Diablo 2 Resurrected - Time To Go Back

in Hive Gaming3 years ago

Blizzard announced "Diablo 2 - Resurrected" 2 days ago on its Blizzconline event.
Time to go back in time and see where we came from.
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What Is Diablo 2


Diablo II is an action role-playing game from the US game developer Blizzard Entertainment and the sequel to Diablo. The computer game was released in 2000 and the expansion Lord of Destruction was released a year later.
In 2012, the successor Diablo III was released, which had a more than troublesome release.

On February 19, 2021, Blizzard announced that a graphically and acoustically revised remaster under the title Diablo II: Resurrected will be released in 2021 for PC and consoles (PlayStation 4 / Playstation 5, Xbox One / Xbox Series X and Nintendo Switch).

Even today, Diablo 2 is among the most popular ARPGs and it's fanbase is huge.
Many consider Diablo (and especially Diablo 2) as the king in the ARPG genre.


Story

Diablo II builds on the story of its predecessor. Since Diablo was not finally destroyed in the first part, Diablo II sets off again to put an end to him and his allies. With Baal and Mephisto, two other powerful demons also play an important role, who are brothers Diablos in the game.

The game is divided into five acts in which different tasks have to be solved, through which the player can earn various rewards on the one hand, but on the other hand also advance the plot. At the end of every act it is important to defeat a particularly powerful boss.

The story is told on the one hand by the NPCs, in particular Deckard Cain and the Archangel Tyrael, on the other hand also in the videos that are played between the files.


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Baal, the final boss of Diablo 2. Back then, the ingame cinematics were groundbreaking. Even by todays standards, 20 years later, they look pretty good


Classes

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From left to right: Amazon, Assassin, Necromancer, Barbarian, Paladin, Sorceres, Druid

The player can select from seven classes. Each class comes with her own gameplay, skilltrees and powerfull tailored items.

The Amazon can not only handle a bow and arrow, but also spears, javelins or a crossbow. There are skills that enhance the effect of the weapons, especially the ice skills for the bow, which freeze enemies hit, and the lightning skills for the javelin, which can cause enormous damage to enemy masses. That being said, the Amazon has skills that deal fire damage or poison damage and various physical attacks. In addition, the Amazon can use passive skills to evade attacks, inflict critical damage and shoot arrows through enemies to injure multiple enemies in a row.

The barbarian is primarily a close combat fighter. He hardly knows combat spells, but he has some magical abilities to significantly increase the effectiveness of his attacks and thereby strengthen his own defense. He can also carry two weapons at the same time. In addition, there are battle cries that temporarily increase the life and defense values ​​as well as the skill level.

The sorceress is the counterpart to the barbarian. With her very powerful elemental spells she can attack not only individual enemies, but also entire areas. She uses the three elements ice, fire and lightning for this. Thanks to the Teleport skill, the sorceress is able to cover great distances faster than any other character.

The paladin is a close fighter with magical abilities and auras, which can improve his abilities and those of his helpers and fellow players many times over. He is therefore the perfect character for teamwork. For example, the fanaticism aura increases the physical damage, the attack speed and the chance of being hit at the same time, so that amazons and barbarians, for example, benefit greatly from it.

The necromancer can resurrect defeated opponents as skeletal warriors or in their original form. A necromancer relies on corpses to summon creatures, which sometimes makes it difficult to interact with other characters. For example, enemies killed by cold damage often do not leave a corpse, and other characters have skills that utilize corpses. A necromancer, however, does not depend on his servants, he can also attack himself using poison and bone spells. In addition, he has the option to curse the opponents so that they, for example, suffer more damage or no longer attack the player.

The assassin can train in three directions. If she takes the path of the "martial arts", she learns her own hand-to-hand combat techniques, which find their spectacular expression in a skilful sequence of charge and discharge. An assassin who is well versed in "shadow disciplines" has psychokinetic powers with which she can expand her own physical abilities or deceive and manipulate her enemies. Third, she can learn the art of trapping.

The druid has the gift of shapeshifting. The special skills of these animals are available to him as a werewolf or advertising bear. However, he gives up his human form for the duration of a transformation. He knows how to summon animals or animal spirits, which render him valuable service in the fight against evil, and to bundle the forces of nature into powerful elemental spells that attack his opponents through fire, ice and wind.

