All of Diablo 4's two-handed swords feature a glaring historical inaccuracy

DIablo 4's Inarius close to smiting down a foe — (Image credit: Blizzard)

An eagle-eyed Diablo 4 fan has noticed that all of the game's two-handed swords are labeled incorrectly.

Over on the Diablo subreddit, user Funslinger offered a side-by-side comparison of all of the game's non-legendary zweihanders, pointing out that many of them look very different to the real historical weapons they're based on - all of which also exist in the game.

Take, for example, the Bastard Sword. Historically, this is a two-handed sword that can also be wielded one-handed, with an extra-length handle and often with crucifix imagery on its crossguard. Bastard Swords are present in Diablo 4, except in Sanctuary they're called Claymores.

I'm pretty sure the non-legendary two-handed swords are all mislabeled from r/diablo4

The Claymore, of course, is also available in Diablo 4. Recognisable primarily by its sloping crossguard and large blade, it's a favoured fantasy weapon, but in Sanctuary, it appears to have been mistaken for the 'Two-Handed Sword'. The pattern continues; the undulating blade of the Flamberge is used to refer to both the beefier blades of the Grimstone and Gothic Blades, while the actual Flamberge has borrowed the name of the Kingslayer from Diablo 3; the blunt point of the Executioner's Sword is referred to as a Great Sword; the Giant Sword is notably smaller than the Grimstone Sword that should bear its name.

It's not something that most players are ever likely to notice. As one commenter points out, it's taken a month for the community to catch on - I'm neither a sword historian nor the kind of person to spend time observing my character model during my grind, and I'm also using a sweet scythe for my Diablo 4 Necromancer build.

Sadly, the discovery appears to have come at exactly the wrong time. Diablo 4 patch 1.0.3 dropped yesterday, and while the previous version of the game hung around for quite a while, it might be some time until Blizzard gets the chance to drop a blade-related fix.

Season one is coming up soon, so check out our guide to the Diablo 4 Battle Pass for all the details.

I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for news, shaping the news strategy across the team. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.