Blizzard is building 'Diablo' inside 'Diablo 3'

The big news for the saviors of Sanctuary has been announced at BlizzCon 2016: Diablo is coming back! The original game, that is. For its 20th anniversary, Blizzard is re-releasing the original dungeon delver that started its massively successful franchise, recreated within the engine of the latest in the series, Diablo 3. And you can play it next week on the game's test realm.

The game will be delivered in a downloadable patch titled "The Darkening of Tristram," sending players down the Cathedral dungeon they delved in the original game. The recreated Diablo will get special graphics filters to add grain to resemble the gloomy, gothic look of the original, as well as piping in the soundtrack from the original game. To seal the low-fi deal, they're restricting players back to the 8-direction movement of games of yore. Hope you love retro controls with your old-school looks.

Sure, we were all looking forward to Diablo 4 instead of more content for a game released in May 2012, but given the decade between the second and third iterations, we probably have a few years before Blizzard even hints at a fourth installment. To help with the GRRM-length gap, the studio also announced two new free zones for players who bought the game's expansion Reaper of Souls, accessible through Adventure Mode.

But the real cream is the announcement of a new(ish) hero for Diablo 3: The Necromancer, a class first appearing in the second game in the series, which will be available in 2017 as part of a microtransaction-style content pack called "Rise of the Necromancer."

Details of the new class, the pack's cost or its actual release date are nil. But given the Necromancer's addition to Blizzard's MOBA Heroes of the Storm back in January, it's a good bet that some of those skills will transfer back to its Diablo 3 incarnation.