I wonder if they should have just called this DIABLO, or The Diablo, to wipe the loreslate clean
I guess we'll see what they do with it
What is the point of that?
D4 is going deep into the D3 lore, even if with a different angle and tone. All the Lilith/Inarius birthing humans stuff is not from the D2 era at all, its firmly D3. They were even dropping lore books in RoS about it (Pandimonium Sanctuary).
Writing your story so that idiotic comic book villains taunt you at your every step hardly says anything about the lore or world being an intractable problem.
Well, the way it was anime'd up and convoluted is just...when I read the lore snippets, I want to fall asleep. Obv it depends on how they handle it, hence the second sentence in my post
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KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
I felt that D3’s story was serviceable, the demon lords probably could have used some better writing and the one twist (you know the one) just served to piss people off
Yeah I enjoyed the story of D3, like I think if you write out the plot points on paper then its probably as good as the story in D2
But in D3 everybody is constantly talking and the dialogue is clunky at best so it undercuts any possible drama or tension
I think the larger cosmos stuff is fine and could work with a different writing team, so that's probably fine.
It was the omni soul stone fusing every lesser evil into megazord PRIME EVIL diablo that was really bad anime, and yes all of the in game dialogue where the villains taunt you over and over as well as the game needing to tell you 10,000 times that you are the most special-est chosen one Nephalem capable of amazing Nephalem feats that every character is very impressed with stuff.
I felt that D3’s story was serviceable, the demon lords probably could have used some better writing and the one twist (you know the one) just served to piss people off
Yeah I enjoyed the story of D3, like I think if you write out the plot points on paper then its probably as good as the story in D2
But in D3 everybody is constantly talking and the dialogue is clunky at best so it undercuts any possible drama or tension
The Act 2-3 transition is the roughest in this regard since iirc
it's literally Asmodan sensing you remaking the soul stone and then telepathically telling you he's attacking Bastions Keep to come and take it.
Everything else flows fine-ish if you just removed the constant chatting at you
Edit: added spoilers since I think someone said they were going through D3 right now
I wonder if they should have just called this DIABLO, or The Diablo, to wipe the loreslate clean
I guess we'll see what they do with it
What is the point of that?
D4 is going deep into the D3 lore, even if with a different angle and tone. All the Lilith/Inarius birthing humans stuff is not from the D2 era at all, its firmly D3. They were even dropping lore books in RoS about it (Pandimonium Sanctuary).
Writing your story so that idiotic comic book villains taunt you at your every step hardly says anything about the lore or world being an intractable problem.
Not quite true that Lilith and Inarius are firmly D3 lore.
As far as I'm aware, the character of Lilith was first introduced in Patch 1.11 of Lord of Destruction, in 2005. She was the Uber version of Andariel in the Pandemonium event. https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Pandemonium_Event
Then the whole relationship between them was from the Sin War novels. The first of those was published in 2006, six years before D3 was released. https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Birthright
Man, I remember Azmodan, the biggest tactical genius of all the hells, continuously being “you cannot defeat me, because I have a secret plan!”
- Player defeats secret plan (hoisting catapults?)
- “No worries, that was not important! I have an infiltrator!”
- Player defeats Ghom
- “He was insignificant! You’ll never cross my battlefield and defeat the giant monster!”
- Player crosses battlefield, kills Siegebreaker
- “Who gives a shit? Cydea will kick your ass!”
- Cydea gets killed
- “I’ll take care of you myself!”
- Azmodan gets killed
- “No worries, I still have a brother!”
By then my eyes had rolled out of my head because of all the eye-rolling.
I do remember that doing Act 3 of D3 was pretty damn impressive, with everything blowing up, the big crawly beast on the side, and the bridge of Korsik.
But I kinda hoped that D4 would be “meet and defeat the whole Diablo family, again, so that we get Andariel, Duriel, Mephisto, Baal, Belial, Azmodan, and Diablo himself, to fight against”.
I wonder if they should have just called this DIABLO, or The Diablo, to wipe the loreslate clean
I guess we'll see what they do with it
What is the point of that?
