Diablo II Enhanced Edition

“It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts” - Mahatma Gandhi
 

Looking for an enhanced Diablo II experience? 

The project's creed is to stay fanatically true to the game's core mechanics, lore and aesthetics.

“Back in 2016, when I was revisiting Diablo II: Lord of Destruction after a few years' break, I noticed one thing in particular that bothered me: the game was blurry as hell. I started looking into high resolution mods that offered to address this problem. I found that they either completely strayed from the Diablo II aesthetic by replacing the interface with Diablo III derivatives, or did not alter the interface at all and simply placed the small panels (originally designed for 640x480!) in the centre of my screen.” - Mike Millaire-d'Aveyron

It was then that he started the painstaking effort of rebuilding nearly all of Diablo II interface panels from the ground up, in a manner such that would not only make them look and feel better in high resolutions but also preserve, and build upon, the original art style to the fullest extent possible. We will let the results speak for themselves.

The project was called the Enhanced Edition, inspired by Beamdog's work on updating the legendary Infinity Engine games. With time, as community feedback was gathered, the planned scope of the Enhanced Edition progressively grew from a simple interface overhaul to a more thorough modification of the game's engine. Seasoned Diablo II code whizzes, Kingpin and Necrolis, both of the notorious Phrozen Keep community, joined the initiative, offering their sage mentorship to younger members of the contributor team.

A re-envisioning of Diablo II's ending and an apocryphal storyline focusing on the machinations of Mephisto is worked on alongside the codebase-extension effort. Mike's creative direction aims to enhance what Diablo II already does well and edit out some of the game's shortcomings, to tell a story of a multiverse shattered with the fall of the Worldstone - as the Lord of Hatred meticulously planned.

In all our development processes, we constantly ask ourselves: what would the original teams choose to do, had they more development time and resources to spend, and what independent choices would they make were they free of constraints imposed by their business-oriented superordinates? Our subjective answers form the foundation of our workflow.

Community suggestions and requests are always welcomed and encouraged.

And so are contributions. If you think you have what it takes to contribute something of value to the project, please get in touch with us.

There is also a communal Discord server, where all Diablo franchise enthusiasts are welcome to stay a while and listen... and speak up, too. You can join it via this link.