Norwegian electronics retailer Komplett has promised it will give away free copies of GTA 6 to anyone giving birth on the game’s launch day, exactly nine months ahead of its arrival.
The cheeky store chain has even encouraged fans to, er, get busy with their efforts to ensure this happens. Images on social media and reddit show posters for the campaign have been spotted, while the retailer’s Instagram has confirmed that this offer really isn’t just a joke.
“GTA 6 dropping in 9 months ;)” declares advertising posters seen in the Norwegian capital of Oslo this week, designed to promote the country’s major electronics chain. The posters also feature an image of a messy bed, strewn pillows, and a scattering of rose petals. It’s not subtle.
You can get GTA 6 for free if you give birth to a baby on the game’s release date in Norway. pic.twitter.com/d4fANWhAnr
On Instagram, Komplett describes the idea of having a baby on GTA 6 launch day as a “life hack” — with the obvious implication being that you could time your parental leave perfectly for when Rockstar’s highly-anticipated blockbuster drops.
(Of note, Norwegian parental leave offers a total of 49 weeks at 100% salary, or a total 61 weeks at 80% salary, shared between two people.)
“This is actually not nonsense,” Komplett wrote in a caption for an accompanying Instagram video. “GTA 6 is released in 9 months (🤞) and if you have a baby on the launch date, we’ll give you the game for free.”
Of course, the campaign is primarily designed to make headlines and get Komplett some attention — and it’s certainly doing that, even if the responses on social media are full of people pointing out that having a baby is quite a time-consuming thing all on its own.
“Lol, you’re not getting time to play gta 6 if you have a screaming baby at home,” wrote Low_Possibility_8893 as part of a lengthy thread on reddit.
“That baby is gonna cost alooooot more than 70 dollars…” suggested sopedound, hinting that actually this didn’t represent much of a financial saving.
“Haven’t slept in 6 days, nipples are like bullets and I’ve been hit in the face with explosive diarrhea,” concluded the appropriately-named PloppyTheSpaceship, suggesting what life with a newborn was actually like. “I don’t even know what my name is right now let alone how to turn on a game, but I’m sure it’s good.”
Magic: The Gathering is kicking off its Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set in a few weeks, and while we’ve seen plenty of deals on upcoming sets, Collector Boosters have been like gold dust… until now.
How much?! That’s right, the fee is high. The reason for this is that Collector Boosters are the best way of grabbing the most expensive cards in any given Magic: The Gathering set because they’re full of alternative art treatments and foil variants.
The rub in this instance is that we don’t know what the most valuable cards in the set are going to be because Wizards of the Coast hasn’t started card reveals outside of a handful just yet.
If you want to snag some great Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cards for your Magic: The Gathering collection, this is the way to go, but with the $37 per pack around the same price you’d pay anywhere, don’t expect any discounts.
Honestly, in the time it’s taken us to write this article, there’s a good chance a bunch more of these have been sold, and they’re not likely to be reprinted after the fact, either.
As a reminder, Collector Boosters don’t necessarily contain ‘better’ cards than Play Boosters, they just contain rarer versions. If you’re looking for cards to play with, you can grab a bundle at a discount right now.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.
Development studio ZA/UM has announced that a free demo for its upcoming espionage-flavoured RPG, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, will be available to play on PC as part of Steam Next Fest.
Launching on February 23 and available until March 16, the demo features a “tailored” version of Zero Parade’s opening hours. While not everything from this section of the full game will be available as part of the demo, it does include two full quests, a variety of side activities, and the freedom to explore the city state of Portofiro. You can get a small taste of what awaits in the gameplay video below, which showcases the very first minutes of Zero Parades.
The demo also allows you to choose from three different character archetypes, which dictate the skills and stats of protagonist Hershel Wilk. ZA/UM encourages replaying the demo with each of the archetypes to see how a physical, soulful, or analytical build affects your choices and opportunities.
IGN recently interviewed several developers from ZA/UM to learn more about Zero Parades, which tells the story of a spy brought out of retirement to complete one last job. Its key theme is failure, and ZA/UM states that it has designed its dialogue system around that. “Every door closed is an open opportunity to go through the window instead,” said the studio in a press release.
Zero Parades features a similar design to Disco Elysium, ZA/UM’s previous game, and has been created by a team made up of both old and new employees. The full game is scheduled to launch in 2026, first on PC through Steam, GOG, and Epic Games Store, and then later on PlayStation 5.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Executive Editor of Features.