D4 is going deep into the D3 lore, even if with a different angle and tone. All the Lilith/Inarius birthing humans stuff is not from the D2 era at all, its firmly D3. They were even dropping lore books in RoS about it (Pandimonium Sanctuary).
Writing your story so that idiotic comic book villains taunt you at your every step hardly says anything about the lore or world being an intractable problem.
Honestly, what I saw from Inarius in D3, he was so full of himself, and felt better than everyone, even the other angels, and what I saw here in D4, I do not see him being the angel that had fun times with a demon. And he definitely hasn’t learned any humility at all.
I've had the D2 remaster forever at this point, fired it up a couple of times but keep getting annoyed at inventory and especially potion management
Really should just look up some uber-broken build to carry me through the game since I'm mainly interested in re-experiencing the story and indulging my nostalgia
Skele/fishymancer is probably the easiest build if you're not trying to skip content (it's not the fastest if you just want to get to endgame as fast as possible) and playing solo.
Max skeletons, max skeleton mastery, put 1 point in all of your curses, 1 point in corpse explosion, then max corpse explosion and/or summon resist. It works from level 1, any gear you get is just a bonus, and those skeletons are tanks. You barely even need potions if you hate that part -- skeles take damage instead of you, and you only need mana to sprinkle in curses and corpse explosions and occasionally replace a skeleton.
I'm going to offer up Holy Fire Paladin as the probably faster/easier option if you're just looking to breeze through the game on Normal. Skelemancer is good for the wall of meat, but there are parts of the game where the skeleton army is rather ineffective (places like Maggot Lair, Arcane Sanctuary), and some bosses like Diablo can smash through your skeletons pretty quickly and end up being kind of a slog to take down.
I wonder if they should have just called this DIABLO, or The Diablo, to wipe the loreslate clean
I guess we'll see what they do with it
What is the point of that?
D4 is going deep into the D3 lore, even if with a different angle and tone. All the Lilith/Inarius birthing humans stuff is not from the D2 era at all, its firmly D3. They were even dropping lore books in RoS about it (Pandimonium Sanctuary).
Writing your story so that idiotic comic book villains taunt you at your every step hardly says anything about the lore or world being an intractable problem.
Honestly, what I saw from Inarius in D3, he was so full of himself, and felt better than everyone, even the other angels, and what I saw here in D4, I do not see him being the angel that had fun times with a demon. And he definitely hasn’t learned any humility at all.
As I recall you don't see Inarius at all in D3. I think he only shows up in a few of the lore books. Imperius is the main Heaven angel you deal with.
Edit: And his books were very specifically talking about the whole "this endless war sucks, I'm way into this Lilith chick, etc." that Diablo 4 is leaning into.
But I kinda hoped that D4 would be “meet and defeat the whole Diablo family, again, so that we get Andariel, Duriel, Mephisto, Baal, Belial, Azmodan, and Diablo himself, to fight against”.
I think we'll get there eventually, but this is much more of a live-service game than past mainlines, they are going to drag it out. Hopefully it doesn't get cancelled before the big D returns at least.
I wonder if they should have just called this DIABLO, or The Diablo, to wipe the loreslate clean
I guess we'll see what they do with it
What is the point of that?
D4 is going deep into the D3 lore, even if with a different angle and tone. All the Lilith/Inarius birthing humans stuff is not from the D2 era at all, its firmly D3. They were even dropping lore books in RoS about it (Pandimonium Sanctuary).
Writing your story so that idiotic comic book villains taunt you at your every step hardly says anything about the lore or world being an intractable problem.
Not quite true that Lilith and Inarius are firmly D3 lore.
As far as I'm aware, the character of Lilith was first introduced in Patch 1.11 of Lord of Destruction, in 2005. She was the Uber version of Andariel in the Pandemonium event. https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Pandemonium_Event
This points something at what they were thinking when, but the whole Pandemonium event where Lilith revives the evils in 1.11 seems to be non-canon. Even the explanation of what Lilith is seems to be non-canonical. Either way she's been imprisoned for far longer than 30 years, which would be impossible if that event happened.
