Blizzard has highlighted in a post what has been changed to make Diablo 2 Resurrected work on the consoles PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Nintendo Switch: For example, movement has been changed so that players can now reach places that were inaccessible on PC. They can now run against walls.
This is the situation:
- Blizzard is releasing the action RPG Diablo 2 (2020) as “Diablo 2 Resurrected” on September 23 for the first time on Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch.
- Design Director Robert Gallerani explains in a lengthy post what has been changed in the original Diablo 2 to make the game work with a controller in 2021.
- An important change concerns character movement: Players can reach places in Diablo 2 Resurrected that the PC version of Diablo 2 never allowed.
On consoles, you play “the character”; on PC, “an eye in the sky”
This is what Blizzard says about movement: According to Blizzard, players on PC with mouse and keyboard feel like “an eye in the sky” commanding their character. With the controller, they act more like the actual character. This has significant implications for how Diablo 2 Resurrected is played.
Blizzard emphasizes how important actual movement is in Diablo 2:
When playing with a controller, movement is tied to the thumbstick. Now the player directly controls the character’s movement rather than the game. To make this work, we have disabled the pathfinding of Diablo 2 on consoles. This allows players to travel to places the game never led them to.
Robert Gallerani, Design Director Diablo 2 Resurrected
Blizzard states: Players can now run against walls or objects. This “freedom of movement” allows players on PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch to evade attacks more easily.
These are additional changes:
- In target acquisition, there is no cursor, so target prioritization is important. The prioritization of target acquisition changes from class to class: A necromancer, for example, has a stronger prioritization on acquiring corpses as a target to explode them later.
- When looting on PC, players hold down a key to have Diablo 2 display the names of items on the ground. However, holding down a key continuously on the controller is perceived as uncomfortable. Therefore, on consoles, two factors determine which items are displayed: distance and time.
- Skills can be directly triggered with the controller – on PC, they are assigned to a key as a hotkey and then triggered. Skills are therefore displayed on consoles similarly to Diablo 3 in a hotbar.
The Design Director also talks about the changes Blizzard made in finding groups and friends on consoles. There have already been criticisms on these points beforehand.
Many players on consoles wish that Blizzard would have oriented the group search functions more towards the PC version and brought lobbies. Because easily finding like-minded players for farming bosses or trading in-game would make the multiplayer experience in Diablo 2 possible.
For many players, especially on consoles, Diablo 2 Resurrected is the first opportunity to play the Blizzard classic. However, there are also some PC veterans who played Diablo 2 20 years ago.
The discussion about the game is sometimes a bit divided:
The closed beta of Diablo 2 Resurrected is over – do we really want the old RPG back?
