Diablo 2: Resurrected overhauls the graphics of the 21-year-old game, bringing it closer to modern 4K standards. I had early access to this weekend's technical alpha, so my first order of business was to open the graphics menu and check out the settings.

There are two sections, one for remastered graphics and one for legacy graphics, which can be switched by pressing keys in-game.

The new art allows for resolution scaling and dynamic scaling. This is a relatively recent standard in games. Adjust the rendering resolution (as opposed to screen resolution) on the fly when the frame rate drops and the GPU needs a bit of a break. if you are remastering a 20 year old game, unless you are running it on an old laptop or at 4K on a machine that can't keep up, this feature You shouldn't need it. It's nice to have the option.

The other graphics options are what you would expect: texture, shadow, transparency quality, ambient occlusion, and FXAA and SMAA anti-aliasing modes. I have these maxed out. The legacy video options, on the other hand, include all of the original settings.

At 1440p with RTX 2070 Super, I get 90-100 fps with the new graphics. Switching to the original graphics gives 200 fps (there seems to be a limit at the moment). I have been in and out of the game with alt-tabb to write this article, switching between the old and new graphics frequently, and have had no crashes or other technical issues.

There are some new options in the gameplay settings that can be tweaked. You can toggle the new automatic gold collection feature, swap item drop intervals and keybindings between the original and the updated defaults. (You can also customize individual key bindings.)

In the accessibility section, there is a new "low vision mode" toggle that does not seem to have been implemented yet, and there is a placeholder setting for color blindness mode. Subtitles can also be toggled. Finally, there are many automap and UI options.

At first glance, the new graphics look good. The chickens may have lost some of their personality, having gone from pixelated birds to more realistic birds. The characteristic simplicity of the original art has been replaced by a more literal and subtle vision. It never looks bad, and it's cool to be able to switch freely between the old and new graphics.

Unfortunately, we can't tell you what the remade CGI cutscenes look like because Blizzard has dropped a placeholder in this technical alpha. For more information, please read my thoughts on Diablo 2: Remastered in general. (I like it.)