Then the whole relationship between them was from the Sin War novels. The first of those was published in 2006, six years before D3 was released. https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Birthright
The Sin Wars novels are centered on Uldyssian, the prototype Nephalim god that the D3 hero imitates. Its fair if you don't want to call those "D3" but the were clearly written as backstory/prep for that game, not simply tying up loose ends from D2 or the like.
I've had the D2 remaster forever at this point, fired it up a couple of times but keep getting annoyed at inventory and especially potion management
Really should just look up some uber-broken build to carry me through the game since I'm mainly interested in re-experiencing the story and indulging my nostalgia
Skele/fishymancer is probably the easiest build if you're not trying to skip content (it's not the fastest if you just want to get to endgame as fast as possible) and playing solo.
Max skeletons, max skeleton mastery, put 1 point in all of your curses, 1 point in corpse explosion, then max corpse explosion and/or summon resist. It works from level 1, any gear you get is just a bonus, and those skeletons are tanks. You barely even need potions if you hate that part -- skeles take damage instead of you, and you only need mana to sprinkle in curses and corpse explosions and occasionally replace a skeleton.
I'm going to offer up Holy Fire Paladin as the probably faster/easier option if you're just looking to breeze through the game on Normal. Skelemancer is good for the wall of meat, but there are parts of the game where the skeleton army is rather ineffective (places like Maggot Lair, Arcane Sanctuary), and some bosses like Diablo can smash through your skeletons pretty quickly and end up being kind of a slog to take down.
It's a good alternative! Maggot Lair is definitely a pain, though corpse explosion makes it slightly less horrible. Diablo falls pretty easily if you use decrepify too, unless you're rushing and skipping content (under leveled).
But I forgot about the holy fire buffs, and you're correct. That build is crazy easy and pretty darn fun through Normal. It falls off quickly after that, but if you just want to see the story stuff it's great.
I wonder if they should have just called this DIABLO, or The Diablo, to wipe the loreslate clean
I guess we'll see what they do with it
What is the point of that?
D4 is going deep into the D3 lore, even if with a different angle and tone. All the Lilith/Inarius birthing humans stuff is not from the D2 era at all, its firmly D3. They were even dropping lore books in RoS about it (Pandimonium Sanctuary).
Writing your story so that idiotic comic book villains taunt you at your every step hardly says anything about the lore or world being an intractable problem.
Honestly, what I saw from Inarius in D3, he was so full of himself, and felt better than everyone, even the other angels, and what I saw here in D4, I do not see him being the angel that had fun times with a demon. And he definitely hasn’t learned any humility at all.
As I recall you don't see Inarius at all in D3. I think he only shows up in a few of the lore books. Imperius is the main Heaven angel you deal with.
Edit: And his books were very specifically talking about the whole "this endless war sucks, I'm way into this Lilith chick, etc." that Diablo 4 is leaning into.
Ah, that what happens when 2 dick-angels look so alike (I mean, all the angels look alike, except for emo-Malthael) and have similar names, starting with an I.
I've had the D2 remaster forever at this point, fired it up a couple of times but keep getting annoyed at inventory and especially potion management
Really should just look up some uber-broken build to carry me through the game since I'm mainly interested in re-experiencing the story and indulging my nostalgia
Skele/fishymancer is probably the easiest build if you're not trying to skip content (it's not the fastest if you just want to get to endgame as fast as possible) and playing solo.
Max skeletons, max skeleton mastery, put 1 point in all of your curses, 1 point in corpse explosion, then max corpse explosion and/or summon resist. It works from level 1, any gear you get is just a bonus, and those skeletons are tanks. You barely even need potions if you hate that part -- skeles take damage instead of you, and you only need mana to sprinkle in curses and corpse explosions and occasionally replace a skeleton.
yes, yes, this is what I'm talking about
I don't need to go fast, I'm perfectly fine with a nice leisurely jaunt
I've had the D2 remaster forever at this point, fired it up a couple of times but keep getting annoyed at inventory and especially potion management
Really should just look up some uber-broken build to carry me through the game since I'm mainly interested in re-experiencing the story and indulging my nostalgia
Skele/fishymancer is probably the easiest build if you're not trying to skip content (it's not the fastest if you just want to get to endgame as fast as possible) and playing solo.
