I’d like the intent and art of Blizzard North to be respected, preserved and faithfully recreated;
as well as, that said art should not be replaced for marketing and/or possibly ideological reasons.
Given the history when it comes to Blizzard North and Blizzard South, I’d say the D2R devs should be more respectful of whatever art the original artists from Blizzard North had in mind.
A lot of the things in Diablo were designed based on the Xena Warrior Princess show from back in the 90s. Even the D3 monk is based on that… as in, even Jay Wilson, for all his flaws, even he understood what the art direction should have been like:
Male Monk, Xena S04E13, 1999
xxhttps://i.imgur.com/PJgpAcz.jpg
Female Monk, Xena S04E16, 1999
xxhttps://i.imgur.com/hOGHdwy.jpg
The same goes for the rogues and the amazons from the previous games.
Just a bit of trivia. The devs wanted the Amazon to be a hot chick!
xxhttps://www.usgamer.net/articles/stay-awhile-and-listen-book-2-blizzard-north-diablo-2-book-excerpt
“The character team decided they wanted to work on a hot chick first, and that’s what they did,” explained David Brevik.
The Amazon did not start out as a “hot chick.” Kris Renkewitz, the hero’s original artist, sketched a tall, fearsome woman who wore bracers that coiled down her arms, animal-skin boots, and mummy-like wrappings that covered her most intimate parts, leaving the rest of her skin exposed. Her hair was short and spiky, her visage grim and feral. “I designed the character to be, well, like an amazon,” Kris said. “She was a giant chick. Her helmet looked different, her armor looked different, her weapons were weird. It wasn’t just a girl with a pony tail and wearing leather,” he added, referring to the hero’s completed form.
Dave, Max, Erich, and Stieg decided a Xena-type appearance was too wild for their tastes. One of Blizzard North’s newest artists, who joined the company in August 1997, took a crack at her revisions. “You know what it felt like?” reminisced Phil Shenk of his time at Blizzard North. “Like you were making games with the kids who played Dungeons & Dragons in their basement. It felt like we were in the basement with all these cool tools, just making up weird, arcane stuff.”
Pulling up the most recent prototype of Diablo II, Phil’s enthusiasm gave way to concern. The prototype was barebones, consisting of a single, tiny dungeon built from gray tiles. The game ran at 640x480. Phil was surprised Blizzard North wasn’t pushing to hit 800x600, the next resolution up. What really stood out to him was the Amazon. She moved in slow, floaty lurches, as if wading through water, and she was too fearsome for Phil’s tastes. Firing up 3D Studio Max, he overhauled the hero into a bombshell: Still tall, fierce, and powerful, but with long golden hair pulled back into a ponytail, and a busty chest and curvaceous figure that filled out skintight leather armor.
