It’s official, Diablo 5 is on the way. It’s going to take a few years to get here, but another chapter in the hellish action RPG series is on the horizon, and this one is going back to procedurally generated areas, rather than the open-world design of Diablo 4.
During BlizzCon 2026, a panel on the design of Diablo 5 reveals a few titbits about the upcoming sequel. “In Diablo 5, we’re bringing back the procedural worlds,” Tiffany Wat, senior production director on Diablo 5, states. “Both in the dungeons and the overworld.”
She goes on to make it clear that, yes, this does mean once you clear somewhere and return to the same spot, it’ll be a different challenge. “If you go back to a region that you’ve been before, all that information that I did yesterday, that path that I found, that landmark that I was moving towards, how to fight those elite monsters, none of that information is going to help me today,” she says.
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“The only thing beyond the fog of war is more questions,” she adds. She mentions there’s an emphasis on “constant discovery,” driven by the idea “you should never really feel safe, because all the towns are gone, and Sanctuary is just a brutal place to be.”
This all sounds like Diablo, alright. The series used procedural generation for its dungeons more heavily before Diablo 4, which has a defined map you can mark out and chart. Naturally, this move divided the community, since many prefer the ever-present threat of RNG over being able to fully learn the hellish world you’re in.
As of now, Diablo 5 is slated for 2029 – told you it’s going to be a few years – but it seems like we can expect some old school ideas to re-emerge for this installment. In the meantime, enjoy the familiarity of Diablo 4 while you can.
