When remastering a game that is a genre-defining masterpiece such as Diablo 2, the focus should utmost be on preserving and enhancing the original aesthetic of the game, not on altering the aesthetic to fit what you think it should be. The artists undertaking the responsibility of bringing the world of Diablo 2 back to life, albeit with significantly higher visual fidelity, should view themselves as museum workers trying to restore a piece of art to its former glory, it doesn’t matter whether the art is unrealistic or uncouth, the art exists as it does and their job is to preserve it as it was originally intended. That being said, some areas of the remaster are very good such as the careful building of the 3D models over the original 25 FPS engine to retain the mechanics of the original as well as the dark, forbidding environmental design. When it comes to the character design and some aspects of monster design, however, the artists working on Diablo 2 Resurrected failed miserably.
It boggles the mind to think that the tall, busty, blonde bombshell Amazon from the original was somehow turned into a freakish amalgamation of Donald Trump’s face and Meg Griffin’s body. I have no idea how the team thought that turning the hulk-like super human Barbarian into an alcoholic Greco-Roman wrestler about 20 years past his prime was being faithful to the original. The artistic team appears to be reinterpreting the world of Diablo through some type of conservative, almost prudish, realism when that is virtually the complete opposite of the original Diablo 2 aesthetic. Anyone who has spent even a negligible amount of time perusing some of the concept art for Diablo 1 and 2 knows that many of the character models look anything but realistic. The artistic style is crude, vulgar, risqué, and entirely unique often featuring large, hulking, muscular men and busty, scantily-clad, hourglass-figured women. At points, the development team’s efforts to undermine the original Diablo 2 character aesthetic approaches almost comical levels, as in a world where we are fighting against nearly nude succubus demons, it was deemed necessary to lengthen the Sorceress’ skirt. You wouldn’t want to show off a little too much leg when confronting the Devil! Overall, the oftentimes irksome modifications simply come off as petty and ultimately dismissive of the vision of the artists that originally created the Diablo 2 universe.
This misunderstanding of the artistic themes underlying the world of Diablo 2 also seems to spill over into monster designs to a certain degree, although I haven’t examined all of the available footage by any stretch. Specifically, the claw viper model appears to be designed without a solid understanding of the characteristics that make many of the Diablo designs so distinctive and memorable. The remastered claw viper resembles some type of natural evolution of a snake-like creature that acquired arms with claws, but still primarily moves and resembles a kind of fictional reptile of sorts, which I guess is supposed to be scary because snakes are scary or something. However, like many of the monster designs in the earlier Diablo games, the monsters are not meant to be scary per se, but rather to be unsettling. To achieve this goal, many of the most iconic monsters in the Diablo universe are designed to represent visual perversions of humanity.
Andariel is probably one of the best examples of this theme, starting with a voluptuous female figure that is then perverted with the addition of hooves instead of feet, bestial claws instead of hands, and bone-like, barbed appendages protruding from her back resulting in an abomination that is simultaneously enticing and revolting. Following this design philosophy, it is evident that the claw vipers are not supposed to represent an evolution of a snake-like creature, but rather a snake-like corruption of a man. The Diablo 2 claw vipers feature extremely muscular male torsos and arms, which are then perverted with the addition of a snake-like tail with a barbed tip, large claws for hands, and a demon head with a snake tongue. Also, notice how when the Diablo 2 claw vipers move, the torso stays stout and upright as it would if a man were walking, not hunched over slithering like a snake as depicted by the remastered claw vipers. Ironically, the simplistic Carbot Animations video about the claw viper temple was able to better pick up on the design aesthetic of the claw vipers than the Diablo 2 remaster did. Even Duriel, which is essentially nothing more than a large maggot demon, has hulkish arms featuring massive biceps in addition to a six-pack.
In conclusion, I want to be clear that I am not saying a more realistic interpretation of the Diablo universe is irrefutably wrong, but rather that when it comes to Diablo 2, that was clearly not the aesthetic that the original developers were going for, and pursuing such an artistic design philosophy in the remaster would fatally compromise the stylistic integrity of the game. I’m also not saying that a busty blonde is the only correct representation of the Amazon character, but rather if the development team would like to incorporate alternate interpretations of what the Amazon could look like, then they should implement those models in addition to a faithful re-creation of the original Amazon, not as a replacement for it. This goes for all of the classes, and in fact it may very well be an improvement if each character class allowed for 2 or 3 different models to choose from. Diablo 2 is probably my most favorite game of all time, and Diablo 2: Resurrected is the first game I’ve pre-ordered from any game studio since pre-ordering the collector’s edition of the dumpster fire that was Diablo 3, so please stay true to the original when working on this masterpiece.
I hope so very much…