Diablo 2 and Resurrected artistic integrity and design

My issues are related to the visual and concept art design of the game considering what i’ve been seeing.

One problem is the change in tone. They are censoring nipples, gore, hints of sexual violence and hell even tights and some cleavege is too much. Gothic horror requires those themes of the young and inocent being corrupted by overshadowing entities, and it always had sexual overtones, it’s the pure versus the depraved (like in Dracula among others).

Second is the pointless overdesign of some models, giving it a more WoW like vibe to certain pieces of gear. There’s a difference between DETAIL and OVERDESIGN. In a metal shoulder pad for example; detail would be adding dents, shine and reflexions, scratches, etc, meanwhile overdesign is adding runes and decorations everywhere to the point were it becomes visual noise. Beauty in simplicity tends to be better (specially in a game with air camera view like this, some details are just not necesary).

The character design. It’s not only that the designs are very different from the originals in concept alone, but the characters now look old as hell. In the original the characters were all young warriors/adventurers, starting their careers, wich made it more endeering to level them up and conquer the forces of hell with them (it’s silly but added to the game feel and contributed to the horror).
It makes no sense (as much as a leveling system makes sense) for them to level up like that in game either, it makes you question “Why is this 50 year old veteran getting to level 2 now after killing a couple of porcupines?”. Is one of the reason i disliked the D3 male barbarian.
If you’re worried about realism (wich would be kind of silly, since this is gohtic horror not realism), just look for photos of actual athletes and soldiers. You’ll notice they look like healthy young people and not like a 20 years later school reunion of life failures.

The playable characters animations should have stick closer to the original ones as well.

Gameplay wise, it might be good to have an intermediate zoom camera option. To enjoy the new visuals without being too close (not everyone comes here for a hardcore gaming experience, some of us just want to enjoy a nice nostalgia trip).

I am a firm believer that video games are art, and when you’re restoting a piece of art you need to keep it as close as the original vision as posible. These aren’t game designers in this scenario, they are restorators. We don’t need a potato jesus version of Diablo 2.
Diablo 2 is banking on nostalgia, and you either pander to people who worry about artistic integrity or those who just want to click s***. There’s no point in pandering to the later crowd since they will just eat anything you sell them (although those are probably better suited to critize the game mechanics themselves).

Diablo 2 was/is one of the most influential games ever made, it was lighting in a bottle. Created by people that had a vision, talent and the will to make something outstanding.
The idea that you think a 70%-30% approach is reasonable for a remake for a game such as this is ludicrous, even a 90%-10% would be stretching it a bit for the people working at this, you haven’t win the legendary status of the giants that came before you.

Moderator: Closing thread, as it derailed from the original topic and started to be a political discussion.

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Yo, finally, someone said this, is it me or Sorc’s skirt is longer on her? D2 started out with a group of young adventurers that didn’t know what they were about to get into.
She looks like a mom with 10 kids in that dress, and she does not look like the One in D3! Which is the original Sorc!

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I’m surprised you think that. Many SC:Brood War players think SC2 is too cartoony looking and criticize the direction the lore took and the gameplay in general.

I personally love SC2 too, I’m not a hardcore RTS player though.