🔥 Diablo 5 Is Borrowing From Baldur's Gate 3, But Not in the Way You Think
Blizzard's next Diablo game is making one of its biggest narrative changes yet.
Diablo V, scheduled for Spring 2029, will take players into a Sanctuary where Diablo has already won. The heroes of the previous era are gone, humanity has been pushed into ruin, and the player takes the role of the heir to the fallen kingdom of Westmarch.
But the biggest change may not be the darker setting or Diablo's return.
It is the way Blizzard wants players to experience the story.
Instead of relying primarily on traditional towns and isolated NPCs, Diablo V will feature a traveling caravan of survivors and companions who accompany the player through Sanctuary.
The idea has clear roots in traditional, character-focused RPGs. Diablo V narrative director Jennifer Hepler, a former BioWare writer who worked on the Dragon Age series, has specifically discussed the influence of games such as Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age on the new system.
🏕️ The Caravan Is Diablo 5's Biggest Narrative Experiment
In previous Diablo games, towns and settlements have traditionally provided places where players could interact with merchants, artisans and quest characters before heading back into dangerous areas.
Diablo V is changing that structure.
The game will instead feature a caravan that travels alongside the player.
The caravan will grow as the player progresses, with survivors, merchants and companions joining the group.
Blizzard describes these characters as people with their own histories, personalities and reasons for surviving in a Sanctuary ruled by Diablo.
That makes the caravan more than just a replacement for a town.
It is intended to become a moving community.
🎭 Why Baldur's Gate 3 Is Being Mentioned
The Baldur's Gate comparison comes from the type of storytelling Blizzard is pursuing.
In Baldur's Gate 3, companions are a major part of the experience. Players spend significant amounts of time talking with them, learning about their histories and watching their relationships develop.
Diablo V is not attempting to recreate that entire system.
Jennifer Hepler explained that the caravan is influenced by the best elements of traditional RPG storytelling, including the idea of having meaningful characters around the player instead of treating every NPC as a temporary quest dispenser.
That distinction matters.
Blizzard is borrowing the philosophy of character-driven storytelling, not simply copying Baldur's Gate 3's mechanics.
👥 These Are Not BG3-Style Party Members
There is an important limitation to the comparison.
Blizzard has not said that Diablo V will let players build fully customizable parties like Baldur's Gate 3.
The caravan companions are primarily there to provide personalities, stories and a sense of community.
They will also have practical functions.
Some companions can act as vendors or provide services within the caravan, while others contribute their own stories and perspectives.
That makes the system closer to a traveling RPG hub than a traditional party-based CRPG.
🧑💻 Jennifer Hepler's BioWare Background Matters
The person leading Diablo V's narrative direction makes this shift particularly interesting.
Jennifer Hepler previously worked at BioWare on games including Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age II and Dragon Age: Inquisition.
Her experience comes from a studio where companion relationships, dialogue and character-driven storytelling have traditionally been major parts of the RPG experience.
That background helps explain why Diablo V is experimenting with a more persistent group of characters around the player.
Hepler has specifically said that her experience with traditional RPGs influenced the development of Diablo V's caravan concept.
🌑 Diablo Has Already Won
The new storytelling system also makes sense because Diablo V starts from an unusual position for the franchise.
Diablo has already conquered Sanctuary.
Blizzard's official description says the heroes of the past have failed, Sanctuary has fallen and Diablo now rules from Westmarch.
That changes what the story needs to accomplish.
Previous Diablo games have frequently focused on stopping an impending catastrophe.
Diablo V begins after the catastrophe.
The player is not simply trying to prevent Sanctuary from falling.
They are trying to survive and eventually fight back against a world that has already been transformed.
That makes human relationships more important.
A traveling group of survivors can show players what life looks like under Diablo's rule in a way that environmental storytelling alone cannot.
🏚️ Sanctuary Is Becoming a Character
Blizzard is also changing the world itself.
Sanctuary will be actively reshaped by Diablo's influence.
Terrain, locations, monsters and rewards can change as players return to areas, while procedural systems are being used to create parts of the world.
The idea is that the world should communicate three different things:
What happened.
The history of the century following Diablo IV.
What is happening.
Diablo's current control over Sanctuary.
What could happen next.
The continuing spread of Hell.
The caravan complements this approach.
The world tells the story of the fallen civilization, while the people traveling through it provide a more personal perspective.
🛒 The Caravan Is Also a Gameplay Hub
The caravan is not purely narrative.
Blizzard says it will contain vendors and other useful functions.
As more survivors join, the caravan can develop into a larger mobile hub.