Max skeletons, max skeleton mastery, put 1 point in all of your curses, 1 point in corpse explosion, then max corpse explosion and/or summon resist. It works from level 1, any gear you get is just a bonus, and those skeletons are tanks. You barely even need potions if you hate that part -- skeles take damage instead of you, and you only need mana to sprinkle in curses and corpse explosions and occasionally replace a skeleton.
yes, yes, this is what I'm talking about
I don't need to go fast, I'm perfectly fine with a nice leisurely jaunt
Had Uber Diablo spawn in a D2R game last night and I just *could not* kill him
Burned through literally a million gold between death costs, repairs, pots, and merc resses, but once I got him down to like 25% his health regen was outpacing the damage from Crushing Blow and my health and resistances meant there were entirely too many instances of me dying in two swipes. (I was in the middle of farming Countess to get a Lum for Smoke, having just gotten to Act I Hell a bit ago and playing SSF.) I tried weapon-juggling to get Open Wounds applied to prevent the Regen, but it was way too finicky and my backup gear hurt my health and resistances even further.
Only time I've ever seen him pop. Very frustrating two hours.
Sorry for that, it can be frustrating. If you run into him again, shop a weapon with "prevents monster heal" on it. Hitting one time with that weapon (has to be an attack, not a random spell while the weapon is equipped) will apply it, and it lasts like 5 minutes or more.
Craft an edge bow and wear some posion dmg. Pummel him with arrows and as soon as he turns green you know you've applied the PVMH debuff. Which will last for at least 20 minutes
Based on the comments in the thread, I got started on the season Saturday morning. As my my lunch hour today, my wizard is working on the 11th or 12th sacrifice. And the majority of the challenges are shaping up to finish “soon”, but I’m confused about the ones that are conquest? What are those and where do I see them? And are they generally able to be done solo?
Based on the comments in the thread, I got started on the season Saturday morning. As my my lunch hour today, my wizard is working on the 11th or 12th sacrifice. And the majority of the challenges are shaping up to finish “soon”, but I’m confused about the ones that are conquest? What are those and where do I see them? And are they generally able to be done solo?
Press F9 (achievements etc), switch to the Season tab, Conquests are on the bottom end. They are doable solo, at least the ones for completing the seasonal journey (did it last week or so)
Conquests are special seasonal achievements, can be something as easy as “level 3 gems to 65” or rough as “kill all bosses 20 minutes from login”. Look at your achievements panel, and you should have a tab for conquests
I did all 3 solo, believe the ones I did were the 3 gems, GR 55 solo on 6 sets, and Torment X in 2 minutes
A small handful of times in the D4 beta last weekend, I would briefly end up in an area where the screen would become incredibly bright and saturated. I think it was supposed to be like a weather effect since IIRC it was always in an outdoor section, but when it happened it was very difficult to see and almost unplayable. I was not a fan.
I think the really significant problem with D3's story wasn't necessarily the ham, it was that they treated it like a DBZ style of constant power escalation. D1 had one Prime Evil, D2 did all three, what's bigger than three Prime Evils? All of the Evils, merged together! Now you've got a main character who is personally more powerful than all Prime Evils combined, just by virtue of being a Nephalem, which lots of people in this world are. Where does that leave future stories?
The long time skip in D4 means those old heroes can be written off. They probably need to figure out how to reverse the Nephalem thing. At that point you're at a clean slate, and hopefully they can be more restrained in the future.
What will be interesting this time is that this is a live service game. They intend to keep telling stories indefinitely, either in expansions or in episodic seasons. I really hope they don't escalate so much that we have a WoW situation. I'm predicting D4 will conclude with defeating Lilith, then Inarius is the next big boss post-launch, and then they'll have some human villains for once now that we're on top.