Best Buy’s latest Deal of the Day has dropped the critically acclaimed Ninja Gaiden 4 down to just $42.99 for one day only on Xbox. Not only that, but this is the Deluxe Edition as well, making this discount all the more impressive.
The Deluxe Edition of the game retails for $89.99, so that’s a serious $47 saving, and available for just a few dollars more than the game was listed on sale for at the start of the year ($40), and you’re getting a whole lot more for it as well.
So what’s included? For just over $40, you’re getting the base game, future gameplay content (The Two Masters DLC), exclusive character skins (Traditional Dark Blue, Legendary Black Falcon for Ryu; Divine Chimera, Raven Master for Yakumo), the Blade of the Archfiend weapon skin, 50,000 bonus NinjaCoin, and additional in-game items.
The standout is definitely the DLC content, The Two Masters, which is still expected to release in early 2026, so stay tuned for more news on that.
But, as I mentioned, this deal is also not long for this world. You’ve got until the end of the day at 11:59 PM ET, February 12, 2026, to secure the discount.
Yeah, yeah, this is also on Xbox Game Pass, but you remember when we used to own games? Those were the days! I have personally been trying to buy more physical games and more physical media in general, and I’d highly recommend others do the same as well.
Think about it this way as well: Game Pass Ultimate is $29.99 per month, and at just $13 more, you can own the game to revisit and play the DLC on as well. That’s worth it, at least in my opinion.
Our review from IGN’s Mitchell Saltzman said, “Despite its disappointing story and bland level design, Ninja Gaiden 4’s excellent combat still make it one of the best 3D action games in recent memory.”
It even earned a runner-up nomination for Best Action Game of 2025, as it’s a “pure action fan’s action game, featuring some of the best melee combat we’ve seen in years, bolstered by aggressive enemy AI, excellent weapon design, and the ability to let your creativity run wild by giving you the freedom to hotswap between all of your weapons on the fly.”
Robert Anderson is IGN’s Senior Commerce Editor and resident deals expert on games, collectibles, trading card games, and more. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Bluesky.
After years of wait and fan expectation, Pokémon Go players will finally be able to capture Mewtwo once more — in just a few months.
The fan-favorite Legendary Pokémon was last available to battle in Pokémon Go all the way back in July 2022, though its Shadow form was available more recently — over a weekend in March 2024. Still, fans have been clamouring for another chance to add the creature to their Pokédex ever since — and now it’s almost time.
Further details for this summer’s Go Fest celebrations have now been announced at a press event held in Tokyo, which will host one of three in-person meetups, ahead of the game’s usual global Go Fest celebration. Artwork shown at the event confirms that Mewtwo will return — and hints at the debut of a Mythical Pokémon species, too.
Artwork for the Tokyo event shows the usual array of Kanto species, as well as popular croc Sandile. Of most note, though, is the Mewtwo floating within the image — confirming its long-awaited return.
“I can’t say anything specific, but look forward to the Pokémon featured in the key visual,” a spokesperson told Japanese Pokémon outlet rocketnews24go, via machine translation. “Especially Mewtwo — I think it’ll be heart-pounding excitement for people who’ve been participating in GO Fest since the early days.”
Will this finally be the moment Mewtwo’s Mega Evolutions become available, after years of wait? Mega Mewtwo X and Y remain the only missing evolutions from the franchise’s original batch of Mega Pokémon. Meanwhile, the game will soon be moving on to the release of Megas from Pokémon Legends: Z-A, with the arrival of Mega Malamar and Mega Victreebell later this month.
While Mewtwo is only shown here for Pokémon Go Fest’s Tokyo event, artwork such as this usually shows species also available (to a greater or lesser extent) at the following global Go Fest — and it seems inconceivable that the creature would only be made available in a local version, when there has been such hype for its return generally.
The same is true of this year’s Go Fest logo, which as ever features a subtle hint at the latest upcoming Mythical creature to become available. Looking at the mini blue lightning bolts on the 2026 design, Mythical Pokémon Zeraora seems a safe bet. The creature recently gained a new Mega Evolution, which would also make for a fitting release.
