Catching Up on Diablo 2: Resurrected

"Champions United" Art.

Seeing the announcement of Diablo 2: Resurrected back in BlizzConline 2021 was pretty interesting, to say the least. First impressions are usually overly positive, especially with Vicarious Visions on board of Blizzard's sinking ship... It's not, but you know what I'm saying. I was pretty excited after the event and looked forward to observing the progress on Resurrected for different reason: my interest in Diablo franchise was slowly growing in last few years and I just had to stay on guard and compare it with Warcraft 3: Reforged.

However, I didn't follow the news on Diablo 2's remaster as close as I originally wanted. That was probably due to my messy routine and reclusive nature, I can't say for sure. Either way, I didn't have clear enough perspective on this release to truly determine how well Blizzard and Vicarious Visions did their job. Since Resurrected should be released in a day this post gets published, I wanted to take that opportunity to simply catch up and go over a few aspects of its development and see how well Diablo 2 was actually treated.

Visuals & Approach.

Big step up from original Classic Games Team can be seen in a way they approached remastering Diablo 2. As you know, Starcraft and Warcraft 3 essentially received big updates in a form of remasters as if they were another expansions. While the original game was used as a foundation for Resurrected (which is next on itself), they put good old Diablo 2 with its original Battle.net aside in favor of different client. I don't even think the new menus in this case are based on Chromium, so we're up to good start already. Although there's a lack of crossplay between the two: it's not bad in high scheme of things, but having an option to play directly with players on original Diablo 2 or Lord of Destruction would've been neat. Being able to use old save files is a good compromise.

In terms of graphics, they seem to mostly do the great job with staying true to the game. At least that's how it looks like to me as I'm not as familiar with Diablo 2 as with Warcraft 3, so it's safe to say that I'm not much of an expert here. Although I've seen people talking about a few alterations and censoring, it's hard for me to say how much of it was actually done. Overall, to a newbie like me, Resurrected looks pretty faithful. Even the option to switch to the original look (without proper widescreen there for some reason) at any time as the new 3D engine runs on top of original 2D game. I still think that going for full on 3D was an overkill though, but it is what it is. Even though all the sprites and stuff were originally created in 3D and converted to 2D. At least, to its core, it is still the Diablo 2.

Marius from Act I Cinematic.

Unlike with Reforged, this time Blizzard did promise and went for updating CGI cinematics for Diablo 2. Although I think it wasn't really necessary, and I wish they also rolled out the original cinematics in higher resolution similarly to Remastered and Reforged... Wait a minute, they also did that as well? Okay, that's awesome! Anyway, new cinematics show that there's still some good talent within Blizzard yet. I like the original ones, but I guess you can nitpick how some humans there might look rather "derpy" for Diablo 2: again, if you really wish to do so. I don't think it's that big of a deal, personally. Although I think I prefer original version of Marius more: in remastered cinematics, he reminds me of Mike Morhaime for some reason.

Quality of Life Changes.

Whenever someone brings an old game in some new form, they're often use that as an opportunity to polish things up a bit. That includes various slight changes, additions and tweaks to classic titles, which is always a tricky thing to do as it's not that hard to go too far with alterations to a point where you just went too far away from original vision. You really have to repeat the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mantra during such process.

And Vicarious Visions seem to do just fine too. Shared stash and its increased sizes are an essential Quality of Life change that removes the need for "mule characters" that you would create just to store more useful and valuable items... or just let you collect even more stuff. There're also many smaller things, such as automatic pick-ups, that are optional, and you can toggle off for a more proper legacy experience with modern look. I was lucky enough to stumble on a good list of all the changes that were made in Resurrected, so make sure to check that out to refresh your memory or learn more about this type of thing.

Shared Stash in Diablo 2: Resurrected. Taken from Blizzard.

