Diablo IV

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
Yeah but that's weird anti-teenager borderline incel stuff dude, and you should stay away from it. There's a ton of hate directed at the character because she's:

A) A teenager.

B) Female.

C) Asian.

In about that order. And people pretend like it isn't, but it undeniably is.

Curiously, Aiden, from Diablo 1/2, who was at least ten times as absolutely stupid, and barely older (early 20s), attracts no snarky comments about "overconfidence" or "young life" or whatever, even though they're just as or more applicable. Just an accident that he was a white male in his 20s, rather than an asian teenage girl. Just a coincidence. We shouldn't read anything into the extreme double-standard. Even though this guy was so dumb, he didn't just take the stone and run off alone, he jammed into his goddamn forehead. Also funny how Frodo (another white guy in his de facto 20s) doesn't really get any sneering for deciding to go it alone, instead people tend to direct their snark towards Tolkien. Very few people acknowledge, either, that Neyrelle has actually studied the lore around the stone very extensively, so even if she's making a dumb decision, it's a lot more informed of a dumb decision than the others.

I think if we drop the anti-teenager stance and vague, unformed racism/sexism, then we have to admit that the stones are clearly pretty good at convincing people to take them alone. And the lesson people should take from Aiden is that, no, they aren't "built different", and they'd absolutely be equally affected by it. It's probably a damn good thing the Main Character didn't take it, just like it's a good thing Galadriel or Boromir didn't take the ring, even though they were a lot "stronger" than Frodo.
I'm totally lost here. I was speaking about all my characters(and those characters played by others) across all the Diablo games. They pretty much are all infants compared to Diablo the Prime Evil, yet think that they can handle keeping him down.

I don't know anything about asian teenage girls in Diablo and that wasn't on my radar at all.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

I don't really like how Diablo IV tells its story via its open world quasi-MMO design, particularly with so many freaking side-quests.
You're definitely not supposed to do all or even many of the side-quests whilst following the main story, but whilst they separate the quests on the quest-window, as @Whizbang Dustyboots says, their failure to follow WoW in using a different icon was definitely a failure of design. I think it's a different colour (white for main vs blue for side, maybe) but that's not enough.

So that is on them. The whole quasi-MMO world is the weakest aspect of D4 currently. Maybe they'll do something cool with it, and Helltides are kinda fun, but...

And this whole both hell and heaven being full of jerks is getting a bit tiring.
This has been true since Diablo 2, note, so complaining about it now is a bit late. It's literally a plot point in D2 that the angels don't have humanity's interests at heart, and that Tyrael is weird because he does (particularly that he's willing to essentially die for us). Then D3 tripled down on that 12 years ago. D4 is actually soft-pedalling it quite considerably compared to D4.

Claiming it stole it from WoW when it was doing it before WoW though is just anachronistic. If it stole it from anywhere, it stole it from Spawn (the Image comic series), which was a major influence of Blizzard in the later '90s.

And Blizzard is doing much the same in WoW, where the Titans, Naaru, and nearly everything else previously good-aligned cosmic forces are being depicted as jerks in a sort of false equivalence both-sides-ism, which has increasingly grated on my nerves and grown tiresome for me.
You're entitled to be mad about this if you want, but lay the blame in the right place, please. This is absolutely classic Gen X stuff that was downright common in the 1990s. It's not "increasingly true" or anything. It's always been a significant part of WoW. The Naaru are a particularly bad example for you to use, as they were literally painted as unreliable fanatics who sometimes turned darkside when they were introduced in The Burning Crusade. Anyone who saw them as "good guys" or "good-aligned" simply did not understand WoW's lore, and frankly, WoW's lore at that point was not very complicated. I remember this particularly because I was in a quite lore-oriented guild in TBC, and this was a frequent topic of discussion - absolutely no-one trusted the Naaru, those big crystal creeps.

The Titans too were never "good-aligned". Where did you get that idea? Order-aligned, sure, but it's a big mistake to see order-aligned as "good-aligned". There's never been any real evidence that that Titans had the good of the peoples of Azeroth in mind (in general, there have been individual exceptions), and tons of evidence that they'd happily genocide the entire planet if they felt it was "necessary" - and nearly did.

