Diablo 4 goes to Hell in a horde mode in season 5

polygon.com:

It’s a given that, in a Diablo game, you’ll eventually set foot in Hell itself — so it’s maybe surprising that it’s taken Diablo 4 over a year to get there, and that the dread moment comes not in a major expansion storyline, but as part of a season. But that’s just what’s happening. Diablo 4’s fifth season, named Season of the Infernal Hordes, launches on Aug. 6, and it’s all about replayable, randomized raids on Hell.

As previewed on the game’s Public Test Realm a month ago, season 5’s big feature is the Infernal Hordes, a permanent new endgame mode in which players will face waves of demon attackers in Hell. Built with multiplayer in mind, but fully solo-able, Infernal Hordes are designed to constantly up the ante: Between waves, players will choose from three Infernal Offerings that offer both boons and banes — in other words, players can increase both the reward and the challenge.

At the end of a run, they’ll face a boss fight with 10 permutations. The Fell Council are a cabal of five demonic priests, returning from Diablo 2, and players will battle a random selection of three of them on each run. If that weren’t enough, randomized events might see massive bosses invade the game partway through a run, including a version of Diablo 4’s terrorizing Butcher who is literally on fire.

“We wanted to make sure players could get into a flow state, that they could just, you know, keep [in] combat, gathering gear, and then come up for air occasionally,” lead seasons designer Dan Tanguay told Polygon. “We wanted to make sure that it had a high amount of replay, also very important for an endgame mode. And that it had some surprises embedded in it as well, that there were some random and memorable elements. That sometimes comes in the form of the boons and banes, and sometimes comes in the form of Butcher-like events, things of that nature.”

The design of the Fell Council is a key part of the aim to constantly surprise the player. “What we don’t want is for players to feel