Longtime fans of Blizzard’s Diablo franchise will be happy to know that their original characters on Diablo 2 won’t be forgotten with the release of Diablo 2: Resurrected.
While speaking to IGN Middle East, game producer Mathew Cederquist revealed that support for save files from the game’s original release made its way into the remastered title without being the intention of the developers.
“Back when we were working on [the remaster], we wondered if the old save files would work, and we kind of shoved it in and it worked,” Cederquist said. “And we were like, ‘okay, that’s the best feature ever.”
This means that players have the option of booting up their save files from the release of the original game, which could have been stored for over 20 years.
Alternatively, Diablo 2 will remain live for players to continue with on the legacy Battle.net launcher, while the remastered will go live on the current Battle.net client.
This is a feature that’s not commonly seen in remakes, even in the history of Blizzard’s previous remasters with other franchises such as Warcraft 3.
The upcoming remaster for Diablo will see the game visually remastered for modern systems while remaining identical in core gameplay and story features. The game will also launch on consoles for the first time.
Diablo 2: Resurrection will be released on an unannounced date in 2021, but fans will have a chance to get their first hands-on experience with the remastered version in either of the separate single-player or multiplayer alphas sometime before release.
