PCGamesN interviewed Diablo IV art director John Mueller to discuss the game’s art direction. Mueller reveals the team drew inspiration from renaissance and medieval paintings exhibited at the Louvre museum.

Diablo’s eternal war between angels and demons – with humanity suffering somewhere in the middle – is heavily inspired by Renaissance and medieval paintings, as well as works from the Romantic era like Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa. These artistic periods feature a mix of dark fantasy and realism that’s central to Diablo IV’s visual identity, and in a recent quarterly update the team behind Diablo IV shared some of the techniques they’re using to realise that art style.

  • RAFT OF THE MEDUSA

The interview features at least two new screenshots and one concept art not seen before. The one with a Wizard standing in a hall, shows how the Physically based rendering (PBR) translates the dark and gritty appearance of Diablo IV scenes. It’s simply beautiful how the textures, light and shadow blend into the wood.

Read the full interview here.

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BlizzCon 2019 Panel Transcripts