Well, it could also be that Activision is simply trying to force Blizzard to go faster than their usual “eh, maybe Diablo 4 will come out half a dozen years from now…” pace by throwing more people at them. I’m sure they’d love to turn one of those properties into another yearly $60 release fiesta instead.
I wonder how much real creative talent is even left at Blizzard at this point. Certainly they haven’t released anything worth a shit in years.
VV has been mainly a support studio for Activision for the last decade. Looks like they’re just dedicating them to Blizzard projects exclusively. They’ll just be cranking out art assets, maybe some code, I’d expect.
Schreier has some details:
There’s also a rumor they (Tencent) are in process of a much bigger acquisition, they are in talks for a 6B loan.
Ouch do not want!
Oooh! I like this change. I think VV do good work at this kind of thing.
It’s a shame I’m boycotting them currently. I guess Diablo 4 and Diablo 2 remake will be the first real games to test my Activision-Blizzard boycott resolve.
Man D2 remaster is going to be always online too I assume?
I’m assuming only the PC version, like with Diablo 3. On console you can play that all offline.
Still fucking awful how they destroyed not only the WC3 remaster but any online play for WC3 at all. Fuckers.
Really hoping Diablo 2 remake actually happens and…happens to be good, unlike WC reforged.
Hey, this was cool. I heard the latest episode of the New Yorker Radio Hour (January 22nd) on the way home today. One segment was about an old Atari 2600 game, ‘Entombed’ (that I’d never heard of) that was one of the earliest examples of procedural generation. It was a neat little bit, you should give it a listen. It’s on their podcast, or you can find it on this page (the 3rd segment, at the bottom).
The developer has changed hands a couple of times in the last five years: it was bought out by Macarthur Fortune Holding less than a year ago, having been under the ownership of Shanghai Hongtou Network Technology since 2016.
Here’s my hot take: Isometric action RPGs (and RTSs!) were a product of the 90s and aren’t worth playing anymore. There’s plenty of games that do what Diablo 2 did, and do it better, and none of them are actually fun enough to play longer than a couple hours.
Who here remembers loading into the desert zone boss in D2 and dying before the loading screen finished? I remember!
That is really some hot take. Most who play these games, play them for 100’s of hours…I don’t really think you know what you are talking about here.
Games like Grim Dawn has a thread here with thousands of posts from people who have played it a LOT!
Hell, Ubisofts most interersting game over the last few years, is an Isometric Action RPG, called Fenyx - Tom and a ton of others here love it.
I know! I think the D2 remake will fall on its face. Games need to be more than killing the same monster with a different color and larger numbers, to hope for a chance for the same item with larger numbers and maybe a purple border instead of blue. Those games you play on your phone now and they charge you $1.99 an hour to open more chests.
I think I misunderstood your post quite a bit! Sorry about that.
Immortals: Rise of the Fenyx is a 3rd person over the shoulder action game, not isometric.
Sorry, thats right - its one of the DLCs that does this.
I agree that a Diablo 2 remake would be, at best, creating a ton of regret purchases chasing nostalgia about a game that has long been surpassed, but I don’t think it’s because “isometric action RPGs” are dead. They still sell pretty reliably. (RTS on the other hand…)
I don’t know why Activision would invest in a game that doesn’t generate continuous revenue. They have to walk the line of fan backlash vs getting a return on their development money.
How can they remake D2 but also include loot boxes, skins, or a monthly fee? This is the serious business of making games, after all.