Diablo 4's new Season 3 companions were inspired by all the RPGs that the designer behind the game's Druid plays, and they're a lot different from followers in Diablo 3.
Blizzard just unveiled Diablo 4 Season of the Construct earlier this week, and it's out real soon. As part of our big Diablo 4 Season 3 interview, 12DOVE spoke to game systems designer Sean White about the Seneschal, the new companions set to debut in the action-RPG with the new season later this month.
"One of my design goals for The Seneschal was player expression – player expression, player different builds, player choice," White said of the inspiration for the new companion. "It is very, very important to me when you approach a system like The Seneschal, players have many different options.
"Inspiration came from a number of places, I played a ton of games and a ton of ARPGs," White continued. The designer says a lot of the "most fun" games have plenty of "theory crafting and player expression," and that's something White wanted to capture with the Seneschal.
"You'll notice that The Seneschal has a ton of different builds – things that are obvious choices like 'This Seneschal will heal you, that's super cool,'" the Diablo 4 designer added. "But then there's a lot of other interactions where you're like, 'Oh, wait a minute, this can synergize with my build.' So things like that I geek out on."
However, White downplayed comparisons to Diablo 3's Followers. "I guess you could say maybe it's Follower-lite or like, but Seneschal is a whole other ballpark. It's almost as if you're customizing its own mini-class that's following you around," White said of the comparisons.
The Diablo 4 designer also said the Seneschal has "way more customization options" than you would've seen with Followers, from either Diablo 2 or 3. "I think that's one of the things that really sets it apart," White concluded.
Elsewhere in our interview, Blizzard confirmed Diablo 4's seasonal stories won't feed into its expansions like Vessel of Hatred, because the developer says "if you miss a season, it's ok." In other words, don't feel like you have to be on the ball with every season going forward if you want to eventually play the DLC further down the line.
Blizzard also confirmed to us that Diablo 4 feedback might not be incorporated until Season 4, so don't expect features to enter the action-RPG soon.
