www.polygon.com
Diablo 4s Season of Witchcraft is underway, and besides all the new dark powers you can wield, theres a completely reworked wardrobe for making your character as hot as possible which, as we all know, is the real endgame.While most of it works the same way as it did in previous seasons, the redesigned menus put a larger focus on actually watching your character change as you swap your gear and dye it various colors. Diablo 4 has always had an impressive amount of options for customizing your look, more than even Path of Exile 2, which locks its gender and body types to each of its classes and has no transmog feature at all. Blizzard has learned from years of making massively social RPGs that games about loot are just dress-up games with numbers.Its no Infinity Nikki: Sanctuary edition, but the new wardrobe is part of a larger shift Diablo 4 has been making since launch to become a little more silly, a little more sexy, and a lot less bleak. There was a time when the developers would deny requests for Diablo 3s pets to come back in Diablo 4 and now, two years later, everyone is running around with a tiger cub in Diablo 4. Last seasons battle pass rewarded a pirate outfit; you can ride a lion as a mount. Diablo 4 has finally loosened up on its faithful recreation of the gothic horror aesthetic of Diablo 2 to embrace a wider, more modern approach.Thats wonderful for players like me, who spend a lot of time in the wardrobe looking for the armor that best represents what kind of character Im playing each season. During the vampire-themed season, I drenched my necromancer in blood using one of the games surprisingly excellent tattoos. And on my sorceress, whose build build surrounded her with pulsing orbs of lightning, I made it so she looked like all that energy had consumed her. And now, in the witch season, Im trying to embody the occult in any way I can.Its a habit for me to end every session tweaking my outfit, which is even easier now that the wardrobe can be accessed straight from your inventory screen anywhere in the world. The new interface has a cleaner, muted look and puts a literal spotlight on your character. Now, when you click into a specific body part, the camera zooms in automatically, and you can see what dye you have applied to each one at all times.Instead of filling the side of the screen with a long grid of menu options, each section is broken out into its own tab. Technically, it takes more clicks to get around, but I find that I tend to swap between each section like a different mode. When Im cycling through different gloves, I want to see everything available, but when Im using dyes, I only want to focus on the overall look of my character. It also helps that everything has flipped to the opposite side, which just feels right to me. Other cosmetics, like mounts and town portals, are now within the same menu and give you a better preview of what theyll actually look like in action. Everything is more accessible and does a better job at encouraging you to experiment.But for all the improvements, theres still a disappointing lack of new transmog options that dont require buying skins in the real-money shop, and even those often feel ridiculously over-designed. I dont need my character to be on fire and I dont need to look like 20 different variations of Sauron. Players have yelled about this since day one, and even if I dont think the problem is as severe as some say, it would be nice to have more options, especially now that its even more convenient than ever to dress your character up in the finest gear.
