Former Diablo dev wishes Blizzard made Diablo 2 more “mod-friendly”
Blizzard EntertainmentBefore there was the gruesome glory of Diablo 2 Resurrected, there was the iconic Diablo 2, but one of the original devs has opened up about one change he feels the game really needed.
While the pixellated vistas of Diablo 2’s Sanctuary have, for some, been eclipsed by the 4K graphics of Blizzard’s remaster, Resurrected, the original title will always hold the key to Diablo fans’ hearts.
Continuing to thrive after 21 years of hack and slash glory, one of the game’s original developers has opened up about what he’d like to have seen make more of an impact on Diablo 2’s rich history.
Well-known programmer Peter Hu – the man behind the famous Patch 1.1o that added Uber Diablo to the game – has revealed the one feature that he wishes the classic Diablo 2 would have had.
Diablo 2 could be more “mod-friendly”
In an Ask Me Anything thread on Reddit, Hu lamented the fact that the base game simply wasn’t built to be modded.
When asked what he would change about the ARPG, he writes “for me, I feel like D2 could’ve been a lot more mod-friendly.
“I loved the custom game feature in the xCraft games, and I think a similar system for ARPGs would’ve been the bomb.” Concluding that “it just wasn’t a concern for most of the development lifetime of D2, and it’s not a system that’s easily implemented later,” he notes that “I did what I could.”
He does clarify that the question is a difficult one to answer as “you never know if doing X thing differently would’ve impacted Y other thing that happened, and may have been necessary for the success of the product.”
Mods are an integral part of some games, with titles ranging from The Sims to Doki Doki Literature Club allowing creative modders to add their own spin to the base game.
Will we see Diablo mods in the future? We’ll have to wait and see. However, it would be pretty cool to modify your follower to actually make them useful for once!