This allows my dressed-in-all-black Sorcerer vibe to stay intact no matter what piece of ridiculous clothing I put on my body. I also love that you're able to apply a pigment to any item in your outfit, or all of it all at once – making it easy to permanently color coordinate your gear. Or I could remove my chest armor and show off one of the 21 full-body markings which are available in the creator and leave them uncovered for the entire game. That means I could hide my helm permanently and still enjoy the benefits of its stats, showing my horrible mid-length haircut off for all of Sanctuary to see.

You're able to hide any piece of gear that you're wearing and, better yet, it will stay hidden even as you're rapidly switching out gear throughout dungeons. While it's easy enough to miss in the beta, you can visit wardrobes in any of the towns to access the Diablo 4 transmog system to alter any of your gear.

I think this sense that character creation doesn't quite go far enough is only emphasized once you get your head around customization. 'We wanted to provide as much variety as possible in terms of there being a ton of different ethnicities and hair and markings and eye colors, but there were certain things that made the class the class, and for Diablo 4 it was body type.' 'Body type is something we consider to be part of the class fantasy,' Rod Fergusson, Diablo's head of franchise, remarked in a roundtable interview. For starters, body types are predefined – each class has two options, and they are justified non-negotiables. Let's stay on that 'forward-thinking' track for a minute, because it's worth praising Blizzard for its overall approach to character creation and customization, even if I do believe the studio could have pushed it a little further. The story is more cinematic and character-driven, while the presence of other players in the shared-world only heightens the opportunity for meet-cutes / expeditions into the catacombs of hell with a party of strangers. That's a shame, because Diablo 4 is doing its best to make you believe that there's more to its heroes than a series of statistics stuffed into Legendary armor sets. It's more robust than anything I have seen from this series before, which is certainly appreciated – although there's less depth than you might expect from an otherwise forward-thinking role-playing game. Your adventure in Diablo 4 begins with a campfire, five classes, and a light character creation toolset.

Diablo 4 character select