Preview Diablo 2 Resurrected Pregandering Video

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Blizzard North; Diablo 2 Resurrected

Fextralife has posted a video preview of Diablo 2: Resurrected. He covers most everything the general populous would be curious about, such as the differences in the graphics and legacy mode, controller support, and quality of life improvements just to name a few.

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I noticed one of the comments was wondering why they never remastered the original. I'd be down for that too. Kind of sad though that I'm more interested in them updating the old ones as opposed to getting Diablo 3.

Thanks, aweigh!

 

[Tyranicon]

Kind of sad though that I'm more interested in them updating the old ones as opposed to getting Diablo 3.

That's because Diablo 3 needs a full remake as opposed to a remaster. Is there even enough quality content in 3 to salvage?

 

[DaveO]

Any players 8 support? If no, then I'll pass.

 

[Zed]

Kind of sad though that I'm more interested in them updating the old ones as opposed to getting Diablo 3.

That's because Diablo 3 needs a full remake as opposed to a remaster. Is there even enough quality content in 3 to salvage?

From the expansion and onward they've been turning the game from one of the worst hack n slash games ever into a sort of time trial-centric bullet hell-ish (but not really) action game with massive damage numbers. It's pretty fun as its own thing but it's not really comparable to D1 or D2.

There's Diablo 4 on the horizon which looks like a mix of D2 and D3.

 

[Kruno]

Any players 8 support? If no, then I'll pass.

LlamaSC already showed it is there.

 

[Tyranicon]

Kind of sad though that I'm more interested in them updating the old ones as opposed to getting Diablo 3.

That's because Diablo 3 needs a full remake as opposed to a remaster. Is there even enough quality content in 3 to salvage?

From the expansion and onward they've been turning the game from one of the worst hack n slash games ever into a sort of time trial-centric bullet hell-ish (but not really) action game with massive damage numbers. It's pretty fun as its own thing but it's not really comparable to D1 or D2.

There's Diablo 4 on the horizon which looks like a mix of D2 and D3.

Unpopular opinion, but the evolution of Diablo-style ARPGs into screen-filled firework efficiency simulators is highly disappointing. Nothing against people who like that sort of thing, but it's not my cup of tea.

 

[Atlantico]

Unpopular opinion, but the evolution of Diablo-style ARPGs into screen-filled firework efficiency simulators is highly disappointing. Nothing against people who like that sort of thing, but it's not my cup of tea.

I think that's a far less unpopular opinion than you think. Which is why we are still talking about D2 with awe in 2021, and not fireworks efficiency sims like D3 and its ilk.

 

[Tyranicon]

Unpopular opinion, but the evolution of Diablo-style ARPGs into screen-filled firework efficiency simulators is highly disappointing. Nothing against people who like that sort of thing, but it's not my cup of tea.

I think that's a far less unpopular opinion than you think. Which is why we are still talking about D2 with awe in 2021, and not fireworks efficiency sims like D3 and its ilk.

I would like to see more new games in the genre with the D1 approach. Grimdark, atmospheric hack and slash games. However, given the player counts of POE and others, it's clear that that's where the real money is being made.

 

[[UCHIHA]XxDarkSasuke420xX]

epic youtuber video essay WOW
my only complaint is that he doesn't have his twitch chat scrolling on the side! how am I supposed to know what to think without seeing POG POG POG POG CHAMP PEPE PEPE LOLOLOLOLOLO PPOGGEPROGEPOGEROOGPEOOO

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Unpopular opinion, but the evolution of Diablo-style ARPGs into screen-filled firework efficiency simulators is highly disappointing. Nothing against people who like that sort of thing, but it's not my cup of tea.

By far, my least favorite area in Diablo 2 was the lair of the bugs which would eject lightning balls in random directions when they were hit. Narrow passages and lightning spam everywhere. I eventually learned to horde electric resistance stuff just to do that one dungeon just because it was impossible to do much more than just soak the damage.

 

[Reader]

This is a good remaster. Way better one could hope for. Especially from the Blizzard of late.
It even has a switch to the original graphics among the other good features.
But here we are

one of the comments was wondering why they never remastered the original. I'd be down for that too

Fucking rant for the sake of rant.

 

[Decado]

I will buy this when it comes out. I spent many hours -- maybe thousands -- playing this game at sea almost 20 years ago. We networked a totally illegal LAN with ship board computers and played till the wee hours of the morning. Good times. Never got caught.

 

[Atlantico]

However, given the player counts of POE and others, it's clear that that's where the real money is being made.

Perhaps,... POE is free-to-play, they player count doesn't really say how well they're monetizing it. It's a Tencent operation now, so who knows.

Sure, Blizzard can try to me-too POE, but that means trying to take players from POE and the like, which are F2P games. Not a huge intersection of players there...

In other words, that there are a bunch of people doing fireworks in an F2P game doesn't really mean much for a company which wants to make an ARPG that defines the genre and is a solid cash machine.