Its going to be a huge queue-fest on Friday. With even less barrier of entry theres going to be a lot of folks, so if you're only interested in getting the rewards for release like the titles and backpiece, i'd suggest skipping as much cutscenes as you can to get through the stuff before getting disconnected and back in queue. You can watch the cutscenes on release, or once you've finished the level 20 requirement, but thats only if you're interested in the rewards. Don't take that as a reason to skip them if you're just enjoying trying it out and playing, enjoy the story in whatever way appeals to you.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
the problem with D3's writing is that the tone is all over the place; sometimes they seem to be trying to tell a Dark, Serious Diablo Story and other times the villains (e.g. azmodan) seem to be practically being played for laughs
I like that they kinda flesh out (so to speak) a bunch of the inhabitants of the heavens and their history, but that's almost all done through little voiceover bits
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I think the really significant problem with D3's story wasn't necessarily the ham, it was that they treated it like a DBZ style of constant power escalation. D1 had one Prime Evil, D2 did all three, what's bigger than three Prime Evils? All of the Evils, merged together! Now you've got a main character who is personally more powerful than all Prime Evils combined, just by virtue of being a Nephalem, which lots of people in this world are. Where does that leave future stories?
The long time skip in D4 means those old heroes can be written off. They probably need to figure out how to reverse the Nephalem thing. At that point you're at a clean slate, and hopefully they can be more restrained in the future.
What will be interesting this time is that this is a live service game. They intend to keep telling stories indefinitely, either in expansions or in episodic seasons. I really hope they don't escalate so much that we have a WoW situation. I'm predicting D4 will conclude with defeating Lilith, then Inarius is the next big boss post-launch, and then they'll have some human villains for once now that we're on top.
I think D4 is inevitably due for a bit of gameplay vs. story incongruence, unless there's a good explanation for why the world bosses are so much more powerful than Lilith.
I think the really significant problem with D3's story wasn't necessarily the ham, it was that they treated it like a DBZ style of constant power escalation. D1 had one Prime Evil, D2 did all three, what's bigger than three Prime Evils? All of the Evils, merged together! Now you've got a main character who is personally more powerful than all Prime Evils combined, just by virtue of being a Nephalem, which lots of people in this world are. Where does that leave future stories?
The long time skip in D4 means those old heroes can be written off. They probably need to figure out how to reverse the Nephalem thing. At that point you're at a clean slate, and hopefully they can be more restrained in the future.
What will be interesting this time is that this is a live service game. They intend to keep telling stories indefinitely, either in expansions or in episodic seasons. I really hope they don't escalate so much that we have a WoW situation. I'm predicting D4 will conclude with defeating Lilith, then Inarius is the next big boss post-launch, and then they'll have some human villains for once now that we're on top.
I think D4 is inevitably due for a bit of gameplay vs. story incongruence, unless there's a good explanation for why the world bosses are so much more powerful than Lilith.
I know I'm going to play it all weekend, but I kinda wish I had the will to skip this and wait until 6/6, which isn't that far away with EVERSPACE 2 and then REDFALL around the corner.
. . .I am going to play me some Necromancer though. God damnit I wish they hadn't gotten their shit together and the damn thing blown me away.
I think the really significant problem with D3's story wasn't necessarily the ham, it was that they treated it like a DBZ style of constant power escalation. D1 had one Prime Evil, D2 did all three, what's bigger than three Prime Evils? All of the Evils, merged together! Now you've got a main character who is personally more powerful than all Prime Evils combined, just by virtue of being a Nephalem, which lots of people in this world are. Where does that leave future stories?
The long time skip in D4 means those old heroes can be written off. They probably need to figure out how to reverse the Nephalem thing. At that point you're at a clean slate, and hopefully they can be more restrained in the future.
What will be interesting this time is that this is a live service game. They intend to keep telling stories indefinitely, either in expansions or in episodic seasons. I really hope they don't escalate so much that we have a WoW situation. I'm predicting D4 will conclude with defeating Lilith, then Inarius is the next big boss post-launch, and then they'll have some human villains for once now that we're on top.
