Diablo III: Reaper of Souls - Ultimate Evil Edition will be finally hitting consoles on Tuesday, August 19. 0
The game should launch at 0:01 a.m. EDT in North America.
The PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, and Xbox 360 versions of Blizzard’s popular action role-playing hack and slash video game features all the content from the original Diablo III PC version, as well as the expansion, Reaper of Souls.
Some new features of console Diablo gaming is the inclusion of an Apprentice Mode and the Nemesis System.
In an interview with BlizzPro, senior level designer Mathew Berger said: “If you’ve been playing for hours and I haven’t because I’ve been slacking off, and my character is Level 10 while yours is Level 60, we do something called the Apprentice Mode.”
“Basically, if I play with you, my low level character will get boosted up for the duration of our play session: I will have increased toughness, I'll do more damage, I will get a little bit of bound experience.
“The experience is tagged to the character, so the monsters I kill will give the appropriate level of experience, but on top of that I will get a little bit of a bonus. The monsters you kill will also be tagged to the appropriate level of experience for your higher level character.
“We’re playing the game together the way it’s meant to be played, even though we’re not on the same level,” Berger added.
Of the Nemesis System, senior producer Julia Humphreys said: “Say I’m adventuring through the world of sanctuary and a monster happens to kill me – there’s a chance that that monster could level up, become a unique monster, and jump out of my game, and appear in [a friend’s] game on my friends list.
“We’ve talked about mirroring the experience of Jaws – where you know something is coming for you – and eventually that Nemesis will appear on screen; its nameplate will be tagged with my name so everyone will know that this is Julia’s killer.
“They'll also know where it came from and who they’re avenging.
“Once he kills that monster, he‘ll get loot and a player gift that he can send back to me, and I’ll know that he has avenged me,” Humphreys said.
Blizzard will also be able to provide ongoing patch support for the PS4 and Xbox One as the architecture of those next-gen consoles allows for it.
Diablo III production director John Hight said in an interview with Xbox Wire: “When we started on this adventure, we thought we'd never be able to do updates on the console side in the same way we do with the PC.
“This allows us to be more responsive to our customers.
“Our goal is to eventually make these updates simultaneous,” Hight added.
Blizzard is currently working on Patch 2.1.0. for the Xbox One, PS4, and PC.
