After over 20 years, Diablo 2 reopens the gates of Hell and once again invites players to Sanctuary with the Resurrected edition. Recreated using modern technology, it brings to light a classic of the video game, arousing a lot of nostalgia in the players. But what led to the return of what is widely perceived as one of the most influential RPGs in history? Here are all the curiosities about Diablo 2 Resurrected told by Rob Gallerani.
Diablo 2 Resurrected: all the curiosities about the project
Rob Gallerani, Studio Design Director, tells what’s behind one of the most anticipated remasters of all time, revealing curiosities and details of the game.
Why do you think D2 has been hailed as one of the greatest video games ever made? When did you begin to realize that the game was going to be such a success?
Looking back, I don’t know if the team could have imagined such a success. We are now more aware of how important the game is, not only for its fans, but also for fans of the entire genre. I believe it is special for a number of reasons. The design was inspired by role-playing games that were played using pencil and paper, and the goal was to give players a world they could master.
Players were expected to learn, discover and in some places invent the best ways to play. This kind of vision is rare, even today. The number of people who consider themselves gamers is greater than it was 20 years ago. In today’s era of play-how-you-like, where the gaming experience is facilitated, we have lost some of the charm and mystery that Diablo II has given players.
Today, every inch of the original game has been mapped, but that original feeling of discovery is what people remember. It was the first time that gamers were faced with an experience like this. For many players, Diablo was one of three of the four games they owned. Now they each have dozens of different titles and platforms to play them on. Diablo 2: Resurrected is as much a remaster as it is the preservation of a very special moment in gaming history, and we hope we can do our fans’ nostalgia the justice it deserves.
What were the biggest challenges you faced while developing the remaster?
It’s an incredibly special game for Blizzard. It is a revered piece of game history. It’s the reason many of us joined Diablo in the first place, and we were thrilled with the idea of taking a classic from 20 years ago, bringing it into the modern era, and experiencing that magic again, on a new generation of consoles. and with a new generation of gamers. This, of course, presented a number of challenges, as the team was keen to keep everything that made the original version so special.
It was really important to us to keep the magic that made Diablo 2 special – the story, the classic dungeon crawling combat, the characters, and even the inventory – and that meant keeping the soul of the original intact. “Keep the Core” was our most important pillar. Staying authentic to the original has consistently been our guide. For many players it was the perfect ARPG experience and we wanted to respect it. The actual balance of the gameplay was crucial to preserve. In several cases it was very easy. For example, we would never think of changing the amount of damage of an attack, or the number of hit points of a monster.
While balance changes are something we contemplate post-launch. With the console we had the biggest challenge of all, trying to invoke nostalgia on a platform where the game never existed. However, we had to do this without compromising the core experience and character advancement (since we have a cross progression!). We knew that players would have a new gaming experience through the use of the controller and therefore we focused on making it work as players would expect. We had to work hard for this to happen, such as removing pathfinding, running / walking keys, allowing stopping between grid points (the game is all on a grid). We have succeeded.
Can you share any interesting facts about the game building process originally?
Diablo II has never had an official and complete design document. Sure, we had a rough plan, but for the most part we integrated new things: four cities instead of the one in the original game; five character classes, all different from the previous three; and many new dungeons, new items, magic and abilities.
The Diablo 2 development team comprised three main groups: programming, character art (everything that moves) and background art (everything that doesn’t move), with about a dozen members each. The design was a largely open process, with input from all team members.
There are links to popular culture, e.g. movies, music, etc. which can be seen in D2?
All references in D2R are the same as they were in the original 20 years ago. Many of the references come from films and games of that era. For example, inserting the Staff of Horadric into a hole to see what happens is very similar to the adventures of a “certain archaeologist” who needs to do the same thing to “Steal” a certain “Ark”. The name Diablo actually came from the mountain near San Francisco. Many of the named demons come from mythology and among the swords in the game there is one called “Lightsabre”, characterized by a very strong ray of light, like those used in certain “star wars” …
Are there any unexpected links to other games that readers would be interested in learning about?
There is one in the StarCraft game where there is a cheat that can be activated by typing “There Is No Cow Level”. This is a reference to Diablo 2 that reminds players that obviously there is no such secret level!
Do you have any funny anecdotes about the making of D2?
The best anecdotes were we who learned how the original game works. It really showed us that the game was built in an era of board games. There were a lot of ideas that the original developers tried and never finalized.
In conclusion, we leave you with this curiosity: what Diablo 2 Resurrected and Madonna? Both are listed in the Guinness Book of Records for the year 2000. Diablo made its way onto the pages thanks to its best-selling computer game status, with over 1 million units sold in the first two weeks. Its sales in 2000 alone reached 2.75 million globally and has been declared “the Harry Potter of computer games”. Meanwhile Madonna, in the film Evita (USA, 1996), changed a record number of 85 costumes by wearing 39 hats, 45 pairs of shoes and 56 pairs of earrings.