Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Expansion Included With PS4 Version

There have been plenty of announcements at this year’s BlizzCon, including the reveal that the Playstation 4 Diablo III release will include the Reaper of Souls expansion. Reaper of Souls will be packed with new features, including more randomization. Game director Josh Mosqueira understands that the original Diablo III campaign didn’t sit right with many, primarily since none of the areas truly felt different when revisiting them. The older Diablo releases had a lot of randomized design, and Mosqueira and the rest of the developers aim to fix that with the new campaign featured in Souls. 

The Playstation 4 version will also get some snazzy new functions courtesy of the DualShock 4’s touchpad and “Share” button. More than likely, the “Share” button will be used mostly for social features, like mail sent to and from players, including gifts. The focus of the touchpad, meanwhile, might involve emotes. Here’s senior producer Julia Humphreys explanation: 

“We’ve been playing around with the touch pad, and what it can be really useful for and really cool for are kind of shortcutting things that you do over and over again, or maybe even giving you the opportunity to do things that we just didn’t have buttons for. One of the things we’re investigating right now is we could it for emotes in the game. That’s been a popular request from people, because we have emotes on PC but don’t have any way to have them really on the PS3, so with the touchpad we can have a little shortcut menu for emotes.”

Another addition (which might just be a PS4-only feature) is called “Avenger Kills”, which allow players to seek out vengeance against an enemy that killed one of their friends. Here’s more from Humphreys: 

“Let’s say you’re out playing in the world and a lowly white monster manages to get that last killing blow on you. There’s a chance that that monster will level up and then a portal will open and the monster will jump through. And then maybe later on when I’m playing in my game, a portal may open up and the monster will come through and I’ll get a message like ‘[your friend]’s killer is now hunting you.’ And I have a chance to then take vengeance for this monster that killed you. It’ll be now a unique monster that has affixes and is much more powerful and when loot drops, of course, I’ll be able to get mine, but that I can send some back to you. It’s just kind of a fun way to help connect games.”

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls will be out for PC and Playstation 4 in 2014. The PS4 version will be titled Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition and will run at 1080p and 60fps. Check out the trailer below, plus PS4 gameplay footage. 

Thanks, VG247