Diablo 2: Resurrected Bets on Comfort and Accessibility
Blizzard continues to discuss planned changes to Diablo II: Resurrected after technical alpha tests. This time the focus is on comfort and accessibility improvements for the game.
- Blizzard's Drew McCrory discusses the philosophy of the development team working on Diablo II: Resurrected;
- The developers don't want to forcefully rework the iconic original, but to improve the game experience through a number of comfort and accessibility improvements;
- New features include options to turn off selected sound effects, the ability to simplify or customize controls, and fixes for various archaisms (such as the user interface).
After the recent testing of Diablo II: Resurrected, the developers have taken to improving the game in accordance with community feedback. We could read about the lessons learned from the technical alpha a week ago. Now Drew McCrory, head of user experience design and accessibility, has spoken out about the changes designed to improve the gameplay experience in the refreshed Diablo II.
As McCrory put it, the team behind the remake of the second Diablo includes many D2 "purists", who have spent thousands of hours in the original game, and don't want to change its successful elements by force. Nevertheless, the developers are aware that in many respects Diablo II is very outdated, especially in terms of gameplay comfort and accessibility. Hence, for example, the addition of the mechanic of automatic gold pickup, which - to the pleasant surprise of the creators - gained recognition not only among people using gamepads (because it was introduced mainly with them in mind), but also for players with limited hand mobility.
These types of changes enables the devs to reach more players, which is good for both of them. The company also wants to give buyers the option to further customize the game to their own preferences or needs. For example, we will be able to be assigne some actions that require us to hold down a button or press it continuously to single-clicking or holding down, respectively. Diablo II: Resurrected will also offer extensive options for changing the control layout on our controllers, and, when playing with keyboard and mouse, assigning multiple actions to individual keys. The developers have even prepared "neutral" commands such as "interact" for so-called binds. Players will also be able to disable numerous sound effects, including those accompanying notifications.
Players will get a lot of options to personalize the game.
Blizzard has also taken on elements that were acceptable more than 20 years ago, but would be considered "bugs" in a modern game. As an example was given a situation in which the character does not hit the target despite the animation suggesting otherwise, and the game doesn't clearly let the player know about it. The solution is to add an option to display a text message informing about failed attack.
The creators also have other ideas for such improvements, although they are still counting on the comments of the players. After all, these changes are made for them. It seems that Blizzard really did its homework after the failure of Warcraft III: Reforged. However, certainty will come only after the game's release. Diablo II: Resurrected will debut on September 23 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
