With the announcement of Diablo II: Resurrected a couple of weeks ago, at BlizzCon 2021, Blizzard has opened Pandora’s Box of nostalgia. Although the announcement did not come as a surprise, as it had already been leaked a few days before, the confirmation that the best title of the saga, although it still has no date (throughout 2021, is the only thing we know) has already generated expectations at the height of the taste that left in their players the title released in the distant year 2000.
Diablo II: Resurrected: Recover your game saves from 20 years ago
Although there are players who are waiting for it even though they did not enjoy it at the time, it is clear that a good part of the users who are waiting for Diablo II: Resurrected are those who did play it, perhaps not in the same year of its release, but much closer to that date than now. And Blizzard is aware of this and has contemplated a possibility that will undoubtedly raise the expectations of many of the nostalgics who are already waiting for it.
Blizzard will make it possible for players of the original version of Diablo II to load their saved games of the classic in Diablo II: Resurrected. Obviously, there will be people who have continued playing it recently, but we will not deny that the first image that has come to mind is that of many people rummaging through their floppy disk collection… and then looking for a floppy drive with which to retrieve the contents of the same. And let’s not forget that 21 years have passed since the release of the original.
Blizzard can’t do much to help us recover the physical media on which these games were saved at the time, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that they have spent the time and resources that were necessary (we imagine not many, but at least it was necessary to have the idea). And we would like to put myself in the shoes of one of those players who, so many years later, can retake a game saved, we don’t know, a decade ago? Fifteen years? and enjoy it with the new graphics engine of Diablo II: Resurrected.
We say that it really shouldn’t have taken too long to implement this backward compatibility in Diablo II: Resurrected because, as Blizzard has already clarified, we’re not talking about a complete rewrite of the title. The company has recycled an important part of the original code, modifying only those aspects that were necessary. Moreover, it is possible that from the idea of backward compatibility, they have opted to keep the same save system of the original Diablo II, and we insist, even so, it still seems to be a huge success.
We recognize that Diablo is a saga to which we have never dedicated too much time. We know the titles, we dedicated a few hours (few) to the first two, and the infamous Diablo III auction house made me not even go near it (although it is true that at a certain point it was eliminated). However, we think of people who have dedicated a lot of time to it, like my colleague Isidro, who recently shared the ten moments of the saga that were forever engraved in his memory, and we bet that, if you still have any Diablo II game saved, being able to retake it, even if only for a few minutes, in Diablo II: Resurrected, will be a most satisfying experience.
At the moment Blizzard is playing with the times. It is clear that they already have more or less clear the launch window for Diablo II: Resurrected, but for the moment they are keeping the unknown so that curiosity does not diminish the interest. What we do know are the technical requirements of the game, which show that the change in the guts of Diablo II has made this new version of the classic, undoubtedly, much more demanding than the original.
