As part of our ongoing (and going, and going) effort to unearth and repost the best of our decade+ of Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 content, we’ve just created a new D2 jigsaws folder in the Image Gallery. These are big overview images, pieced together from dozens of regular screenshots, designed to show off an area much larger than you can appreciate on your screen while playing. We had a couple dozen of these posted in the old days, and while lots were speculative, fan-made combinations of semi-random areas only made possible by the hundreds of screens the D2 Team released during that game’s development, others were created during the beta or the final game and exactly mapped out large non-random sections of the gameworld.
These should be a blast to put together in Diablo 3, with most of the surface areas non-random. (See the rough version of Act 2 Leord pieced together from various Blizzcon gameplay movies.) It’s going to be a while before we have a chance to create those for real, so in the meantime just enjoy these Diablo 2 images. Today’s batch are all towns; Tristram in D1, and from D2 the Rogue Encampment, Harrogath, and big shots of a very different Lut Gholein and Kurast that were created for a D2 magazine ads.
If you find these nifty and want to try your hand, feel free. (Be sure you turn off the 3D effect before you start taking screens.) Anyone can upload to the gallery, and lots of the big, static areas in the game have not been jigsawed properly. I’d swear I saw a big one of the D2 Tristram at one point, but I can’t find it today, and Lut Gholein, Kurast, and the Pandemonium Fortress should be added as well, along with other static areas like Baal’s Throneroom, the Worldstone Chamber, Travincal, and more. (The Arreat Plateau has been done, and will be added in a later update.) Click the thumbs below to see the larger (usually huge) version of the shots.