This year is, of course, the 30th anniversary of Pokémon and the 10th anniversary of Pokémon Go — a pair of milestones that fans expect to be celebrated fully this summer. Word on what else is coming to the Pokémon franchise this year will follow shortly on Pokémon Day — February 27 — which is when it’s expected that the series’ 10th generation of games and creatures will be unveiled.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
The heavily rumoured, but yet to be confirmed, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Remake/Remaster is getting its very own art book, at least according to this recent Amazon listing in the UK.
Preorders are also now available, strangely, before we’ve got official confirmation of the game actually being real and given its own release window. Its art book is listed at £29.95 right now, a slight reduction from its initial £39.99 RRP, and the Amazon listing also mentions a release date of March 24, 2026.
Titan will be publishing the art book, and the publisher already has a history of releasing art books for the gaming franchise since 2012. That includes Assassin’s Creed III, Unity, Syndicate, Origins, and more.
More recent Assassin’s Creed art books have also been published by Dark Horse, a separate publishing house, including Shadows, Mirage, and The Making of Assassin’s Creed: 15th Anniversary.
Robert Anderson is IGN’s Senior Commerce Editor and resident deals expert on games, collectibles, trading card games, and more. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Bluesky.
Layoffs have hit the development studio Wildlight Entertainment, makers of the recently released multiplayer shooter Highguard. This comes just over two weeks after the free-to-play game’s January 26 launch.
Former senior level designer Alex Graner posted on LinkedIn, “Unfortunately, along with most of the team at Wildlight, I was laid off today.” While the number of people who were laid off has not currently been confirmed, the studio’s LinkedIn page states that its size is/was 51-200 employees.
Wildlight’s official X/Twitter account confirmed the layoffs with a statement reading, “Today we made an incredibly difficult decision to part ways with a number of our team members while keeping a core group of developers to continue innovating on and supporting the game.”
On BlueSky, Mat Piscatella from Circana (which tracks game sales and engagement) highlighted, “Highguard debuted in the top 10 in weekly active users on US Steam, was top 20 on both US PlayStation and Xbox (Circana Player Engagement Tracker week ending 1/31/26) and yet…” According to SteamDB, Highguard reached a peak concurrent player count of 97,249 on PC via Steam on release day and experienced a sharp decline with only 4,524 players two weeks after launch.
Graner also said, “This one really stings as there was a lot of unreleased content I was really looking forward to that I and others designed for Highguard.” While it initially had a 3v3 competitive mode, a 5v5 mode was implemented just days after release due to player reception to the small scale of the original mode. The team revealed a content roadmap on launch day that included updates with new items, modes, and characters each month throughout the year packed into seven separate episodes; it’s unclear how the layoffs will affect the studio’s plans as of now, but Widllight says it’ll continue to support the game.
Love and Deepspace is a virtual boyfriend game (also known as an otome game) where you play as a character who fights monster aliens while five men fight for her love. It’s available to download on iOS and Android and works on the old free-to-play, gacha mechanic. The ultimate aim is to build your relationships with one, two, or all of the men (we listen and we don’t judge) by interacting with them, fighting alongside them, texting them, completing their storylines and even… playing with claw machines to collect plushies. It was developed by Papergames, which is also the studio behind Infinity Nikki.
What’s the plot of Love and Deepspace?
You know how it goes, a Deepspace Tunnel opens up and suddenly alien monsters are causing havoc. As the main character living in 2034, in the fictional Linkon City, it’s your job to battle these alien monsters as part of an organisation called the Hunters Association. The Hunters all wield a special ability called an Evol and yours is Resonance, one that works alongside other Evol wielders’ to boost their skills. Throw in a shady biotech company called EVER, an organized crime syndicate called Onychinus, the Farspace Fleet, medical experiments and secrets a plenty, and you’ve got the storyline that makes the average love story look like child’s play.
Who are the men of Love and Deepspace?
There are five potential love interests in Love and Deepspace. Each has a different personality and storyline, but the one thing they all have in common is being obsessed with you. You can choose to focus on just one or play the field, and while they are mentioned in each other’s storylines, they don’t interact directly. Each has a specific Evol (think superpower) and multiple storylines that take place in both the modern day and in different lifetimes.
Light spoiler warnings ahead, although the non-linear way in which you unlock memories means piecing the storylines together is more of a puzzle than a straight path.
Xavier – Fights alongside you as a Hunter, gentle and caring, is actually a time traveller from the future. His Evol is light.
