One of the original creators of classic RPG game series Diablo has commented on the possibility of a Diablo 2 remaster, and he didn’t mince his words.
David Brevik, lead programmer on the first Diablo, and project and design lead on the second, was asked by a fan on one of his wife’s Twitch streams about the idea of a Diablo remaster, akin to Warcraft 3: Reforged. He believes it could happen, but it wouldn’t be the same game, and none of the team being still at Blizzard would be a huge hurdle to replicating that magic. “It’s very possible for them to do,” he says. “Will it be the same game? Doubtful.”
He then gives a truncated rundown of what was a difficult, tumultuous development cycle. All of the assets and source code were lost late in the process, meaning the company probably doesn’t have access to the original models and what not. Perhaps the bigger issue is not having any of the team-members on staff any more, making figuring out the balancing and particular thinking for any of the writing or decisions difficult. “They don’t have any of the people who worked on the code, or did anything there, any of the balancing, any of the quests, anything like that,” he states. “So good luck trying to figure out what the hell we did. Nobody’s ever contacted me about it.”
Brevik then points to Warcraft 3: Reforged, the strategy game remaster Blizzard released earlier this year, as an example of why, if a Diablo 2 Remastered happens, fans might want to temper expectations. Reforged was negatively received when it launched because of a lack of promised features alongside other issues, being called the “worst game ever” by users on Metacritic, and never quite recovered.
You can watch the full clip here:
Brevik regularly streams with his wife here, and co-founded his own company to help indie studios earlier this year. There’s no plans for a Diablo 2 re-release, but given this is its 20 year anniversary, it may well follow in Warcraft 3 and StarCraft 2‘s footsteps yet. If you’re still playing it, this mod that keeps it updated might be of use.
Diablo 4 was officially announced late last year, we have everything on the Diablo 4 release date here, and a list of the best games like Diablo, if you want some classic RPG action.