However, not everything needs to be added or changed. While something might be a bug, a long time has passed to a point where this quirk became an integral part of gameplay experience. Thankfully, all Blizzard remasters haven't messed too much if that core of classic games. Starcraft was left alone from the get-go while Warcraft 3 does receive balance changes in "special occasions". Both of these RTS titles have a certain pathing system that some consider to be "outdated", but it was left as it due to its key role in gameplay that's especially important to professional players. In Diablo 2, Blizzard seem to fix some bugs, such as "Trapsin" one where laying traps would decrease the amount of boss monsters being spawned. This is a major issue for Assassins since they just don't get as much loot as other classes due to that.

Developers seem to have a lot of discussions with the community. Listening to their feedback and making changes based on this collaboration, which is demonstrated in "Technical Alpha Learnings" post from Blizzard. One of the recent topics was "Next Hit Always Misses" issue that Diablo 2 community wants to be changed: whenever your character is put into another animation whenever you get hit by an enemy, your next hit and spell will miss. At first Blizzard didn't want to fix that as it's part of original experience at the moment. But now, it seems to be... kind of fixed? Honestly, I'm too stupid to really "get it", but at the very least it looks like they fixed some desync issues in the client.

TCP/IP Support.

So far I've talked about mostly positive things regarding Diablo 2, but it's finally time to address the other side of the coin as there're some issues worth talking about. With the announcement of Resurrected, Blizzard promised to keep TCP/IP for remaster as that's feature is present in the original game and actively used by players to play together through LAN or other tools instead of official Battle.net servers. But then, in one of their blog posts, developers changed their mind by stating that they're "committed to safeguarding the player experience". Later on they shared some details on this decision on official forums.

It all boils down to security issues within the game and there's a certain truth to it as you're actually more likely to stumble across cheaters and hackers through TCP/IP means. There's also a matter of piracy where Technical Alpha client was cracked, allowing people to play in offline mode, and Blizzard was sending out cease-and-desist letters. It's pretty sad, especially since there's another angle to it with modding.

There're a number of prominent modifications for Diablo 2 that are really popular among its players, and it doesn't seem like that Project Diablo 2 and Median XL would be compatible with Resurrected as a result of that decision. Some might say that "at least original game with expansion are still there for this kind of deal", but it's still an unfortunate situation and part of ongoing issue of how some big developers & publishers treat modding in modern days. Available options will be much more limiting for the remaster and, at the end of a day, the "old game is still there" isn't a great excuse.

Console's Ups and Downs.

For the longest time, Diablo 2 was the only mainline title of the series that didn't receive a console ports. That changes with Resurrected and there're a few points regarding this particular iteration of the game that's worth talking about. Starting with gamepad support that's also coming to the PC as well. From what I've seen, this type of controls were implemented pretty damn well. I would've probably stay true to keyboard and mouse even after getting a gamepad of my own someday simply because of that's how Diablo 2 was played for all those years, but I think that having an option to switch to a controller is neat.

But again, things are getting even more complicated from this point forward. Despite seemingly good controls, console audiences would have to face various annoyances of other kind that directly affect and change their Diablo 2 experience in comparison to PC players. Proper lobbies are going to be replaced with Party Finder, which is a much more simplified option and many people aren't happy about it. On top of that, there're issues with chat... Well, there's actually none since they cut it from console versions since "the primary way to communicate is through native voice chat on their platform". Perhaps it is easier that way for console (I have no ideas, despite simple doubt), but it's just odd. At least Nintendo Switch version should be "running like butter", even with only 4 players online.

Conclusion.

In moments like this, I wonder if there's a perfect remaster or just a re-release. I've already talked about it briefly before, but some flaws seem to be hidden even in what some would call a "remarkable exhibit". That's pretty much how I can describe Diablo 2: Resurrected, even though some of it's issues are more on the nose. Although there's a chance that the release version will be much more optimistic with future improvements coming along the way moving forward and more attention to it than other Blizzard remasters.

Despite my interest in this game, I wouldn't get my hands on Resurrected any time soon for reasons that are well known to regular readers of this blog or my friends: I just can't afford it both financially and technically. My only way to experience Diablo 2 is to get the original version with expansion and that doesn't sound that bad to me, but again... Tough times. Until then, all that's left for me is just watch others enjoy their time in Sanctuary and I hope their experience will be a hell of a fun.