I don’t recall hearing this, do you have a source on that?
My impression is that when they spoke of updates they meant gameplay/endgame content, not necessarily story.
I think the really significant problem with D3's story wasn't necessarily the ham, it was that they treated it like a DBZ style of constant power escalation. D1 had one Prime Evil, D2 did all three, what's bigger than three Prime Evils? All of the Evils, merged together! Now you've got a main character who is personally more powerful than all Prime Evils combined, just by virtue of being a Nephalem, which lots of people in this world are. Where does that leave future stories?
The long time skip in D4 means those old heroes can be written off. They probably need to figure out how to reverse the Nephalem thing. At that point you're at a clean slate, and hopefully they can be more restrained in the future.
What will be interesting this time is that this is a live service game. They intend to keep telling stories indefinitely, either in expansions or in episodic seasons. I really hope they don't escalate so much that we have a WoW situation. I'm predicting D4 will conclude with defeating Lilith, then Inarius is the next big boss post-launch, and then they'll have some human villains for once now that we're on top.
I don’t recall hearing this, do you have a source on that?
My impression is that when they spoke of updates they meant gameplay/endgame content, not necessarily story.
They don't say explicitly that it'll be major story beats or full Acts, but I'm expecting this game to be much like Destiny 2. Live service game means they intend to keep the game going indefinitely, and that must include campaign content in some form. It's possible they'll do paid expansions on top of the live service model. But I think they're better off keeping the whales engaged every season with real content.
Ah ok, re-reading that it does sound like it could possibly include more story than I originally thought.
Still though, to me that mostly sounds like mimicking PoE’s content. Many of their leagues include a new NPC that adds more flavor to the world (even if they are only temporary) to give context to their new gameplay mechanic. Sometimes they have a quest chain, or at least ease you into it in a quest-like manner. Then they had a few larger “expansions” that were permanently incorporated as major aspects of the game.
I would not be surprised at all to see Blizzard copying that pattern.
Everything they describe is in addition to delivering the complete Diablo IV experience, the rich endgame features you expect at launch, and regular expansions that continue the story.
So yeah they might have some stuff during seasons but expect paid expansions for the real story.
Yeah and I fully expect them to keep upping the ante over those Expansions, each one needs a lot more wow factor than some rando humans to sell it every time. Its just going to be more drawn out.
I can see them doing some writing trick to keep the power levels more contained, but the Nephalim are Inarius and Lilith's children. It's wishful thinking that all that lore is just going to vanish completely. Right now the path they are on seems to be just tweak the tone and focus away from some Micheal bay power fantasy while still drawing on the lore behind that game as well as its predecessors. Heck I think we've already seen that in his escape Inarius
killed Rathma himself.
There was a 30 year-ish gap between D2 and D3 as well, yes it gives some room to drop characters and threads and bury old hatchets, but it doesn't automatically erase continuity.
rahkeesh2000 on
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
As long as they don’t sunset paid content like Bungie does with D2.
I think the really significant problem with D3's story wasn't necessarily the ham, it was that they treated it like a DBZ style of constant power escalation. D1 had one Prime Evil, D2 did all three, what's bigger than three Prime Evils? All of the Evils, merged together! Now you've got a main character who is personally more powerful than all Prime Evils combined, just by virtue of being a Nephalem, which lots of people in this world are. Where does that leave future stories?
The long time skip in D4 means those old heroes can be written off. They probably need to figure out how to reverse the Nephalem thing. At that point you're at a clean slate, and hopefully they can be more restrained in the future.
What will be interesting this time is that this is a live service game. They intend to keep telling stories indefinitely, either in expansions or in episodic seasons. I really hope they don't escalate so much that we have a WoW situation. I'm predicting D4 will conclude with defeating Lilith, then Inarius is the next big boss post-launch, and then they'll have some human villains for once now that we're on top.
I think D4 is inevitably due for a bit of gameplay vs. story incongruence, unless there's a good explanation for why the world bosses are so much more powerful than Lilith.
