Diablo 2: Resurrected remaster

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

aside from that there's nothing wrong with any of these locations.

Almost all of those locations are pretty shit.

 

[Kruno]

Here is a questionnaire for the developers by MrLlamaSC.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/p69mf9/diablo_2_resurrected_beta_questionnaire_feedback/

 

[RaptorRex888]

Oh wonderful, a game I already played and finished 20 years ago with slightly better graphics and worse everything else. Much better than making something new.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Titan Quest isn't generic, lol. Its setting is criminally underused and I can only think of 1 other game with the same premise for its setting - Age of Mythology. Yeah, the acts are a bit too long, but hey, they had a story to tell. I'd have skipped China and made Babylon a bit longer, but that's neither here nor there.

The mythological setting? Yeah, that's fine. But Titan Quest explicitly avoided using it because people might be offended by the concept of Greek gods and Greek Mythology(https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/why-is-titan-quest-so-bad.62700/). What is left is entirely generic

Wait le wat?

Who was going to be offended by what, and why? Wtf lmao.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Diablo 2 is still the greatest Diablo-like (lul) ever made. Yes nu-games like Grim Dawn or Path of Exile introduced some knewl shit but still come short in several aspects which considering how old Diablo 2 is it's kinda depressing.

There ARE however a few things that Diablo 2 did terribly. First, the writing in anything but the cinematics is pathetically generic (and even the cinematics get a bit retarded after a certain point). Second, there's a ton of political correctness, mostly muh stronk wombyn over and over but they even put some Fedora as well as anti-coservative shit (Act 5), which is all sorts of hilarious. Teh diveritah is also already there. Paladin being a nigger was always stupid. Just because you were all too young to understand you were being wokefied doesn't mean it wasn't bad then and it set a bad precedent as modern wokeness is just an extension of 90s wokeness. We wouldn't be where we are today without l1bruls in the 90s infecting everything. Notice that neither the first Diablo nor Warcraft 2 had much wokeness (if at all), where as both Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 had tons of it, which is something to think about.

BTW, on the question of normal being too easy. Keep in mind that we know a lot more about the mechanics of the game now. Even if one consciously avoids using a cookie cutter build you cannot consciously unlearn what you know about the game. Back in the day it was fine though, as i remember struggling quite a bit back then.

 

[Saravan]

Diablo 2 is still the greatest Diablo-like (lul) ever made. Yes nu-games like Grim Dawn or Path of Exile introduced some knewl shit but still come short in several aspects which considering how old Diablo 2 is it's kinda depressing.

There ARE however a few things that Diablo 2 did terribly. First, the writing in anything but the cinematics is pathetically generic (and even the cinematics get a bit retarded after a certain point). Second, there's a ton of political correctness, mostly muh stronk wombyn over and over but they even put some Fedora as well as anti-coservative shit (Act 5), which is all sorts of hilarious. Teh diveritah is also already there. Paladin being a nigger was always stupid. Just because you were all too young to understand you were being wokefied doesn't mean it wasn't bad then and it set a bad precedent as modern wokeness is just an extension of 90s wokeness. We wouldn't be where we are today without l1bruls in the 90s infecting everything. Notice that neither the first Diablo nor Warcraft 2 had much wokeness (if at all), where as both Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 had tons of it, which is something to think about.

BTW, on the question of normal being too easy. Keep in mind that we know a lot more about the mechanics of the game now. Even if one consciously avoids using a cookie cutter build you cannot consciously unlearn what you know about the game. Back in the day it was fine though, as i remember struggling quite a bit back then.

D1 mage is literally a black guy.

And the Order of Zakarum, in regards to the Paladin in D2, is based in Kehijstan which is the Eastern Empire that lore-wise has black people (see for example Act 3 mercernaries). The Paladin in D2 is described as being a member of a splinter-group from Zakarum whose homeland is probably Westmarch or Khanduras. Might be difficult to explain a black guy from Westmarch but definietly not Khanduras.

The D1 mage is described as being a member from the Vizjerei Mage Clan who are also based in part from Kehjistan.

 

[Lacrymas]

Wait le wat?

Who was going to be offended by what, and why? Wtf lmao.

The publishers explicitly forbade the developers depicting humans in the evil army. I honestly don't know why, it probably has something to do with the age rating.

BTW, on the question of normal being too easy. Keep in mind that we know a lot more about the mechanics of the game now. Even if one consciously avoids using a cookie cutter build you cannot consciously unlearn what you know about the game. Back in the day it was fine though, as i remember struggling quite a bit back then.

No, the game did become easier patch after patch and it all went to shit the moment runewords were introduced. MrLlamaSC has a few videos attempting to speedrun the release version of Diablo 2:

He also has an Amazon and Sorc run if you are interested in seeing how different it actually is.

