Although the announcement of Diablo II: Resurrected It has attracted a lot of attention from a large part of the community, it has also raised some kind of suspicion due to the possible oversaturation that the franchise can endure.
Thanks to the interview conducted by VentureBeat to J. Allen Brack and Allen Adam we have been able to know some of their thoughts on what happened with the Diablo franchise and their work with Vicarious Visions
GamesBeat: For a while it seemed like Diablo was the least important franchise, and now we have three Diablo projects to come. That’s a lot of Diablo. Are there any concerns about the oversaturation of that franchise, or do you think that all these games will be able to coexist?
Allen Brack: There are many game franchises that fall for this, but there is no shortage of love and desire for more Diablo content. There has been this concern and it has been raised internally. We will continue to review and view it, but it is something we are not currently concerned about. It’s not something that really makes me sleep at night. There are so many things teams are working on, so many stories and ways of playing that they are developing … I think there is so much love and desire for Diablo that people will be really excited about him no matter what platform they play on. or if they go to all.
Allen Adham: They fit pretty well if you think about it. Immortal on mobile when it is released, Diablo II: Resurrected, the beautiful tribute to the past and the amount of time we hope that people will play Diablo II: Resurrected in relation to Diablo IV, which we envision as the following step in the life of this franchise. We hope it will last for years and we believe in fact, that they fit together very well, nurturing each other.
GamesBeat: Vicarious Visions has recently become part of the company. What exactly is its function? Is it for Diablo II?
Allen Brack: We started talking to some people from Vicarious about two years ago. We had the idea of making a Diablo II: Resurrected, or what has become Diablo II: Resurrected, with the idea that they would lead some of the work on the remastering. It has been a co-developed joint in what I think is roughly fair to say that the folks at Vicarious have worked on it. front-end and Blizzard teams have worked on it back-end and the Battle.net integration. Blizzard doesn’t have a long history of working with other studios. We go practically alone. One thought we had all along is that it would be a shame if we worked together on this game, if we solved a lot of the integration, the glitches of working effectively, and then at the end of Diablo II, we ended up saying, this was amazing, thank you so much, good luck with whatever your next project is.
As time goes by, it’s always been thought that it would be great if this team, who now have a lot of knowledge about Diablo, a lot of understanding, a lot of working closely with the people who are in charge of the Diablo franchise at this point, could continue to help in some way. We have a percentage of the team that is working on the remastering of Diablo II, and a percentage of the team that is working on Diablo IV, and we will continue to have them work on what will be Diablo in the future.
Allen Adham: It’s a testament to how well that joint development is going. One of the things that we have discovered through this development is that we share a lot in terms of culture. In fact, Luis Barriga, the director of Diablo IV, came from Vicarious Visions. We have seasoned Blizzard developers who have returned to Albany to work on Vicarious Visions. One of our biggest challenges and opportunities at Blizzard is that we have these beautiful rich worlds that we have created, and now PC, console and mobile platforms, and so many exciting ideas. This will help us create great games with a common culture and a great group of friends on the East Coast. It is a victory for all.
GamesBeat: Is Vicarious Visions now exclusively tied to Blizzard products? Would they ever be tasked with remaking a different Activision brand again, like another Tony Hawk game?
Allen Brack: I don’t want to say never, but that’s not the plan. The plan is that, in the future that lies ahead, they will dedicate themselves to Blizzard products in some form.
– .