Zayne – A cardiac surgeon with a grumpy outer shell but a sweet toothed gooey middle. His Evol is ice.
Rafayel – A sensitive, pouty artist who hates cats and is actually one of the last survivors of an ancient race called the Lemurians. His Evol is fire.
Sylus – Powerful and strategic, with distinctive silver hair and red eyes, Sylus is the leader of the crime syndicate called Onychinus. His Evol is Energy.
Caleb – The main character’s adoptive brother, and a Farspace Fleet pilot. Protective and possessive, he was one thought dead, but returned as a Colonel in the Farspace Fleet. His Evol is Gravity.
What are the mechanics in Love and Deepspace?
There are a whole bunch of mechanics in Love and Deepspace, and all of them contribute to your relationship with the different male characters.
Combat
You take on different combat challenges in the storyline to progress, and regular activities like bounty hunts or Hunter training to earn rewards. You’re always paired with one of the male characters, and your choice of special attacks will depend on their Evol. Players have the option to set combat to an auto mode where the battle plays out without your input.
Texts and phonecalls
You’ll receive texts from each of the men at various points, and you’re giving a selection of dialogue options to reply with. As your relationship increases you’ll also get phone calls from them to discuss various events or check in. You can also comment on their posts on a Facebook like feed, send them emojis, and poke them.
Physical Interactions
You interact with each of the men in a setting called the Destiny Cafe. You can touch various parts of their body to elicit reactions, feel their heartbeat, or blow on your microphone.
Conversation
In the Destiny cafe you can also prompt them to have different types of conversations with you. You can get them to introduce themselves to your family or friends (a great way to weird your parents out over lunch) or to suggest what you should have for breakfast. Again, the dialogue options are heavily guardrailed so this isn’t going to head into AI sexbot territory. Sorry. You can also use the notebook function to ask them to set reminders for you, everything from important dates to tracking your period.
Quality Time
Basically the world’s most handsome Pomodoro timers. You can choose to Work, Workout, Study or Sleep for a set amount of time with any of the guys, and you can even do it in AR mode, so that you can reach new heights of comforting delusion by framing them in your real surroundings.
Dates
With Love and Deepspace dates you can go with the guys to try and grab plush toys at a claw machine, play a game called Kitty Cards against them, and go to a photo studio to get video or snapshots with them, or of them. You can style them, change the poses and backgrounds, and they have way more patience than any real life love interest would. In this section you can also update a personal journal with stickers and notes and photos, listen to audio recordings starring them, or access ‘Falling for You’ videos and visual novels content telling the story of your relationship.
Home
A recent addition, this mode brings a bit of The Sims to Love and Deepspace. You have a house to decorate with new rooms unlocking as you complete activities in the home, and each of the men can spend time with you there. It’s kinda cute to see badass Sylus dusting bookshelves because you’ve told him to do chores. There’s a gardening element too, where you can grow flowers that can be used in flower arranging without or without the boy’s input, and new blooms can be unlocked by hybridizing the plants.
How do the gacha mechanics work in Love and Deepspace?
Like Genshin Impact, you can buy or earn wishes to speed up your progress in Love and Deepspace, and there’s a number of in-game currencies which can be earned or bought.
Here the wishes represent memories with the men of Love and Deepspace, with different rarities and values attached to each. Five star memories, for instance, can be used to experience Each memory can be upgraded with Heartsand and crystals which can be earned by taking part in bounty hunts, or completing tasks and protocores, which are collected through combat.
Some memories are only available during special events, though those events are repeated sporadically to allow you more than one chance to grab specific wishes. Previous events have included a Star Wars style Throne of Eros storyline and Mortality’s Tenderness, which has a classical Chinese theme.
Rachel Weber is the Head of Editorial Development at IGN and an elder millennial. She’s been a professional nerd since 2006 when she got her start on Official PlayStation Magazine in the UK, and has since worked for GamesIndustry.Biz, Rolling Stone and GamesRadar. She loves horror, horror movies, horror games, Red Dead Redemption 2, and her Love and Deepspace boyfriends.
Blizzard will celebrate the 30th anniversary of Diablo by adding the Warlock class to a swathe of games — including Diablo 2: Resurrected, more than 25 years after the game’s original launch.
