Diablo 4 is getting ray traced reflections and shadows in March
Nvidia gave us a brief look at the upcoming ray tracing patch for Diablo 4, and it's looking pretty good.
Even before it launched, Blizzard has been talking up ray tracing features in Diablo 4 fairly regularly. Though it was never shown in action, ray tracing support was understood to be on the cards for launch.
Diablo 4 came out, and delivered two whole seasons and we'd yet to see that promise fulfilled, but that's going to change soon.
At CES 2024, Nvidia confirmed a suite of games will soon get ray tracing and DLSS support. The list includes Dragon's Dogma 2, Horizon Forbidden West (which doesn't have a PC date yet), and Diablo 4. Blizzard's action RPG already supports DLSS, of course, in both its frame generation as well as image upscaling forms.
During its keynote, Nvidia showed off a brief teaser of ray tracing in Diablo 4, confirming the game will receive ray traced reflections, as well as ray traced shadows. The video also shows off the performance with DLSS 3 on and off, though it's misleading as it does not state the resolution or the GPU used.
Nevertheless, the two effects look incredible, and will certainly go a long way in enhancing the game's visual make-up - particularly in dungeons. Watch it all in the video below:
The March release target puts this update firmly into the Season 3 zone, which could mean it will also arrive alongside other gameplay updates, beyond just ray tracing. We're still waiting on Blizzard to actually start talking Season 3, which is expected to kick off right as Season 2 ends, on January 23.
We're expecting at least one livestream between now and then, potentially next week. We know one thing that Season 3 is bringing, though, and that is The Gauntlet - a leaderboard-driven endgame dungeon that's similar to Diablo 3's Challenge Rifts. As for the new content, we’ll have to wait for Blizzard to properly reveal it.