Diablo RPG Kickstarter signup is live

[Micah Sweet]

With respect, yeah. You even misunderstood the animation on-screen.

Diablo isn't destroyed in D2 - he can't be destroyed (or not by known methods) - he's a Prime Evil. They pretty much definitionally cannot be destroyed. They can be contained within soulstones. And that's precisely what happens to him in D2 - it's even in the animation as he's killed, he's pulled into the soulstone embedded in his forehead.

You can see his death animation on this page if you scroll down: Diablo (Diablo II)

His return in D3 is a mess not so much because of that but because of the terrible way it's handled plot/writing-wise.

The soulstones for all three Prime Evils were destroyed at the end of D2 (unlike in D1, where evil was allowed to endure). How would any of them come back? Do they explain that in D3?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Original release D3 was just not a very good game on any level except maybe second-to-second gameplay (which isn't quite enough for an ARPG, I would argue).

Later D3, after the expansion and huge loot changes was a pretty great game but the designers focused their effort pretty much entirely on the "endgame" mode of play and Adventure mode. I've never heard anyone say "beat the game 3-4 times then it gets good" (because it's not true), but that seems like a translation of "the game is built around endgame" (which is true). D3 is hugely more entertaining as a game-game (rather than just a play-once story or w/e - it's a pretty bad story) if you play Adventure mode and just level up fast and then do Greater Rifts etc.

Then you have an actually solid ARPG, and that is how undoubtedly most of the hours logged on D3 were spent, so I think the devs were correct to focus on that.

Ultimately no Diablo game has a particularly great story - ARPGs in general aren't typically designed as play-once story experiences in the way some CRPGs and a lot of action RPGs (i.e. Witcher 3 etc.) are.

I think the story of the first two games hung together pretty well. I remember at the time really hoping D3's story had the angel as the bad guy (him destroying the corrupted Worldstone seemed like a set up for this).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The soulstones for all three Prime Evils were destroyed at the end of D2 (unlike in D1, where evil was allowed to endure). How would any of them come back? Do they explain that in D3?

It is explained in D3, yeah.

In D2, the soulstones are destroyed, but that's not equivalent to destroying their souls, rather the idea was that it sent them back to the Black Abyss (I believe this is actually stated in D2, even), where demons originally came from (but you will note that they managed to get out of that before). This essentially equivalent to Batman dusting his hands off after slamming the Joker in a cell in Arkham Asylum and saying "Well I never have to worry about that guy again!", when he full-well knows the Joker has escaped Arkham before!

But specifically in D3, the Evils left "traces" - i.e. corruption - on Sanctuary, and Adria used this to essentially pull them into the Black Soulstone (which was a major thing in D3). The soulstone when was used to create like, powered-up super-Diablo out of Leah (nobody liked this plot development at all, I note). This Diablo was defeated and shoved back into the (overloaded, somewhat unstable) Black Soulstone which was then put in a "safe place" (lol as if) by the Horadrim.

Malthael (the Angel of Death) then immediately stole (killing most of the people protecting it, in an admittedly cool cutscene) the Black Soulstone to try and drain the souls (or part of the souls - enough to kill them) out of all humans in Sanctuary (basically just taking the "Judge Death" approach, I feel like that's probably where they got this from), and stopping him doing this is the plot of the D3 expansion. He then got mad when this failed and shattered it, and long story short this broke all the Evils out again, though as of D4, certainly Ba'al and Diablo are still MIA.

I remember at the time really hoping D3's story had the angel as the bad guy (him destroying the corrupted Worldstone seemed like a set up for this).

On the direct contrary he is the main (indeed kinda only) good guy in D3. Other angels are terribly naughty though.

 

[JConstantine]

I was disappointed that while Lilith started off talking a good game in D4, that never ended up going anywhere.

Right? I really thought Lilith had something to say but then it all sort of just trailed off into Mephisto nonsense (which they've now dragged out for an entire expansion without resolving much).