I think the really significant problem with D3's story wasn't necessarily the ham, it was that they treated it like a DBZ style of constant power escalation. D1 had one Prime Evil, D2 did all three, what's bigger than three Prime Evils? All of the Evils, merged together! Now you've got a main character who is personally more powerful than all Prime Evils combined, just by virtue of being a Nephalem, which lots of people in this world are. Where does that leave future stories?
The long time skip in D4 means those old heroes can be written off. They probably need to figure out how to reverse the Nephalem thing. At that point you're at a clean slate, and hopefully they can be more restrained in the future.
What will be interesting this time is that this is a live service game. They intend to keep telling stories indefinitely, either in expansions or in episodic seasons. I really hope they don't escalate so much that we have a WoW situation. I'm predicting D4 will conclude with defeating Lilith, then Inarius is the next big boss post-launch, and then they'll have some human villains for once now that we're on top.
I think D4 is inevitably due for a bit of gameplay vs. story incongruence, unless there's a good explanation for why the world bosses are so much more powerful than Lilith.
Your battles against the BBEG are empowered by Prophesy™ (from the makers of Plot Armor™). The world bosses have too many competing stories and ultimately don't matter so no one gets the buff.
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What is the point of that?
D4 is going deep into the D3 lore, even if with a different angle and tone. All the Lilith/Inarius birthing humans stuff is not from the D2 era at all, its firmly D3. They were even dropping lore books in RoS about it (Pandimonium Sanctuary).
Writing your story so that idiotic comic book villains taunt you at your every step hardly says anything about the lore or world being an intractable problem.
Yeah I enjoyed the story of D3, like I think if you write out the plot points on paper then its probably as good as the story in D2
But in D3 everybody is constantly talking and the dialogue is clunky at best so it undercuts any possible drama or tension
It was the omni soul stone fusing every lesser evil into megazord PRIME EVIL diablo that was really bad anime, and yes all of the in game dialogue where the villains taunt you over and over as well as the game needing to tell you 10,000 times that you are the most special-est chosen one Nephalem capable of amazing Nephalem feats that every character is very impressed with stuff.
The Act 2-3 transition is the roughest in this regard since iirc
Edit: added spoilers since I think someone said they were going through D3 right now
Not quite true that Lilith and Inarius are firmly D3 lore.
As far as I'm aware, the character of Lilith was first introduced in Patch 1.11 of Lord of Destruction, in 2005. She was the Uber version of Andariel in the Pandemonium event. https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Pandemonium_Event
Then the whole relationship between them was from the Sin War novels. The first of those was published in 2006, six years before D3 was released. https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Birthright
- Player defeats secret plan (hoisting catapults?)
- “No worries, that was not important! I have an infiltrator!”
- Player defeats Ghom
- “He was insignificant! You’ll never cross my battlefield and defeat the giant monster!”
- Player crosses battlefield, kills Siegebreaker
- “Who gives a shit? Cydea will kick your ass!”
- Cydea gets killed
- “I’ll take care of you myself!”
- Azmodan gets killed
- “No worries, I still have a brother!”
By then my eyes had rolled out of my head because of all the eye-rolling.
I do remember that doing Act 3 of D3 was pretty damn impressive, with everything blowing up, the big crawly beast on the side, and the bridge of Korsik.
But I kinda hoped that D4 would be “meet and defeat the whole Diablo family, again, so that we get Andariel, Duriel, Mephisto, Baal, Belial, Azmodan, and Diablo himself, to fight against”.
Edit: And his books were very specifically talking about the whole "this endless war sucks, I'm way into this Lilith chick, etc." that Diablo 4 is leaning into.
I think we'll get there eventually, but this is much more of a live-service game than past mainlines, they are going to drag it out. Hopefully it doesn't get cancelled before the big D returns at least.
This points something at what they were thinking when, but the whole Pandemonium event where Lilith revives the evils in 1.11 seems to be non-canon. Even the explanation of what Lilith is seems to be non-canonical. Either way she's been imprisoned for far longer than 30 years, which would be impossible if that event happened.
