The Art of Diablo Volume II – Book Review

It feels a little odd to be reviewing this book. After all, I haven’t read the first volume yet, but here we are!

The Art of Diablo Volume II has turned up on my doorstep, courtesy of publishers Titan Books and authors Blizzard Entertainment. As I mention every time I get to review something in this vein, I do love seeing the bits around the edge of the games that I play, whether that be extra story, additional peeks behind the scene or, in this case, the story of how the Diablo games came to look the way they did. 

At first glance, Titan’s The Art of Diablo Volume II is an imposing thing. Hardcover bound and very large, this is almost a book to leave on a coffee table to look swish, coming with some real quality about it. The front cover has a beautiful picture of Lillith highlighted and the quality of the illustration sets the tone for the rest of the book. 

This volume covers three of the more recent games in the canon – Diablo II: Resurrected, Diablo Immortal and Diablo IV, and the interesting part of each chapter is not only the pictures that you can look at, but the description of the creative process that goes into each iteration of the game. 

Take the first section of the book as an example – the art of Diablo II: Resurrected. I knew from playing the game for review that it could be played either in its original, 2D sprite based graphics, or as a new, up-to-date and shiny 3D remaster of the originals. What I hadn’t realised until I read this book was that not only did the developers and graphic designers have to remake every sprite from the original game in 3D, but that when they had done that, they also had to make some changes to the game engine. You see, the devs wanted to keep the gameplay and the engine the same, to preserve the gameplay, and so they had to write a little program to sit between the old engine and the new shiny 3D graphics. That meant that if there was an item in the old game in a certain location, this was mapped into the new version to make sure everything was the same. 

It is attention to detail like this that has typified the Diablo franchise for me, and that’s before they even went into the decisions that they had to make regarding the colour palette and all the other little things that we, as players, probably would never even consider. 

Add to these explanations a massive number of full colour, and often full page, illustrations showing the concepts of certain characters and player models, and you can begin to see how much work goes into making a game like any one of these. 

Imagine for a second that you are a graphic designer for Blizzard, rightfully proud of the design work you’ve done for Diablo on large, 4K monitors, where every little detail shows through and looks amazing. Now imagine that the higher ups come through and tell you that the next project you are going to work on, Diablo Immortals, is not a big screen extravaganza, but that it is to be playable and clear on a small mobile phone screen. You may be tempted to hang up your pencils and seek alternative employment but the designers at Blizzard not only embraced the challenge, but made it work really well. One of the guys on the inside gives a good example about the changes that had to be made, speaking about a shoulder pad with a skull on it, which in the base games would be pretty easy to design. In the mobile version, he had to make the similar style of armour look just as good with much lower fidelity and detail. 

Moving onto Diablo IV, and although it didn’t look massively different (to my jaded eyes, anyway) the difference here was that this was the first open world exploration of Sanctuary that had appeared in the franchise, and of course this brought its own problems and challenges. 

Making creatures work in a space in which they could appear from literally anywhere, and at any angle, must have been a massive challenge, and it is testament to the work that went into the game that I never once thought about it, just taking it all in my stride as I went about slaughtering all the enemies that had been meticulously designed. Seeing where the designs for some of the foes began, to where they ended up in the game is a real insight into how things are done. There’s no doubt that the images in The Art of Diablo Volume II from Titan truly do the work justice. 

All in all, The Art of Diablo Volume II is a fantastic book to have and to read; even if you do just look at the pictures, there is so much here you can’t help but be intrigued. It looks good, it feels like a quality product, and while it isn’t cheap, it makes a decent fist of being value for money. If you have any interest in the design process of the Diablo games, take a look at what Titan Books have created with The Art of Diablo Volume II. You won’t regret it. 

Huge thanks go to Titan for providing us with a copy of The Art of Diablo Volume II for review. Hit up Titan Books direct if you wish to grab one for yourself.