 

[Zeriel]

Blizzard could have had the hardcore market years ago, but at this point I think it's impossible for them to catch up to PoE. They don't seem to want to try either, both Diablo 3 and Diablo 4 are very much going for the casual market. I don't think they even really have employees who are hardcore though, so it's kind of besides the point. You look at the culture of the company now and its just impossible for them to produce something like PoE.

Small sidenote: I really like how the spell effects look in the D2 remaster. It was kind of a perennial discussion when the 2D -> 3D era switch-over was happening whether 3D spell effects looking lame was a limitation of 3D, or just bad art direction, and stuff like this remaster clearly shows its possible to make really good, "2D-y" spell effects in 3D, modern artists just don't do it for whatever reason.

 

[[UCHIHA]XxDarkSasuke420xX]

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Blizzard could have had the hardcore market years ago, but at this point I think it's impossible for them to catch up to PoE. They don't seem to want to try either, both Diablo 3 and Diablo 4 are very much going for the casual market. I don't think they even really have employees who are hardcore though, so it's kind of besides the point. You look at the culture of the company now and its just impossible for them to produce something like PoE.

Supposedly, while the game remains the same, the new graphics are more along the lines of the first Diablo with the gore and horror themes. Admittedly, I haven't played Diablo 3, but Diablo 2 did kind of take a step back from the original in terms of the horror aspects of the graphics. If the graphics of the remaster puts the Diablo back in Diablo 2, that's an improvement.

 

[Zeriel]

Yeah, basically everything "good" about the D2 remaster is because they used old source assets to upgrade everything. Slavishly copying the old ends up with some pretty good results. That's why in the original remaster reveal thread I said I think D2 remastered actually looks better, aesthetically, than D4, even though D4 is nominally trying to recreate the D2 look, them organically starting from scratch is just informed by too many modern aesthetic choices to look as good as intentionally copying D2.

That they do have a lot of the old source assets seems to help a lot though, if they were doing this from scratch, even slavishly copying I bet it would turn out a lot worse.

 

[Tacgnol]

Kind of sad though that I'm more interested in them updating the old ones as opposed to getting Diablo 3.

That's because Diablo 3 needs a full remake as opposed to a remaster. Is there even enough quality content in 3 to salvage?

From the expansion and onward they've been turning the game from one of the worst hack n slash games ever into a sort of time trial-centric bullet hell-ish (but not really) action game with massive damage numbers. It's pretty fun as its own thing but it's not really comparable to D1 or D2.

There's Diablo 4 on the horizon which looks like a mix of D2 and D3.

Unpopular opinion, but the evolution of Diablo-style ARPGs into screen-filled firework efficiency simulators is highly disappointing. Nothing against people who like that sort of thing, but it's not my cup of tea.

Newer ARPGs seem to be abandoning (or somewhat slowing) the zoom zoom playstyle from what I've seen. They probably want to offer something different to Path of Exile (which has taken the zoom zoom to stupid levels).

 

[Zeriel]

Kind of sad though that I'm more interested in them updating the old ones as opposed to getting Diablo 3.

That's because Diablo 3 needs a full remake as opposed to a remaster. Is there even enough quality content in 3 to salvage?

From the expansion and onward they've been turning the game from one of the worst hack n slash games ever into a sort of time trial-centric bullet hell-ish (but not really) action game with massive damage numbers. It's pretty fun as its own thing but it's not really comparable to D1 or D2.

There's Diablo 4 on the horizon which looks like a mix of D2 and D3.

Unpopular opinion, but the evolution of Diablo-style ARPGs into screen-filled firework efficiency simulators is highly disappointing. Nothing against people who like that sort of thing, but it's not my cup of tea.

Newer ARPGs seem to be abandoning (or somewhat slowing) the zoom zoom playstyle from what I've seen. They probably want to offer something different to Path of Exile (which has taken the zoom zoom to stupid levels).

To be fair I think that's just power creep. PoE is a live service game with constant updates every 3 months. Any other "classic" Diablo clone that had new content every 3 months would be as bad with power creep as PoE if not worse. Launch PoE was VERY slow and low power level, especially before support gems existed.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Hmm, I'd like to see more of this.

 

[Tacgnol]

Kind of sad though that I'm more interested in them updating the old ones as opposed to getting Diablo 3.

That's because Diablo 3 needs a full remake as opposed to a remaster. Is there even enough quality content in 3 to salvage?

From the expansion and onward they've been turning the game from one of the worst hack n slash games ever into a sort of time trial-centric bullet hell-ish (but not really) action game with massive damage numbers. It's pretty fun as its own thing but it's not really comparable to D1 or D2.

There's Diablo 4 on the horizon which looks like a mix of D2 and D3.