The Sin Wars novels are centered on Uldyssian, the prototype Nephalim god that the D3 hero imitates. Its fair if you don't want to call those "D3" but the were clearly written as backstory/prep for that game, not simply tying up loose ends from D2 or the like.
It's a good alternative! Maggot Lair is definitely a pain, though corpse explosion makes it slightly less horrible. Diablo falls pretty easily if you use decrepify too, unless you're rushing and skipping content (under leveled).
But I forgot about the holy fire buffs, and you're correct. That build is crazy easy and pretty darn fun through Normal. It falls off quickly after that, but if you just want to see the story stuff it's great.
The site that famously banned linking to any resources outside of themselves at the time? Good riddance.
yes, yes, this is what I'm talking about
I don't need to go fast, I'm perfectly fine with a nice leisurely jaunt
https://web.archive.org/web/20220825134427/https://www.diabloii.net/forums/threads/fishymancer-final-version-updated-for-1-13.798047/
Craft an edge bow and wear some posion dmg. Pummel him with arrows and as soon as he turns green you know you've applied the PVMH debuff. Which will last for at least 20 minutes
Press F9 (achievements etc), switch to the Season tab, Conquests are on the bottom end. They are doable solo, at least the ones for completing the seasonal journey (did it last week or so)
I did all 3 solo, believe the ones I did were the 3 gems, GR 55 solo on 6 sets, and Torment X in 2 minutes
Yeah never was a fan either. All the other good stuff is still there and with Maxroll there's even a new one that's decent.
The long time skip in D4 means those old heroes can be written off. They probably need to figure out how to reverse the Nephalem thing. At that point you're at a clean slate, and hopefully they can be more restrained in the future.
What will be interesting this time is that this is a live service game. They intend to keep telling stories indefinitely, either in expansions or in episodic seasons. I really hope they don't escalate so much that we have a WoW situation. I'm predicting D4 will conclude with defeating Lilith, then Inarius is the next big boss post-launch, and then they'll have some human villains for once now that we're on top.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
I like that they kinda flesh out (so to speak) a bunch of the inhabitants of the heavens and their history, but that's almost all done through little voiceover bits
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
really big
. . .I am going to play me some Necromancer though. God damnit I wish they hadn't gotten their shit together and the damn thing blown me away.
I don’t recall hearing this, do you have a source on that?
My impression is that when they spoke of updates they meant gameplay/endgame content, not necessarily story.
https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo4/23816415/diablo-iv-quarterly-update-august-2022#NewContent
They don't say explicitly that it'll be major story beats or full Acts, but I'm expecting this game to be much like Destiny 2. Live service game means they intend to keep the game going indefinitely, and that must include campaign content in some form. It's possible they'll do paid expansions on top of the live service model. But I think they're better off keeping the whales engaged every season with real content.
Still though, to me that mostly sounds like mimicking PoE’s content. Many of their leagues include a new NPC that adds more flavor to the world (even if they are only temporary) to give context to their new gameplay mechanic. Sometimes they have a quest chain, or at least ease you into it in a quest-like manner. Then they had a few larger “expansions” that were permanently incorporated as major aspects of the game.
I would not be surprised at all to see Blizzard copying that pattern.
So yeah they might have some stuff during seasons but expect paid expansions for the real story.
I can see them doing some writing trick to keep the power levels more contained, but the Nephalim are Inarius and Lilith's children. It's wishful thinking that all that lore is just going to vanish completely. Right now the path they are on seems to be just tweak the tone and focus away from some Micheal bay power fantasy while still drawing on the lore behind that game as well as its predecessors. Heck I think we've already seen that in his escape Inarius
There was a 30 year-ish gap between D2 and D3 as well, yes it gives some room to drop characters and threads and bury old hatchets, but it doesn't automatically erase continuity.
That pissed me off.
Your battles against the BBEG are empowered by Prophesy™ (from the makers of Plot Armor™). The world bosses have too many competing stories and ultimately don't matter so no one gets the buff.