You want it darker: Diablo remade inside Diablo III
Even a redone UI
It is the future, the year 1996. The age of serially abusing the left mouse button has begun - for Diablo is born. Soon, you will be able to transport your haggard soul back to that more innocent age of mass slaughter, blasphemous themes and venal kleptomania. Diablo 3 [official site]'s 20th Anniversary event/patch kicks off later this month, and they've only gone and remade the first game inside their latest demonic pinata - right down to the UI, animations and tinnier sound. Take a look below.
We knew back in November that this was happening, of course, but now we get a good, long look at what they've actually done. You'll want to watch the below video to see 'The Darkening of Tristram', as they're calling their time-limited game-within-a-game mode, but here's the gist of what they've done:
- A pixellated filter over the screen
- shifted camera
- Different animations
- characters locked to eight degrees of rotation
- player character walks rather than runs
- tinnier, more repetitious sound
- different character models e.g. more Diablo 1-like butcher
- darker, obv
- redone, retro UI
Of course, you'll want to set the game's resolution to 640x480 for the full effect. I'm just not convinced by that pixelisation filter, if I'm honest.
This is all part of patch 2.4.3, whose release date is tagged only as 'coming soon.' There are various loot and quality of life fixes, as well as the start of 'season 9', but the big draw is The Darkening Of Tristram. They say it'll be available for 'the month of January', which suggests it's days rather than weeks away, and previous reports have it that the event will return annually.
Diablo III's a bit much for me, to be honest - too much about the meta, not enough about the journey. Maybe my playing a full-on Diablo remake is a bit fingers-in-ears, lalala the last twenty years didn't happen lalala can't heeeearrr youuuuu, but hell, I'm down for it anyway.