Diablo II

A Diablo II Remake Looks To Be On The Way From Vicarious Visions

Activision Blizzard Inc. revealed that Vicarious Visions, a subsidiary of Activision, has recently been absorbed into Blizzard Entertainment instead.

According to a new report by Bloomberg, it appears that the reason for the merger is an upcoming remake of 2000s Diablo II.  Though Blizzard has failed to explicitly announce Vicarious Visions’ involvement in the remaster, known as Diablo II: Resurrected, an insider who requested to remain anonymous has confirmed that the Albany-based developer has been working with Blizzard on the Diablo franchise for some time.

The remaster was originally intended to be designed by Blizzard’s Team 1, a recently disbanded but seasoned internal development team based at Blizzard Headquarters in Irvine, California. The shift may be due, in part at least, to the recent (and catastrophic) failure of Warcraft III: Reforged in early 2020. The highly anticipated remake of the beloved RTS launched with overwhelming criticism due to buggy gameplay, poor design choice, and a lack of features and content. It is possible, perhaps, that in an effort to avoid backlash from wounded Reforged players, Blizzard has decided to hand the reins over to the Vicarious Visions crew, while Team 1 continues their ongoing work on Heroes of the Storm.

Either way, Blizzard fans should be thrilled to have the Vicarious Visions team working on any upcoming titles as their most recent work, including Crash Bandicoot N’Sane Trilogy and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 has been extremely well-received, scoring a whopping 80 and 89, respectively, on Metacritic.