Atm, even if putting points into very basic skills with no guidance whatsoever, you have a very high chance of choosing a cookie cutter build. For example, bumping up teeth on the necro is what speedrunners do for the fastest leveling before transitioning to bone spear.

 

[Saravan]

Wait le wat?

Who was going to be offended by what, and why? Wtf lmao.

The publishers explicitly forbade the developers depicting humans in the evil army. I honestly don't know why, it probably has something to do with the age rating.

BTW, on the question of normal being too easy. Keep in mind that we know a lot more about the mechanics of the game now. Even if one consciously avoids using a cookie cutter build you cannot consciously unlearn what you know about the game. Back in the day it was fine though, as i remember struggling quite a bit back then.

No, the game did become easier patch after patch and it all went to shit the moment runewords were introduced. MrLlamaSC has a few videos attempting to speedrun the release version of Diablo 2:

He also has an Amazon and Sorc run if you are interested in seeing how different it actually is.

Atm, even if putting points into very basic skills with no guidance whatsoever, you have a very high chance of choosing a cookie cutter build. For example, bumping up teeth on the necro is what speedrunners do for the fastest leveling before transitioning to bone spear.

Yes D2 became easier as patches went on and Runewords are overpowered once you get them, especially the game-breaking ones like Breath of the Dying or Enigma. However you compared the difficulty to Grim Dawn and I have played through that blind in all difficulties and I can't say it's any more difficult. Path of Exile is a lot more difficult compared to these two games at least in the end-game. The difficulty balancing is however not the part that has ever been the main strength of any ARPG. Comparing the art-style, music, sound effects, special effects and environment between D2 and Grim Dawn there really isn't any contest. Despite being a lot older D2 wins on all accounts.

 

[Lacrymas]

However you compared the difficulty to Grim Dawn and I have played through that blind in all difficulties and I can't say it's any more difficult.

Have you tried the roguelike dungeons, "endless" dungeon (it's not endless), Crucible, or starting out at a higher difficulty?

 

[Lyric Suite]

D1 mage is literally a black guy.

There's nothing wrong with the mage in D1, because the race doesn't contradict the class, which is quite clearly eastern in aesthetic.

And the Order of Zakarum, in regards to the Paladin in D2, is based in Kehijstan which is the Eastern Empire that lore-wise has black people (see for example Act 3 mercernaries).

Yes i know, except:

1) The white wombyn blacksmith in Act 2 was a Paladin of the same order, and Kehijstan is clearly Indian, not African when we see it.
2) The aesthetic of the Paladin is 100% European, down to having a nice big Christian cross when the "holy shield" skill is active.

Now it's obvious most people would only see the second point. They would look at the character selection screen and wonder why this obviously European knight is African by race. The ingame lore is irrelevant by the time you get to it (and it also doesn't make sense).

If they wanted to be cool, instead of a European paladin they could have gone entirely with a full eastern aesthetic for his armor and weapons, but they didn't, 'cause subverting the expectation was the whole point, and there's ton of wokeness everywhere else so it's not like we have to wonder why they made him black. It's also possible that different people worked on different things and the European paladin was already complete by the time they came up with the idea of making him eastern or African.

 

[Average Manatee]

Titan Quest isn't generic, lol. Its setting is criminally underused and I can only think of 1 other game with the same premise for its setting - Age of Mythology. Yeah, the acts are a bit too long, but hey, they had a story to tell. I'd have skipped China and made Babylon a bit longer, but that's neither here nor there.

The mythological setting? Yeah, that's fine. But Titan Quest explicitly avoided using it because people might be offended by the concept of Greek gods and Greek Mythology(https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/why-is-titan-quest-so-bad.62700/). What is left is entirely generic

Wait le wat?

Who was going to be offended by what, and why? Wtf lmao.

Quoting from the thread

There seemed to be a constant fear during the development of Titan Quest about upsetting this or that segment of the audience or someone's grandmother. I was literally told by one of the higher-ups that the game should be designed so that his grandmother would want to play it (even though his grandmother had never played a game before in her life). We were building a game with relatively complicated and hardcore gameplay systems but trying to make it thematically and visually appealing to as wide a casual audience as possible. The end result, is that the game was a little more bland and generic in some respects than it should have been and the game world didn't do much to convey a sense of danger.

One example of this would be the mandate that enemies not use language or build anything that would make them seem like they had more than animal intelligence. It was felt by one of the higher-ups that people might feel wrong killing enemies that displayed any obvious intelligence. I guess somehow it is wrong to fight intelligent enemies but okay to slaughter dumb animals? We also weren't originally allowed to have humans die, ever, in the game and no human corpses.

