The long-awaited and long-rumored Diablo 2 remaster has surfaced online once again but in a rather different form than what fans would expect.
According to a claim made a couple of months back, the remastered version will be called Diablo 2 Resurrected and has been pegged by Blizzard Entertainment for a release around the holiday season in fall. The same source also claimed that development is being handled by Vicarious Visions, the New York-based studio behind the recent Crash Bandicoot remasters.
Earlier today, Vicarious Visions was spotted seeking a quality assurance tester for a game “involving mature themes, including but not limited to content with an M rating.” Vicarious Visions is currently working on remastering Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 and 2, which in all fairness can hardly be considered a game with a mature theme. Hence, as far as fans are concerned, the mentioned M rating just adds more weight to the alleged leaks of Diablo 2 remaster being developed by Vicarious Visions.
Last year, a different leaker and who accurately predicted the announcement of Diablo 4 stated that a remastered Diablo 2 was actually dropped by Blizzard a while back in favor of a new installment. It was suggested that Blizzard switched gears to channel new ideas into a complete package in the form of Diablo 4 instead of spending resources on overhauling a decades-old installment.
Hence, at the time, a Diablo 2 remaster was believed to have been scrapped entirely. However, rumors still kept surfacing that the project remained in the pipelines; just that development was going extremely slow.
The more recent bit about the involvement of Vicarious Visions did well in throwing more fuel to the fire. Provided that the claims are legitimate, Blizzard was expected to make an announcement at BlizzCon 2020. Unfortunately, that annual show was just cancelled due to COVID-19. While an announcement can still be made online without any excessive showing, fans will have to wait a while before deciding if Diablo 2 Resurrected was a hoax or not.
