Back in May, lead Diablo artists told PC Gamer that the best way to design Diablo art was to look at anything that wasn’t Diablo. Today, it seems those artists haven’t been looking terribly far afield, because Blizzard’s doing some good old-fashioned franchise synergizing by putting Starcraft skins in Diablo 4.
In a blog post published yesterday, Blizzard revealed a series of new cosmetics that bring a Starcraft-themed armor set for each Diablo 4 class. And I won’t blame you for cocking an eyebrow: It’s not the first time Sanctuary’s seen crossover cosmetics from another Blizzard IP—D4’s gotten multiple rounds of Warcraft skins—but Azeroth’s spiky fantasy armor feels like an easier fit for Diablo’s gothic palette than Starcraft’s scifi soldiers and aliens.
Still, while I’m generally opposed to Activision-Blizzard’s history of melting down the visual identities of its games into a homogeneous slurry, I’ll admit: You can apparently make a pretty decent Barbarian armor set out of a Terran marine.
Modeled after Jimmy Raynor’s Starcraft 2 armor, the Barbarian set reimagines his skull-etched faceplate and powered armor as demonic platemail powered by a sort of internal hellfire furnace. And it comes with a weapon skin that puts a gun on a sword. It’s not bad!
And because Necromancers already dabble in their fair share of twisted, mutated flesh, the meaty accents on the chitin plates of their Zerg broodmother-themed set feels like a pretty good fit.
The other sets, however, I’m less convinced by. The Druid’s getup is modeled on a Zerg-infested marine, which seems like an odd pairing. Meanwhile, the Rogue and Sorcerer sets—based on Zeratul and Tassadar, respectively—hew so closely to their inspirations that I just feel like I’m looking at Protoss. Which is weird. They don’t go to this school.
And the Spiritborn is Kerrigan. Like, straight-up, unadulterated Kerrigan. Anyone’s well within their rights to be jazzed by the chance to put Starcraft peanut butter with their Diablo chocolate, but personally? If I wanted to look at Starcraft stuff, I would play a Starcraft game—although Blizzard doesn’t give many new opportunities to do that nowadays.
That said, if you want a Zergling mount or Hydralisk companion, there are bundles for those, too.
The real question, of course, is price. The announcement post doesn’t list prices, but if previous crossover skins are any indication, you can expect each class’s cosmetic bundle to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 2800 platinum/$25 USD.
You can get some free cosmetics, however. After the Starcraft skins hit the Diablo store at 12 pm PDT on September 26, you can get a free Starcraft-themed weapon skin and player emblem as a daily login reward until September 28. One of them is a Zerg crossbow. Upsetting.
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