Resurrected, the 2021 remaster of Blizzard’s classic sequel, will receive the Reign of the Warlock DLC today, February 11, priced at $24.99 across PC, PlayStation, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch. The paid add-on is available already on Battle.net — and on Steam, where Diablo 2: Resurrected has also launched.
The news was announced just moments ago at Blizzard’s Diablo Anniversary Spotlight showcase, which featured Warlock-flavored reveals for the franchise’s other games, too. A Warlock class will arrive as part of Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred on April 28, across PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, before dropping in the free-to-play Diablo Immortal this summer.
But it’s the addition to Diablo 2: Resurrected that comes as the biggest surprise — since the class was never available in the original game. As of today, however, you’ll be able to summon demons (including the suitably devilish-sounding Goatman, the Tainted and the Defiler), then bind and even devour them to gobble up their lifeforce, granting temporary buffs and traits.
Today’s Diablo 2: Resurrected update also adds enhanced Terror Zones, where you can earn consumables and choose which acts are terrorized. On Hell difficulty you’ll encounter the stalker enemies Heralds of Terror, though also have the ability to unveil five mystical statues to unlock an uber boss — the Colossal Ancients — which Blizzard describes as “the next evolution of endgame battles.”
Lastly, today’s update also adds a sprinkling of quality-of-life updates too, including built-in loot filters, improved stash tabs (yes, including stacking!), and a Chronicle to track the items you’ve collected.
Blizzard launched Diablo 2: Resurrected more than five years ago for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch. The game “brings a beloved classic up today’s graphical standards, but it overlooks 20 years of obvious flaws,” IGN wrote in our Diablo 2: Resurrected review, awarding the game 7/10.
No matter how much time goes by, the gory, loot-filled embrace of Diablo 4 is something I always seem to return to, and with the Lord of Hatred expansion right around the corner it’s only a matter of time before I lose myself for dozens of hours once again. That’s especially true now that I’ve had the chance to check out the second of two new character classes coming alongside the expansion, the Warlock, who uses the power of Hell against itself to become an unstoppable, demonic magic user that even Mephisto himself should have reason to fear. This summoner of satanic sigils and swarms of sinister spawn has numerous distinct builds that make it an interesting option for different types of players, and make it less likely that you’ll end up in a party filled with identical demon summoners when going toe-to-toe with the Lord of Hatred, and I truly cannot wait to see what insane builds people come up with. Combined with the new region of Skovos, an overhauled endgame experience, and a whole bunch of tweaks to skill trees and loot, this finale to Mephisto’s story is looking truly epic so far.
Blizzard was happy to share plenty of news about their upcoming Lord of Hatred expansion for Diablo IV, but the main course was the Warlock character class – a mage who turns the dark powers of hell against itself and uses demons as disposable tools in his battle against their kind. It’s truly the most metal class in Diablo to-date, and after spending some hands-on time messing around with several pre-configured variations, it’s given me another reason to look forward to diving back into one of my favorite ARPGs.
Like the Spiritborn class from last year, the Warlock seems to have a bit more build diversity than the classes found in vanilla Diablo 4. Instead of a ranged magic user like the Sorcerer, who has a handful of elemental options that apply different status effects to enemies, the Warlock has a version that turns him into an aggressive melee monster, leaping around to stomp the enemy flat, or a summoner class that lets his minions do his fighting for him and has much more in common with the Necromancer. No matter which you pick though, they all have the same flavor of using hellish powers, whether that be unholy rituals or imposing your will over enemies on the battlefield to turn them into your meat puppets. And since you can mix and match these options at your discretion, there’s a lot of potential to create a well-rounded fighter that perhaps ends up being a jack of all trades, but master of none, which is both a neat option to have available, and also maybe not advisable (though that won’t keep me from at least giving it a try).
If You Build it, They Will Die
My favorite of the builds I tried was called the Legion, which focused on summoning demons to aid me in battle, then feeding off of their death to do additional damage to my enemies. In this version of the Warlock, absolutely every attack involved using and abusing my infernal servants to deal damage, including my base attack that fired exploding fallen lunatics at my foes. Naturally, the ultimate for this build let me summon an absolutely massive demon called the Fiend of Abaddon, who swung a gigantic claymore at everything in the area, doing huge damage. It’s been a while since I did a playthrough with the Necromancer, but the Warlock felt to me like a much more aggressive version of this type of minion character archetype and I absolutely loved it.
