With the announcement of Diablo 4, people are hyped for more hellish raids, tons of loot and endless fun with friends. But it’s going to be a long, long time before we get Diablo 4. Therefore, people are naturally nostalgic for the past, and with Blizzard there is a recent willingness to revisit their past with the likes of World of Warcraft Classic and a remaster of Warcraft 3. What about the beloved Diablo 2 then? Well, unfortunately, it seems unlikely.
In an interview with Gamespot, the original Creators of the Diablo series talked about the series and its storied past. There’s interesting information there, but some of the disheartening kind for fans is they reveal that the game was almost completely lost when they had to rebuild the game based on a home version, and in the process most of the game’s original assets were destroyed. Therefore, if Blizzard ever did want to pursue a remaster or enhanced remake they would have to basically rebuild those from scratch.
“I had a big chunk of it. Went home, pulled out the hard drive or whatever we did back then. Spent a few days reconstructing it, which ended up working fine, except that we lost all the history. We lost a lot of the assets, art assets. It would make it very difficult for Blizzard to do a Diablo 2 Remaster because all the assets we used are pretty much gone. They’d have to make them from scratch.”
While it isn’t impossible, the effort Blizzard would have to put into a Diablo 2 remaster would be quite a bit more than the typical enhanced re-release. With enough time and resources, it could still happen, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on it.