I must admit I haven't kept up with D4 - I tried the beta weekend and decided it wasn't for me due to the forced multiplayer combined with the level scaling (who on Sanctuary thought level scaling was a good idea for an aRPG?!) - but Lilith was the thing I found most compelling (I'm a sucker for the Mother of Monsters), so this is incredibly disappointing if that's the case.

 

[JConstantine]

Hot Take Diablo-wise....
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I liked the concept of the Nephilim.

 

[JConstantine]

The whole game was like, decent lore, terrible writing. And gamers tend to be particularly vituperative to ideas that were alongside bad writing, no matter how good those ideas might be independently.

Unfortunately, this isn't limited to gamers or writing. There is a staggering number of people who are seemingly incapable of separating an idea from its execution.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Unfortunately, this isn't limited to gamers or writing. There is a staggering number of people who are seemingly incapable of separating an idea from its execution.

Oh I agree, but I think because gamers are particularly likely to be fiction-illiterate in discussions of games as compared to say, how many comic-book fans are fiction-illiterate or movie or TV fans. I mean, there are always some - c.f. the people who reacted to the Superman trailer and tried to say "This film is badly written, the robots said they didn't feel emotion but they clearly do!" (jesus wept lol), but there are so many more as a proportion of the commenting audience with games that it's staggering.

I would draw a direct connection to the average age of the audience (games seem to trend sharply younger than TV/movies) - it's clear that younger people are much, much, much more likely to be fiction-illiterate, and to claim "bad writing" when they merely don't understand it, or to blithely assert that the author of the work agrees with and approves of everything that happens in it, and much less likely to be able to parse nuance or complexity generally. I presume it was ever thus (and that there were always many exceptions).

 

[Micah Sweet]

It is explained in D3, yeah.

In D2, the soulstones are destroyed, but that's not equivalent to destroying their souls, rather the idea was that it sent them back to the Black Abyss (I believe this is actually stated in D2, even), where demons originally came from (but you will note that they managed to get out of that before). This essentially equivalent to Batman dusting his hands off after slamming the Joker in a cell in Arkham Asylum and saying "Well I never have to worry about that guy again!", when he full-well knows the Joker has escaped Arkham before!

But specifically in D3, the Evils left "traces" - i.e. corruption - on Sanctuary, and Adria used this to essentially pull them into the Black Soulstone (which was a major thing in D3). The soulstone when was used to create like, powered-up super-Diablo out of Leah (nobody liked this plot development at all, I note). This Diablo was defeated and shoved back into the (overloaded, somewhat unstable) Black Soulstone which was then put in a "safe place" (lol as if) by the Horadrim.

Malthael (the Angel of Death) then immediately stole (killing most of the people protecting it, in an admittedly cool cutscene) the Black Soulstone to try and drain the souls (or part of the souls - enough to kill them) out of all humans in Sanctuary (basically just taking the "Judge Death" approach, I feel like that's probably where they got this from), and stopping him doing this is the plot of the D3 expansion. He then got mad when this failed and shattered it, and long story short this broke all the Evils out again, though as of D4, certainly Ba'al and Diablo are still MIA.


On the direct contrary he is the main (indeed kinda only) good guy in D3. Other angels are terribly naughty though.

Fair enough. From my perspective it seems like the plot went somewhat off the rails after D2 + LoD. Reminds me of Supernatural after season 5. There was still some good stuff, but at that point they had moved beyond the story the series was intended to tell.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Unfortunately, this isn't limited to gamers or writing. There is a staggering number of people who are seemingly incapable of separating an idea from its execution.

That's how I feel about the Star Wars prequels. Good ideas, bad execution.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I must admit I haven't kept up with D4 - I tried the beta weekend and decided it wasn't for me due to the forced multiplayer

This was actually overstated.. Outside of passing people in town and when you approach clearly marked areas for multiplayer opponents, the game actually makes most other players invisible to you and you never have to interact with them.

Other than when you're fighting an (optional) outdoor boss, the "forced multiplayer" folks were worried about is mostly watching somebody ride past you on a horse.