Diablo 4 was perhaps Blizzard's most exciting announcement of BlizzCon 2019, with the developer not only revealing the game's existence, by way of a a stunning cinematic trailer, but also sharing a surprising amount of gameplay. There was even a playable demo available at BlizzCon that featured Diablo 4's first three classes: Sorcerer, Druid, and Barbarian. However, one particularly interesting aspect of the game went a bit underrepresented, its open-world bosses, but luckily that has been remedied with a new Diablo 4 gameplay video.
In the Diablo 4 BlizzCon gameplay teaser trailer, a brief encounter with a boss named Ashava, the Pestilent is shown. This boss is unique, in that it's not an elite boss and not a story boss, instead serving as an open-world boss, which is part of Diablo 4's new open-world design. These open-world bosses can be encountered within Diablo 4's explorable area, and they offer a unique and challenging battle experience. These fights are so big that they can even be tackled by up to 8 players, though difficulty will scale to the number of players involved.
Game Informer, as part of its exclusive access to Diablo 4, put together a video showcasing what one of these encounters look like with the maximum number of players. Judging from the party layout, it looks like the Game Informer players are in a group of three, and five Blizzard employees are arranged into their own party or parties. Together, they tackle Ashava, the Pestilent in the hopes of defeating it and claiming its impressive loot.
The gameplay video is surprisingly chaotic, with Ashava swinging its bladed arms and nearly defeating players in a single attack. Luckily, dying in the demo leads to to a quick respawn, and the group eventually dwindles down Ashava, through sheer brute force, and is rewarded a range of Diablo 4 loot.
This footage is interesting in that it offers a glimpse at what 8-player co-op actually looks like in Diablo 4. It also shows Blizzard's interest in exploring new forms of endgame content for Diablo 4, and huge open-world bosses that have scripted actions and drop meaningful rewards will definitely add to the experience. Furthermore, it could hint at something larger that Blizzard is planning and hopefully the developer shares more information about these plans, and Diablo 4's bosses, over the coming year.
Diablo 4 has no current release window but is planned for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Source: Game Informer