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Characters can spend their attribute points on strength, dexterity, vitality and energy

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Good old skill trees. Many players miss them in the current Diablo III


Itemization

Another crucial feature is the myriad of items that the character can be equipped with. In the course of the game the character finds more and more powerful objects, some of which have been additionally improved by magical abilities. Possible such improvements are increased property values, in addition to the four basic properties, above all resistance to physical damage as well as poison, fire, lightning and cold damage, increased values ​​for stamina, life energy or mana and an increased attack value in various forms. In addition, there are increases in one, some or all skills, mostly class-specific. In addition, there are tricky improvements such as damage is reduced to mana, attacker suffers damage, mana / life regenerates on a direct hit or attack spells that occur randomly during attacks or defenses.

There is a whole range of different items, each of which only represents the approximate base values ​​and exists in two degrees of quality, normal and exceptional. Even a bad exceptional object is better than a good normal one. This means that even better objects can be found at higher levels of difficulty, but these are comparatively less common compared to more and more "trash".

Normal magic items (marked in blue in the game) have one or two magical improvements which, like their characteristics, are derived from the name of the item. However, there are exceptions to this, especially items for characters who cast magic can increase their skills or have other useful properties. However, when the character finds an item, they can initially only recognize the type. Which improvements it has must first be identified, which is possible either via findable or obtainable magic scrolls or alternatively via the non-player character Deckard Cain.

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So-called rare items (rare items, marked in yellow) are much rarer and can have up to six improvements. Nothing can be derived from the name here, two completely different objects can even have the same name. The crafted items (marked orange) are very similar, which can be generated in the expansion using the Horadrim cube and a perfect gem, a jewel and a rune.

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its all about the items

Unique items (one-off items, marked in gold), which can only be created once in each game, have a special name and are often very powerful and numerous improvements. These also include the items required for solving the quests, although these cannot be sold at the dealers in contrast to other uniques.

The set items marked in green are also very rare. These are often of only moderate use in themselves, but have very powerful capabilities when the complete set is worn.

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everyone starts small

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today, you slay some small goblin like creatures...

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...but soon you may face Diablo himself.

The plot of the game is expanded to include a fifth act. In this the player starts in the barbarian city of Harrogath, which is besieged by Baal's servants. From here it is a matter of fighting your way to Baal, the third of the brothers. He is hidden in a tower, where you have to fight again against an elite version of the most typical monsters of each act, then against Baal's personal guard and finally against himself. The world stone, through which Baal became so powerful in the first place, is a powerful stone whose splinters are the soul stones. This is destroyed by Tyrael at the end of the game.

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we defeated Baal and meet Tyrael


Resurrected!!!

First of all: Diablo 2: Resurrected will be a remaster, not a remake. What is the difference? Where remakes are new editions developed completely from scratch (like the Definitive Edition of Mafia 1), a remaster is based on the technical framework of the classic. Specifically, that means: The original Diablo 2 is taken as a basis for Resurrected and properly polished.

So Diablo 2: Resurrected retains the 2D basis of the original, but renders it in 3D with new graphics. This enables dynamic shadows, improved (physics) effects and revised animations, for example. In addition, the resolution (as is usual with remaster versions) can be increased up to 4K.
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A release date has not been announced yet, but you can already pre-order it on the Battle.net (30€ standard edition, 60€ for the Prime Evil Collection)

Even as a big Blizzard fan, after the desastrous "Warcraft III - Reforged" release, I try to not be as hyped as usual.
Sure, the graphics are great and looking back at the 100s of hours I played Diablo II 20 years ago, deep inside I am really looking forward to dive into the game and get lost again. But I rather wait a bit longer to see if this time, the re-release will run smooth.

One Last Thing

You can register HERE and try to get one og the early alpha keys upfront. Good Luck :)

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I know some people even made little living out of the items and selling them online.
Insane amounts for imaterial stuff - actually.

 3 years ago  

Yeah, I guess that's why blizzard implemented the "real money auction house" in Diablo 3. Removed it a few months after release. I had a co-worker who spent hundrets of euros in that auction house.

Oomph I wasted too much of my life on that game back in the day.

 3 years ago  

Time you enjoyed is not wasted ;)

The entire series is getting a upgrade from what I've heard is that right?
Remember the good days of being able to sell items for cash on the market place!

I'm so excited to play this with my homies like the old days