How Blizzard built Nahantu from the bones of Diablo 2 Resurrected, and how it's unlike anything else in Diablo 4
Diablo 2 Resurrected gave Blizzard a great opportunity to revitalise Nahantu for the Vessel of Hatred expansion in Diablo 4, its developers tell me.
29th Aug 2024 13:53
Images via Activision Blizzard
How Blizzard built Nahantu from the bones of Diablo 2 Resurrected, and how it's unlike anything else in Diablo 4
Diablo 2 Resurrected gave Blizzard a great opportunity to revitalise Nahantu for the Vessel of Hatred expansion in Diablo 4, its developers tell me.
29th Aug 2024 13:53
Images via Activision Blizzard
Diablo 4's Vessel of Hatred expansion is just months away now, and while much of the pre-launch hype has (rightly) focused on the new Spiritborn class, I'm just as eager to see Nahantu again.
The location was featured prominently in Diablo 2 and its more recent Resurrected overhaul, but Vessel of Hatred will give it a whole new chance to shine for a new audience. I spoke with Brent Gibson, Associate Game Director and Aislyn Hall, Systems Designer at Blizzard at Gamescom to talk about what goes into reviving the location - and why it's different this time around.
Nahantu doesn't "betray the brand" of Diablo 4
"I had the pleasure of working on D2R, up-rezzing Nahantu for that experience," Gibson explains.
"The idea of it was so limited, but the jungle offered up so much more that we could potentially do. So, we've got this perfect blend of pulling in the nostalgic things, like the ziggurats, and some of the enemies that you've seen in the past, and blending it with the open world inspiration that we have, with all the different rainforest and jungle cultures around the world."
"So we pulled a lot of inspiration, but we haven't copied anything," he adds, saying he's pleased the team was able to work on "something completely fresh that can sit alongside that gothic vibe."
"The one thing I'm probably most impressed with is that it still feels very Diablo. So even though you're not seeing churches and cathedrals and all that stuff, you've got this fresh take that doesn't betray the brand."
"I think what blew me away when I stepped onto it for the first time was just the way that, despite the fact that Sanctuary is a gothic world, Nahantu just brought this vibrancy with the jungle, but still did it in such a dark, brooding and, frankly, mysterious and scary way," Hall explains.
"Jungles are inherently kind of scary to me as a person. It's like, what's hiding behind that tree, what's hiding under the underbrush?" she adds.
A "sense of scene"
"This is the first environment that has the sense of a scene," Gibson says.
"It feels like there's a canopy above you. There are pockets of light that are passing through and you can kind of see the shadows of all the leaves. That was a really super interesting challenge for our team to take on."
"It's those types of things that start to set it aside from the other regions."
I asked the pair if this could potentially lead to a more uneven open world, though, with disparate sections stitched together within the game.
"It's really well defined in our lore that this is the last region," Gibson says, "and so, finding a way to look at that border and work out how you go from Gea Kul down to Kurast and not feel like it's teleporting players into a completely different game took a lot of work."
"We have the advantage of a big river that runs through the map, so we take advantage of the river that you see in the cinematic," he explains.
"We take advantage of the mountains. We're neighbouring Hawezar, and there's some overlap in length from Hawezar into that region as well. So a lot of effort and thought has gone into it."
Hall says the move into Nahantu feels "seamless", and players will almost feel surprised it's not in the original Diablo 4 base game if they've not played it prior to Vessel's launch.
"I would wager that if you've never played Diablo 4 before and you start with Vessel of Hatred, it would just feel totally seamless."
For more on our conversation with the team, be sure to check out why the team still talks about Reaper of Souls a decade on from its release, and what the future could hold after Vessel of Hatred.
About The Author
Lloyd Coombes
Lloyd is GGRecon's Editor-in-Chief, having previously worked at Dexerto and Gfinity, and occasionally appears in The Daily Star newspaper. A big fan of loot-based games including Destiny 2 and Diablo 4, when he's not working you'll find him at the gym or trying to play Magic The Gathering.
