about something. It’s giving you an opportunity to say it out loud, basically, even though it doesn’t necessarily create a branched quest or storyline based on that. It’s just about that opportunity of expression for your character or for some of the other characters too.

Rivera: That’s why we do it sometimes in side quests. It’s not like you have two different paths, but I do think we get to explore a little bit of that. There was a side quest from, I think in Vessel of Hatred, that you get to have an alternate ending based on what you choose.

IGN: Romance options? That’s all I got.

Blizzard PR representative: Are you asking, “Can we hook up with Lilith?”

GameSpot: It’s what everybody’s thinking.

Rivera: In terms of romance, we get to see a little bit of Lorath’s past, which is something that we haven’t really gotten a chance to see with other characters. He has interactions with Queen Adriana that we get to see. We also get to see a lot more of Lorath, how he was painted in the past, and who he was versus who he’s become now.

PC Gamer: Is Lorath back? Are we going to hear more Ralph Ineson?

Burns: Yeah, Lorath is one of the main characters in the expansion. He’s going to be with you almost all the time throughout the campaign, except the times you split up and you’re off doing different things, right? But yeah, he’s there, he’s continuing his story. There’s a lot about Lorath and the Horadrim in Lord of Hatred. And again, it goes back to the themes of legacy and the fate of the Horadrim.

We’ve been in VO sessions with Ralph recording all of his lines, and it’s always great to hear his voice again. The moment you hear it, you’re like, “Oh yeah, it’s Lorath.” That’s been really fun and I’m super excited about Lorath’s story in Lord of Hatred. I think it has a lot of great moments. He’s a lot of fun to write as a character and, again, Ralph’s voice is just amazing.

Another thing is Lorath has a history in Skovos, and that’s something we’ll explore in the campaign but, years and years ago, he came to Skovos with some other Horadrim and went on an adventure there. He met this Amazon named Adriana and they formed a bond, so he has some history with her. And now Adriana is the Amazon queen of Skovos. So with him coming back, there’s a connection he has to this place that we’re going to explore.

IGN: I’m curious about how you guys are going to make players care about Akarat. The importance of the final cut scene of Vessel of Hatred might have been lost on people unless they’re in deep on Diablo, but he’s obviously a different type of puppet than a wolf. I’m curious about how you think about bringing Akarat as a character into the fold–and all the baggage that comes with him–and trying to explain why that matters while also showing this new version of the Lord of Hatred who is now walking around as a deity.

Rivera: When it comes to Akarat, he’s just going to appear as a normal man. I think what is going to really cut deep is the amount of people who are now rushing to get to Skovos; seeing the influence that he has because he’s such a big figure in the world and he’s been doing miracles in Sanctuary. The idea of all these people worshiping this person that you know as a player is Mephisto, I think that is where that terror starts to come.

He also has his Jedi mind tricks, right? Mephisto is very good at getting in your head. You think you see one thing, but really he’s showing you something else and that’s the power. We get a chance to show how Mephisto really plays with your emotions and I think that’s the best part about him.

Burns: Just to add to that, a couple interesting things about Mephisto in this form–and ways to create interest for folks playing through it–is at first he’s defying expectations, right? Yeah, he’s a prime evil in this body, but he’s not doing anything bad, which is interesting because that’s how Mephisto was in the base game as well. Oftentimes, he’s just telling you the truth. Maybe he’s trying to get his own way by saying it, but he isn’t always lying about things. Right now, he’s just out there helping people and doing miracles. So it becomes this question, or this mystery, of what is he doing it all for? Why is he putting on this act? What’s his end game for it all?

The other thing–and this ties into our themes–is that I think that Mephisto believes that humans don’t really have any control over their fate. They’re just cattle that more advanced entities or intelligent entities like him can lead around. What he’s doing here is almost to prove a point to us, The Wanderer, and also to Lilith; you can create these things, these humans, and you can hope that they have some kind of free will or agency, but ultimately I’m going to show you that they don’t. That’s something else we play with, again, to just deepen his character a bit and make it more interesting.

IGN: You have described Diablo IV as The Hatred Saga, and with this being the final confrontation with the Lord of Hatred, one would assume that that means that’s the end of the aforementioned saga. I’m wondering how you guys are thinking about Diablo IV’s future. I’m assuming that there’s going to be more Diablo IV after this.

Burns: You’re right in terms of us just looking at it as The Hatred Saga, and really that’s been our focus–just bringing this story to a close in a really big and impactful way. But there are other stories to tell on Sanctuary, of course, though I can’t really go into detail about any other stuff.

Rivera: I think the best part is Diablo’s live service. It gives us the opportunity to dive into whatever we want. Like Season 11, right? We get a chance to bring Hadriel back and we’re getting a chance to talk to this angel that we only met briefly in Diablo II. We get to expand Hadriel’s lore, which is really cool. We get a chance to always, possibly, tell new stories. But right now, we’re just focusing on getting this expansion out and seeing what happens.

The above interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.