‘Absorbed Blizzard daughter Vicarious Visions is working on Diablo II remake’ – Gaming – News

Vicarious Visions, the Blizzard daughter who recently made Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, is now part of Blizzard itself and the studio is reportedly working with another team from Blizzard on the Diablo II remake.

Blizzard released the confirmation from absorbing Vicarious Visions, which worked on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, Skylanders, and helped with Destiny 2. The roughly 200 employees of Vicarious Visions will all transfer to the WarCraft maker. The studio had been a subsidiary of Activision since 2005, which merged with Blizzard in 2008 to form Activision Blizzard.

A report by gaming journalist Jason Schreier of Bloomberg also sheds some light on where Vicarious Visions now working on. He states that they have been given part of the task of developing the Diablo II remake. Blizzard itself already has a special team that aims to polish older games for remakes and remasters, called Team 1. It worked on WarCraft 3: Reforged, for example. However, that game was not to the taste, after which they were removed from the Diablo II remake. Now the VV team is working with the Diablo IV team on the Diablo II remake, according to Schreier and his sources.

Reasons for the relatively disappointing success of WarCraft 3: Reforged, according to Schreier’s report, are ‘poor planning, miscommunication and hasty development due to pressure from management, who wanted to save and earn money’.

Rumors about Vicarious Visions working on the D2 remake, already made the rounds last year, but Blizzard has still not officially announced anything. This second report makes it more likely that the remake actually exists. Incidentally, this is referred to as a remake and not a remaster because the original code and assets of the game are largely would have been lost. It is not known when this remake should be released.

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