As promised in Nvidia's CES "Special Presentation," ray tracing is coming to Diablo 4 this month. just announced for release on March 26, this patch should make Diablo 4 gameplay more enjoyable once it is released. if your GPU has ray tracing capabilities, that is.

The update adds only two new ray-traced lighting effects: ray-traced reflections and ray-traced shadows. So it shouldn't be as taxing as a mode that does full-blown ray tracing everywhere at once, and since DLSS 3 is already in the game, it should at least alleviate some of the special effects added to Diablo 4.

As for specifics, Nvidia has been rather vague on the details, but said today that "armor, water, windows, and other properly reflecting surfaces will now feature accurate and realistic ray-traced and ray-traced transparent reflections."

As for the eerie effects of shadows...

"Many of Diablo IV's shadows will be enhanced by ray tracing, adding detail to every scene.

My first reaction to that is that my delicate sensibilities may not necessarily want that extra detail in some scenes, but it all looks very clean. And "Diablo 4" was already a pretty game. It was just that slightly gruesome, that hellish feeling of gushing out of that mountain of gore.

Nvidia showed off twin lighting effects at the CES event:

For me, it's probably the shadow effects that stand out the most and give the game the most visual impact. Developers have gotten so good at faking reflections that sometimes you really have to look to see where the raytraced reflections make a difference.

Certainly, it is the shadows that bring the game world to life in the gloomy environments of Diablo 4, as is evident in the rain-soaked, neon-soaked streets of Cyberpunk 2077. Shivers.

I know it's not cool to be swept away by the added prettiness, but seeing how "Diablo 4" looks with this update and the fact that it's available on Steam makes me want to play this game again.