Diablo 4 has some very interesting features when it comes to cross-play, cross-progression, and co-op.
As revealed by Comic Book, Blizzard seems to have pulled off some kind of miracle with cross-play. Across five completely different platforms, you have cross-play automatically enabled.
This is particularly impressive, when one considers that PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are not particularly powerful hardware. It may be that this system was already being worked on for those platforms first, and then they adapted it to current generation consoles.
Cross-progression is similarly an automatic setup. Both cross-play and cross-progression are built around Blizzard’s Battle.net system, so that may be the reason that Blizzard can promise such an incredible feature.
In any case, what this means is that you can start playing Diablo 4 with your PlayStation 5 at home, and then when you have to leave, you can carry a Windows handheld, such as the ROG Ally, the AYANEO 2, or the GPD Win 4, open up your Battle.net account on the Activision Blizzard client, and pick the game back up wherever you had to go.
The preconditions before you can play co-op are not unreasonable, but you won’t just be able to jump in with friends immediately.
For starters, the prologue has to be played alone. Co-op does open up after you reach Kyovashad, but there are still other conditions.
The quests are based around whoever in your team is the party leader. This means the party leader gets most of the rewards after each successful quest. It doesn’t mean everyone else gets nothing, but don’t expect a Borderlands style situation.
The good side is that enemies scale to each individual player. That means low level and high level characters alike will get fair opportunity to defeat each enemy and boss. The lower level players won’t just be squashed by bosses far too high above their power level.
It will all definitely be worth it as we have reported on Diablo 4’s exceedingly high marks on its metascore. Blizzard have also planned an extensive battle pass for Diablo 4, and multiple seasons, so there are a lot of potential hours of gameplay waiting for you and everyone else. But, if you’re up for an early challenge, you can get immortalized by Blizzard themselves if you meet a particular hardcore achievement.
Diablo 4 will be released on June 6, 2023, on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows, via the Activision Blizzard client.