The tagline was inevitable: Blizzard's taking us back to hell. Diablo 2: Resurrected is a remaster of the classic action RPG and its expansion Lord of Destruction, with new 3D graphics and completely recreated cinematics.
"Diablo 2 is a very important game to Blizzard," said Diablo chief Rod Fergusson. "It helped define the ARPG genre. It was the 20th anniversary of the game last year, Blizzard's 30th anniversary now, and as we're getting ready for Diablo Immortal and Diablo 4. It feels like a great moment to bring this game back."
Beneath the new graphics, which support 4K and high refresh rates like 144 Hz, this is almost exactly the same Diablo 2 it's always been. You can flip back and forth to the old graphics at will, and underneath its new 3D engine Diablo 2: Resurrected runs on the the old game's code. That means most everything works as before, including many beloved community exploits, AI, pathing, the works. The audio has been remastered for Dolby 7.1, but it's still using the same recordings from the original game.
Blizzard has made a few new quality of life additions, including a shared item stash for all your characters to pull from and auto-looting. But Fergusson stressed that its additions in Diablo 2: Resurrected are optional toggles—if you still want to pick up gold and loot manually, you absolutely can.
Diablo 2: Resurrected is coming to PC and consoles in 2021, with cross-platform progression (TBD on which consoles, exactly, that includes). Eager helldivers will be able to sign up for a technical alpha before release. Blizzard told us it'll cost $39.99 on PC.
- Read more about what's changing and what's staying the same in Diablo 2: Resurrected
- Good news: Diablo 2: Resurrected won't affect classic Diablo 2, unlike the launch mess with Warcraft 3: Reforged
- It turns out Diablo 2's source code and assets weren't so lost after all
