2022 is late for Diablo 4 release. Its engine isn't that good to face the potential new aRPGs being developed atm. If they delay D4 to 2022 they'll make a mistake. No matter in what state the game is, it has to drop next year or they risk getting smashed by better games and lose a big portion of the player base they aim to get.
The truth is Diablo 4 is a great game for 2020, but it would be mediocre in 2022 since the games market is so dynamic. Diablo 4 has to capitalize on what it is in 2021. That's my personal opinion.
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D3 sold over 30m only because of Diablo LoD and big hype train Blizzard made, Blizzard sold us D3 hype as D2/WoW new generation ARPG with awesome mechanics and PvP arenas, then we got just dumbed down single player, but must online game for consoles with WoW graphics.
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Uelmen, Diablo's original composer, also gave his perspective on the potential remaster; "My only strong opinion is that it needs to have more violence, more gore, and more nakedness. Long as they do that, then they'll be true to the series, in terms of what we were going for, as artists."
At that, Schaefer added, "Yeah, I'm going to agree with that. The game was made to be shocking and push boundaries and when you have an opportunity to remake it with modern graphics, you're going to be confronted very quickly with how much are you really going to want to reproduce something that was down to a few pixels in the original version, and not succumb to the temptation to make a censored version."
"We're talking about modern Blizzard right now, and they have shareholders and things like that, that we didn't have to worry about back in the day," Shaefer laughed before continuing, "I'm curious as to what their approach is gonna be."