Unpopular opinion, but the evolution of Diablo-style ARPGs into screen-filled firework efficiency simulators is highly disappointing. Nothing against people who like that sort of thing, but it's not my cup of tea.

Newer ARPGs seem to be abandoning (or somewhat slowing) the zoom zoom playstyle from what I've seen. They probably want to offer something different to Path of Exile (which has taken the zoom zoom to stupid levels).

To be fair I think that's just power creep. PoE is a live service game with constant updates every 3 months. Any other "classic" Diablo clone that had new content every 3 months would be as bad with power creep as PoE if not worse. Launch PoE was VERY slow and low power level, especially before support gems existed.

Power creep is part of it, but PoE was always faster than other ARPGs. Even back in the 1.0 days builds were pretty zoom zoom compared to other popular ARPGs.

Take a look at things like movement skills in games like Last Epoch and Grim Dawn. They tend to have cooldowns or high resource costs so they can't be spammed endlessly.

Other thing with PoE is the dev response to faster clear speed is constantly adding more instant one shot kill effects instead of trying to deal with the root of the problem. People keep saying PoE2 will fix it, but GGG have given no actual indication that they will tackle the problem.

 

[Gromlintroid]

Looks good, hopefully it will turn out good

 

[Zeriel]

Kind of sad though that I'm more interested in them updating the old ones as opposed to getting Diablo 3.

That's because Diablo 3 needs a full remake as opposed to a remaster. Is there even enough quality content in 3 to salvage?

From the expansion and onward they've been turning the game from one of the worst hack n slash games ever into a sort of time trial-centric bullet hell-ish (but not really) action game with massive damage numbers. It's pretty fun as its own thing but it's not really comparable to D1 or D2.

There's Diablo 4 on the horizon which looks like a mix of D2 and D3.

Unpopular opinion, but the evolution of Diablo-style ARPGs into screen-filled firework efficiency simulators is highly disappointing. Nothing against people who like that sort of thing, but it's not my cup of tea.

Newer ARPGs seem to be abandoning (or somewhat slowing) the zoom zoom playstyle from what I've seen. They probably want to offer something different to Path of Exile (which has taken the zoom zoom to stupid levels).

To be fair I think that's just power creep. PoE is a live service game with constant updates every 3 months. Any other "classic" Diablo clone that had new content every 3 months would be as bad with power creep as PoE if not worse. Launch PoE was VERY slow and low power level, especially before support gems existed.

Power creep is part of it, but PoE was always faster than other ARPGs. Even back in the 1.0 days builds were pretty zoom zoom compared to other popular ARPGs.

Take a look at things like movement skills in games like Last Epoch and Grim Dawn. They tend to have cooldowns or high resource costs so they can't be spammed endlessly.

Other thing with PoE is the dev response to faster clear speed is constantly adding more instant one shot kill effects instead of trying to deal with the root of the problem. People keep saying PoE2 will fix it, but GGG have given no actual indication that they will tackle the problem.

Afair in the early days movement skills didn't exist. The only one I remember back then was flicker strike, and they nerfed it very quickly to not be spammable, so that shows you where the power level was at back then, when act 2 was the last act. The game was incredibly slow compared to now, and basically identical to D2. And even pre-nerf flicker strike was basically same as teleporting sorcerer in D2. There was no support gems or effects to make it aoe.

Support gems were the moment where the tide started to shift. Chris Wilson even had an interview where he talked about that--it was an intentional decision on his part to start off power levels very low, so there was room to creep, and he knew as soon as support gems were added where they were headed. It's just that the game has been around so long that we are so much further into the "future" than D2 ever got.

Also the power level thing is not something players agree on. That's the crux of the issue. They've made attempts to tamp down on it before and have to end up reversing them because players don't like having the power taken away. That's the essence of power creep: players want new things, they want to feel more powerful, and when you take it away they get mad, even if some players would prefer that.

 

[Tacgnol]

Afair in the early days movement skills didn't exist. The only one I remember back then was flicker strike, and they nerfed it very quickly to not be spammable, so that shows you where the power level was at back then, when act 2 was the last act. The game was incredibly slow compared to now, and basically identical to D2.

Leap Slam and Lightning Warp have been in since the beta. Back in 1.0 people used to have weapon swaps with high attack speed for the purpose of instant leap slamming.

Most ARPGs don't give you such ludicrous amounts of movement speed either.

 

[Zeriel]

Afair in the early days movement skills didn't exist. The only one I remember back then was flicker strike, and they nerfed it very quickly to not be spammable, so that shows you where the power level was at back then, when act 2 was the last act. The game was incredibly slow compared to now, and basically identical to D2.

Leap Slam and Lightning Warp have been in since the beta. Back in 1.0 people used to have weapon swaps with high attack speed for the purpose of instant leap slamming.

Most ARPGs don't give you such ludicrous amounts of movement speed either.

Fair enough. I don't remember it back then, but maybe it just wasn't in my build.