One area where this handicapped us was in the creation of environmental assets that visually demonstrated the enemy's war against humanity. We originally wanted to create enemy siege-works outside Athens but were told that would make the enemies seem too intelligent. It was a struggle just to monster camp assets. All of the ruins were also removed from Greece at one point because someone was afraid that players might not understand why, if the game took place in ancient times, that there would still be ruins... I had to fight for both of these things. Without them, Greece would have just been a featureless expanse of wilderness with occasional human towns that never really appeared to be in any serious danger.

At the same time, we were told that enemies should seem like noble adversaries, not evil or demonic creatures. It was highly controversial when the designs for the Limos and Arachnids were first presented. I had to personally fight to get those approved because they were considered too grotesque and scary looking even though they were based on actually mythology. Undead and the Spirit Mastery were also a struggle to get in the game. I was told that Spirit Mastery was too "Necromancery and evil". We managed to push a few more things like that through over the course of development but it was always frowned upon.

Basically, my belief is that Titan Quest never had as much style and character as it could have because we were afraid to do anything even remotely controversial. When I first designed the skill masteries, they were all based on Olympian gods, with skills modeled after the powers or attributes associated with different gods in mythology. This was rejected because it was potentially too religious and people might not want to feel like they were worshiping mythological gods to receive their powers.

We ended up with a game set in Greek mythology that barely contained any actual mythology other than the inspiration for some of the monsters and dialog on peripheral story-teller NPCs stuck off to the side in the towns. The first quest I put in the game, when we were prototyping it for THQ was modeled after one of the 12 labors of Heracles. The Erymanthian Board was terrorizing a town and the hunters they sent after it hadn't returned. You had to ascend mount Erymanthos, discover the wreckage of the hunter's camp, and then continue on to the snow-capped summit to battle the monstrous board. Of course, I was told we couldn't have snow on the summit because people might not realize it snowed in Greece and then later the whole quest vanished and was replaced by generic crap like retrieving a dowry ring so some chick can get married while monsters are overrunning the world.

Sadly the original post from the dev was on a forum that seems to have been wiped.

 

[abija]

Only way D2 is same difficulty as Grim Dawn are extremely strong nostalgia googles.
It's also simply worse in pretty much every aspect.

 

[Saravan]

However you compared the difficulty to Grim Dawn and I have played through that blind in all difficulties and I can't say it's any more difficult.

Have you tried the roguelike dungeons, "endless" dungeon (it's not endless), Crucible, or starting out at a higher difficulty?

Starting out in veteran mode makes normal a lot more interesting and challenging I agree with that. Definitely compared to D2 even if you have meta knowledge for both. I didn't try endless dungeons (felt done after completing it in the last difficulty) so perhaps there is some difficulty spike there you are referencing too.

D1 mage is literally a black guy.

There's nothing wrong with the mage in D1, because the race doesn't contradict the class, which is quite clearly eastern in aesthetic.

And the Order of Zakarum, in regards to the Paladin in D2, is based in Kehijstan which is the Eastern Empire that lore-wise has black people (see for example Act 3 mercernaries).

Yes i know, except:

1) The white wombyn blacksmith in Act 2 was a Paladin of the same order, and Kehijstan is clearly Indian, not African when we see it.
2) The aesthetic of the Paladin is 100% European, down to having a nice big Christian cross when the "holy shield" skill is active.

Now it's obvious most people would only see the second point. They would look at the character selection screen and wonder why this obviously European knight is African by race. The ingame lore is irrelevant by the time you get to it (and it also doesn't make sense).

If they wanted to be cool, instead of a European paladin they could have gone entirely with a full eastern aesthetic for his armor and weapons, but they didn't, 'cause subverting the expectation was the whole point.

In lore the Zakarum religion spread from the far east to places like Khanduras and Westmarch. It's not explained exactly where Fara (the white woman you are referring to) is from, only that she was a former paladin herself.

Yes you are right in that Kehijstan is more middle-eastern/indian inspired. This is however a personal point and we are subjectively viewing the aesthetics of the characters. It looks to me that the original D2 paladin had a North African and middle eastern aesthetics, something that would remind me of a Moroccan, compare the original D2 paladin with the resurrected and there is a clear difference. In any case if you insist that Kehijstan is only a reference to Indian and/or middle eastern culture then it would make no more sense for the Paladin to be white than black. Both are entirely possible in the way the lore is set up.

 

[Lyric Suite]

My point is that the "lore" is irrelevant. The paladin is a European archetype, and the aesthetic of the character is European. Therefore it doesn't make sense to make him black other than to want to be edgy and woke.

"Why can't a paladin be black? Also, technically the paladins in this game are eastern..."

The exact thought process you'd expect by the woketard that came up with this during development.

 

[Lacrymas]

Starting out in veteran mode makes normal a lot more interesting and challenging I agree with that.

I mean starting out on Elite or Ultimate.

My point is that the "lore" is irrelevant. The paladin is a European archetype, and the aesthetic of the character is European.

