While American fans at this weekend’s BlizzCon went into full-on meltdown mode, NetEase was also telling Chinese fans about the upcoming Diablo Immortal. It turns out that yes, Netease is taking the technical lead on the game, with the title using its in-house Messiah engine, which was built for 3D-accelerated games on smartphones. It’s been used on a few other titles before now. Not that you’ll have to have a smartphone; the NetEase team is fine with people using emulators to play the mobile-only game on PCs in that roundabout way.
The company reiterated some of Blizzard’s now-standard talking points: There are no firm plans yet on the game’s business model or on things like PvP and guild mechanics; for that matter, it’s not yet set in stone whether Android and iOS players will use the same servers. NetEase did also confirm that the game will not be as dark as the PC titles, although that seems to be a reference to the visuals being brighter so phone users can see it rather than narrative contents. You can check out a couple of preview videos for the Chinese reveals just below.