This gives Diablo V a way to combine several systems into one location without requiring players to repeatedly return to a traditional town.
It also fits the game's premise.
Why would survivors constantly establish permanent settlements when Diablo controls the region?
A moving community makes sense in a world where staying in one location could be dangerous.
🐐 Even a Treasure Goblin Is Joining
One of the more unusual characters Blizzard has revealed is a stranded Treasure Goblin.
Instead of functioning solely as the familiar creature that players chase for loot, the character is presented as someone searching for meaning in a world where greed has lost much of its purpose.
That is a small detail, but it illustrates what Blizzard appears to be trying to do.
Characters that previously existed primarily as gameplay concepts can now have personalities and stories of their own.
The Treasure Goblin example also gives the caravan some of the strange humor that has existed throughout Diablo's history.
⚔️ Blizzard Is Not Turning Diablo Into Baldur's Gate
Despite the obvious comparison, Diablo V remains a Diablo game.
It is still an action RPG built around:
Fast combat
Loot
Character builds
Classes
Procedurally generated environments
Dungeon exploration
Equipment progression
Solo and multiplayer play
Blizzard has confirmed that Diablo V can be played solo or multiplayer, with the full game designed to support playing with friends.
The narrative changes are being added around that foundation rather than replacing it.
That is an important distinction.
🧙 The Classes Are Still Classic Diablo
Blizzard has already revealed three classes for Diablo V.
Demon Hunter
The Demon Hunter returns with ranged combat and dual crossbows.
Monk
The Monk returns as a fast melee-focused class built around martial arts and holy power.
Plague Knight
The new Plague Knight is a heavily armored class focused on disease, battlefield control and plague-based abilities.
Blizzard has said that Diablo V is expected to launch with more classes than any previous Diablo game, although the complete lineup has not yet been revealed.
🧠 Why Blizzard Is Making This Change
The simplest explanation is that Blizzard wants Diablo V to have a stronger emotional connection between the player and its world.
Diablo IV introduced a darker and more grounded approach to the franchise's storytelling, but Diablo V is taking that idea further.
The new caravan gives Blizzard a recurring cast of characters who can remain relevant throughout the campaign.
Instead of meeting an NPC once, completing a quest and moving on, players can potentially watch their community develop as the journey continues.
That creates more opportunities for:
Character development
Personal stories
Dialogue
World-building
Emotional stakes
Recurring relationships
Those are all areas where traditional CRPGs have historically placed a lot of emphasis.
📖 What Diablo V Can Learn From Baldur's Gate 3
The influence of Baldur's Gate 3 is therefore less about specific mechanics and more about how players connect with characters.
Baldur's Gate 3 demonstrated how strongly players can respond to companions with distinctive personalities, personal conflicts and evolving relationships.
Diablo V appears to be applying a smaller version of that philosophy to an action RPG.
The goal is not to turn Sanctuary into a party-based CRPG.
It is to make the people around the player feel more memorable.
That could be particularly important in a game where the protagonist is constantly moving through a devastated world.
🔥 Diablo V's Biggest Storytelling Shift Yet
The Diablo franchise has always had memorable characters and dramatic lore, but the primary attraction has traditionally been combat and loot.
Diablo V appears to be giving its characters a larger role.
The traveling caravan is a surprisingly significant design decision because it affects both the narrative structure and the gameplay loop.
Instead of:
Town → dungeon → loot → town
Blizzard is experimenting with:
Caravan → journey → exploration → companions → combat → caravan
The difference may sound small, but it could change how players experience the entire campaign.
🔗 Read More
For Blizzard's official Diablo V announcement and confirmed details:
Diablo V: Forging the Next Era | Blizzard
For the official Spring 2029 announcement:
Diablo V is Coming Spring 2029 | Blizzard
For additional reporting on the caravan and RPG influences:
GamesRadar: Diablo V's narrative direction
🔮 What Comes Next
Diablo V is still years away.
Blizzard says regular development updates will begin in 2027, giving players a much closer look at the systems being developed for the game.
That means the caravan system could still evolve substantially before the Spring 2029 launch.
For now, however, Blizzard has made its direction clear.
Diablo V wants to preserve the fast action, loot and build experimentation that define Diablo while bringing in a stronger layer of character-driven storytelling.
And that is where the Baldur's Gate 3 comparison becomes interesting.
Blizzard is not making Baldur's Gate 3 with demons.
It is taking one of the biggest lessons from modern CRPGs, making the people around the player matter more, and trying to fit that idea into the Diablo formula.
If the studio can make those companions memorable without slowing down the action that defines the series, Diablo V could end up feeling very different from its predecessors while still unmistakably being Diablo.
