Diablo 2 is about to get a full remaster as Diablo 2: Resurrected was announced at BlizzCon today. The remaster will come out later this year.
Diablo 2: Resurrected will get a ton of improvements for modern players. These will include new 3D graphics and fully recreated cinematics. Its expansion, Lords of Destruction, will also get the same treatment.
Diablo 2 remaster will run both legacy and brand new graphics
Diablo 2 is among the most definitive action-RPG titles of all time. It gave countless hours of gameplay to players in the early 2000s. The game made the Diablo franchise among the most definitive titles ever.
Now, the remaster will be playable for new PCs and have new features to boot. The game will support 4K, together with a higher 144 Hz refresh rate — almost exactly the same as the original Diablo 2.
“Diablo 2 is a very important game to Blizzard,” said Diablo chief Rod Fergusson. “It helped define the ARPG genre. It was the 20th anniversary of the game last year, Blizzard’s 30th anniversary now, and as we’re getting ready for Diablo Immortal and Diablo 4. It feels like a great moment to bring this game back.”
Much like most remasters, the game will support both legacy graphics and the new shiny coat of paint. Underneath the new engine, the old game also runs, with the graphics overhaul working as a compatibility layer for the game.
D2: Resurrected almost made from scratch
There aren’t many changes that Blizzard did for Diablo 2: Resurrection other than graphic and compatibility-related details. Even then, this is a good thing for people who love the classic title.
The entire game will still have the same exploits, bugs, AI, pathing, and whatnot. The aim is to give the best experience possible through quality of life improvements.
For starters, players can also enable loot sharing across all their characters. They can also turn on auto-looting as needed, which can help you cut the tedium out of the title.
Blizzard pieced the entire game together from scratch. In 2019, Diablo creators note how the source codes and assets are missing and that they’re piecing the game back together. At the time, the creators looked for ways to stick everything from scratch.
“[We] finally rebuilt a lot of it through what people had at their homes,” Erich Schaefer said.
“I had a big chunk of it. Went home, pulled out the hard drive or whatever we did back then. Spent a few days reconstructing it, which ended up working fine, except that we lost all the history. We lost a lot of the assets, art assets. It would make it very difficult for Blizzard to do a Diablo 2 remaster because all the assets we used are pretty much gone. They’d have to make them from scratch.”
Diablo 2: Resurrection will come within the year on both PC and consoles for $39.99.
Featured image courtesy of Diablo/Youtube Screenshot