Again this stuff isn't new - it's been true since WotLK at the latest. What's new is that because the Titans are "back in the news", people are having to realize "Oh actually they were never good guys", and because some people have (bizarrely imho) been apparently thinking they were for 10+ years, they're reacting badly.

Now that Metzen is back, I suspect that's going to be dialed back some. The edgelord stuff seemed to be the old regime that was shown the door during Shadowlands for all of their gross behavior.
Nah. Metzen was behind most of the "neither side can be trusted" stuff, because he's a real Gen Xer in terms of media culture, and Gen X media culture holds you can never trust "either side" when there are extremists involved. Only people who aren't extremists can be trusted - only people who can let stuff go, put people first, and who won't blow up a planet just to stop someone.

The edgelord-iest stuff in WoW is all from when Metzen was still there, note. Cataclysm is wall-to-wall edgelord-ery, as is WoD - WoD has some ridiculous stuff straight out of '90s comics particularly, and was way edgier before someone at Blizzard told them to knock it off (rape plotlines etc.). Metzen quit in 2016, so when Legion came out, and thus the only expansions without his influence are Battle for Azeroth, Shadowlands, and Dragonflight. Dragonflight is easily the least-edgy WoW has ever been, including Vanilla. BfA was at most moderately edgy - nothing compared to Cataclysm or WoD - and Shadowlands has what sounds like an edgy concept, but isn't really particularly so. Again I'd say it's as nothing to the edgy-ness of Cataclysm or WoD.

EDIT - It may be worth noting Metzen has a different position now to what he had during the WoD/Legion era. Specifically, he got promoted to a position where he had less direct influence on WoW's story and writing, because he was in charge, at one remove of the story/writing of all Blizzard games - specifically "senior vice-president of creative design and story development", whereas in Cataclysm and earlier, he was straight up creative director, and he is now executive creative director (with no creative director beneath him, so he's once more WoW's de facto "showrunner"). So that may explain why WoD was so ludicrously edgy, but it doesn't really explain why Cataclysm was, unless he'd already started to take a back seat. I mean, did he really approve stuff like Garrosh calling Sylvanas "bitch"?
 
Last edited:

I'm totally lost here. I was speaking about all my characters(and those characters played by others) across all the Diablo games. They pretty much are all infants compared to Diablo the Prime Evil, yet think that they can handle keeping him down.

I don't know anything about asian teenage girls in Diablo and that wasn't on my radar at all.
The criticism you offered, specifically focusing on the "young life" and "overconfidence" is one people have been slapping on Neyrelle repeatedly, so it looked like you were. As I pointed out, they don't generally apply the same to Aiden.
 

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
The criticism you offered, specifically focusing on the "young life" and "overconfidence" is one people have been slapping on Neyrelle repeatedly, so it looked like you were. As I pointed out, they don't generally apply the same to Aiden.
Nah. I was coming from the perspective that even if our characters are 100 years old, they're still babies compared to Diablo and the overconfidence is built into the game across all versions. I apply the young and overconfident to both of those above and all the others.

I haven't been in many Diablo discussions. In fact, this may be the only one. It's the only one I can remember, so I haven't encountered the young asian girl hate that you are referencing. I had no idea it even existed. :p
 


Aldarc

Legend
Metzen has also talked about how being a dad (maybe of daughters, in fact) has mellowed him. I know it mellowed me out, personally.
That mellowing is probably why Kerrigan got a redemption arc, plus a vaguely happy ending for her and Jim Raynor.

Since Starcraft is effectively dead, Overwatch is on life-support, and the Survival game killed in development, there is really only the story for Diablo and Warcraft to worry about for Metzen. Nevertheless, I'm glad that he can focus on Warcraft. However, rumblings about a future faction conflict between the Horde and Alliance has me worried as I was hoping that the game would finally move towards a faction-less system.
 

Whizbang Dustyboots

Gnometown Hero

I thought I had followed the D4 storyline pretty well, but I missed what the exact endgame had been for Lilith.

I'm so busy with World of Warcraft (my wife and I are going hog-wild in delves) that I don't see picking this up until later, although I am excited about the next storyline chapter. Maybe Christmas vacation, when I'll be off for about 10 days.
 

cbwjm

Seb-wejem
I might have to have a watch since I'm not sure if I can quite remember her endgame, was it something like make humanity strong enough to fight off both angels or demons or turn them into her personal army?
 

Remove ads

Top