Diablo IV will let you press a button to skip its campaign – but only if you’ve finished the story once already.
After the reveal of a video detailing the character-creation systems in the upcoming Diablo IV, Twitch streamer DatModz quickly noted the appearance of a ‘Skip Campaign’ button next to some of the characters. Adam Fletcher, Global Community Development Director for Diablo, soon stepped in to clarify that players have to beat the campaign once before the button appears.
Don Adams, Lead Quest Designer for Diablo IV, then went on to explain the mechanic in more detail in a Twitter thread. “As @PezRadar mentioned, this becomes available for your account after beating the #DiabloIV campaign once. Each character can then skip at creation or any time after,” he explains.
“Did you roll a bunch of alts to explore the classes before taking one to the finish line? You can skip the alts ahead or play them through – up to you. Want to play just up to your favorite part of the story or to grab a specific quest reward before skipping to the endgame activities? Go for it. The team worked hard to build a high quality Campaign as an introduction and initial journey through the world of Diablo IV. I think its worth playing multiple times, but we never planned on requiring repeat playthroughs per character or even per season. Once per account. Enjoy!”
The ability to skip sections of a game or make them easier has been creeping into video games for a while now, most notably with the addition of ‘story mode’ difficulty to games like Horizon Zero Dawn, where enemies are much easier to defeat. Famously, some Mario games, like Super Mario 3D World, give the player the option to use a power up that provides flight and invulnerability if they repeatedly fail on a difficult level. Adding an option to skip sections not only improves the accessibility of a game, it also allows players to go directly to the parts they’re most interested in without grinding through the sections they’d rather never play again. As DatModz puts it to the makers of Diablo IV: “Thank you for respecting my time.”
Diablo IV is set to be released on 6th June for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One, and the developers have promised story updates every three months.