But summoning demons to do your bidding is still a fairly passive strategy, and for a truly aggressive alternative, I tried out the Vanguard build, which focused on turning myself into a hideous, profane hellspawn instead of just summoning them. This version of the Warlock involved unleashing a bunch of fire and lava all over the place, like one ability that let me summon a demonic head that spewed flames from his mouth (hell yeah), and another that caused my enemies to explode upon death, causing a chain reaction of destruction in my wake. The main draw of this variety of Warlock though, was Metamorphosis, an ultimate ability that straight-up turned me into a demon, replacing my existing hotbar with a whole new slew of blasphemous temporary abilities as I ran around tearing my way through Mephisto’s hordes with my razorsharp claws. This build felt like it would definitely take some learning to master, especially since replacing all your skills while in demon form could be fairly jarring at first, but I really liked the idea nonetheless.
Whether I was opening up molten cracks in the earth, using totems to chain enemies in place, or hexed enemies within an area and turned me invisible when killing enemies within them, I was almost always placing lethal traps all over the map that made it impossible for demons to reach me without suffering my wrath first.
Another build that really clicked with me was the Ritualist – a version of the Warlock that focused on creating sigils that impacted whole areas of the map with various status effects, often causing demons to up and explode into pink giblets. Whether I was opening up molten cracks in the earth, using totems to chain enemies in place, or hexed enemies within an area and turned me invisible when killing enemies within them, I was almost always placing lethal traps all over the map that made it impossible for demons to reach me without suffering my wrath first. Naturally, the ultimate ability for this build just summoned an absolutely humongous sigil on the ground (filling nearly the entire screen) that exploded multiple times and just wiped the area clear of any baddies. I probably only scratched the surface with this build, and there were a few sigils I didn’t even get to try, but it already felt super powerful and very different from any of Diablo 4’s other character classes.
Finally, there was the Mastermind Warlock, which was all about mobility, stealth, and applying a bunch of status effects to enemies. I definitely felt the least at home with this build, but the vibe I got from it was that it’s sort of the rogue version of the Warlock, where you’re given lots of ranged attacks and options to dodge around or become invisible, but are also quite squishy. The ultimate ability involved summoning a swarm of hungry Hell bugs that ran around the map eating everything in sight. Overall, this one seems like it requires a fair bit more finesse than some of the other options that were much more straightforward brute force plays, but even in my limited time with it, I could see that the DPS potential on this one was pretty insane. It maybe won’t be the choice for my first playthrough of Lord of Hatred, but I could definitely see myself deep-diving into this option and seeing what interesting combos I could come up with.
After experimenting with these options, I also tried my hand at building my own Warlock that mixed and matched my favorite abilities from each. I can’t say I was very successful at doing so on my first attempt, but the vibes of using Hell against itself and all the different forms that can take definitely sold me on giving this class a try come April.
More to Explore
Though most of my time was spent checking out the Warlock and its various permutations of demonic badassery, I also was given a sneak peek at some of the new systems, like the reworked skill trees that put more emphasis on customizing abilities rather than passive increases, new details on the new endgame progression system called War Paths, some seriously cool changes to itemization, like set bonuses being added, new crafting systems, and a much-needed loot filter (finally), and even a fishing minigame. I didn’t get to go hands-on with most of these, instead just learning about them from developers over the course of several Q&A sessions, but everything I’ve heard so far has me feeling really optimistic about Diablo 4’s chances at consuming my life (again) later this year.
The skill tree changes are easily my favorite tweak, as they’ve done away with all the boring nodes that just make your numbers go up (that’s what the paragon tree is for, after all), and have instead made each skill purchase an interesting decision that augments how your character plays. Some of the examples of this are a skill tree that can turn the Sorcerer’s Hydra fire summon into an ice summon instead, or in the case of the Warlock, a perk that turns a defensive wall of demons into an offensive group of roaming monsters. I really like the idea that now the core skill trees for each character will focus on modifying skills to match your playstyle, instead of just boosting DPS, and am pretty eager to dive in and see what new options are waiting to be exploited.
As for the endgame changes, set bonuses, and the new crafting systems, IGN will have plenty more to share in the future as the Lord of Hatred nears ever closer to ensnaring Sanctuary. For now, I’m sold on the Warlock, and am already noodling on some chaotic summoner builds to let loose later this year.