You are the only one who cares.

 

[Lyric Suite]

You are the only one who cares.

Maybe you should have fucking cared when it mattered. Enjoy tranny Amazon now because there's a direct line between wokeness in D2 and wokeness today.

 

[Saravan]

My point is that the "lore" is irrelevant. The paladin is a European archetype, and the aesthetic of the character is European. Therefore it doesn't make sense to make him black other than to want to be edgy and woke.

"Why can't a paladin be black? Also, technically the paladins in this game are eastern..."

The exact thought process you'd expect by a woketard.

Nah I just find it strange that you can hand-wave D1 mage as being black solely because of his class when it's strongly tied to the lore that he is black just like the Paladin in the same game universe. The European/Christian armor aesthetics are definitely there I don't dispute that but that was always more in relation to depicting a holy character. The same themes are run in D1 as well.

 

[Lyric Suite]

My point is that the "lore" is irrelevant. The paladin is a European archetype, and the aesthetic of the character is European. Therefore it doesn't make sense to make him black other than to want to be edgy and woke.

"Why can't a paladin be black? Also, technically the paladins in this game are eastern..."

The exact thought process you'd expect by a woketard.

Nah I just find it strange that you can hand-wave D1 mage as being black solely because of his class when it's strongly tied to the lore that he is black just like the Paladin in the same game universe. The European/Christian armor aesthetics are definitely there I don't dispute that but that was always more in relation to depicting a holy character. The same themes are run in D1 as well.

Because the archetype matters more than the "lore", which is actually irrelevant in the end.

 

[Saravan]

Starting out in veteran mode makes normal a lot more interesting and challenging I agree with that.

I mean starting out on Elite or Ultimate.

I wasn't aware that you can start (like at lvl1?) at Elite or Ultimate or perhaps I'm misunderstanding you?

As I said I played through all difficulties so that included Elite and Ultimate difficulties too, comparatively to Nightmare and Hell in D2. Of course there might not be an exact 1:1 in difficulty between the two games, D2 is probably easier but not by such a wide margin imo. Perhaps my Warlord (Oathkeeper and Soldier) was really strong. I didn't find it too difficult to figure out a decent combo.

 

[Lacrymas]

Because the archetype matters more than the "lore", which is actually irrelevant in the end.

Only if you choose to believe the bullshit peddled by Campbell or Jung.

I wasn't aware that you can start (like at lvl1?) at Elite or Ultimate or perhaps I'm misunderstanding you?

Yes, you can start on Elite and Ultimate at lvl 1. You have to buy keystones that unlock them, but they are found in literally the town you teleport to in the Forgotten Gods expansion. Imo, the best thing is to start on Elite. Ultimate is pretty brutal and you'll constantly feel underleveled.

 

[Saravan]

Because the archetype matters more than the "lore", which is actually irrelevant in the end.

Only if you choose to believe the bullshit peddled by Campbell or Jung.

I wasn't aware that you can start (like at lvl1?) at Elite or Ultimate or perhaps I'm misunderstanding you?

Yes, you can start on Elite and Ultimate at lvl 1. You have to buy keystones that unlock them, but they are found in literally the town you teleport to in the Forgotten Gods expansion. Imo, the best thing is to start on Elite. Ultimate is pretty brutal and you'll constantly feel underleveled.

Oh I see well yes in that scenario it's definietly harder than Diablo 2 as you can't start in hell difficulty at lvl 1, you would be instakilled.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Only if you choose to believe the bullshit peddled by Campbell or Jung.

The "bullshit" part here is to believe the idea of an archetype was invented by those people and that one must therefore rely on their views on the matter.

Europeans do not own the concept of an "holy warrior", but the paladin remains a European archetype the same way the samurai remains a Japanese one.

 

[Lacrymas]

Only if you choose to believe the bullshit peddled by Campbell or Jung.

The "bullshit" part here is to believe the idea of an archetype was invented by those people and that one must therefore rely on their views on the matter.

Europeans do not own the concept of an "holy warrior", but the paladin remains a European archetype the same way the samurai remains a Japanese one.

They kind of did, though. I don't know of anyone before them that put this much stock in archetypes (or even mention them?). You might argue Plato, but he only ever applied his theory of Forms in a negative way when talking about art (copies of copies/mere delusions), so he contradicts you there.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Maybe he should have been yellow or green. Any page notes on WHY they chose dark skin? (Maybe they tanned too much).

D2 / LODs major sin is the harpy succubi (fugly bitches).

What's the shit pricetag on this woke disaster going to be $30 $40 $50 $60?

 

[Storyfag]

You are the only one who cares.

Maybe you should have fucking cared when it mattered. Enjoy tranny Amazon now because there's a direct line between wokeness in D2 and wokeness today.

You are talking to Lacrymas. He will enjoy xer. Unironically.