f13.net

So I just finished my first playthrough.



Also....

I enjoyed the ride though. Now onto nightmare!

Finished up Normal at lv31 Monk (~3000hp, ~330dps), with two coworkers and Furiously (who popped in for the very last of Act IV).

Played through the first couple quests in Nightmare -- everyone is lv30+ but the fights are more effort than they were earlier today when I ran the first part of Act I with some other friends.   Nightmare looks like it'll entertain.

Regarding the story:
Thought it was a frustrating that Leah was sacrificed and Adria got away with it.  No real resolution there.  We saved the world but it still felt like a bit of a bummer.

EDIT: spoiler thread, no sense hiding

I imagine that's the hook for the expansion.

EDIT: I dinged 31 as we finished Act IV, my scarf wearin' douchebag's DPS was 400-ish (it's 490 now from a nice bow that dropped at ZEE END) but he is a delicate flower that dies way too easily, I need to get some shit with more vitality on it I think. :P

Quite surprised the end cinematic didn't have a hook for the expansion pack actually. Both Diablo and Diablo 2 ended in that way.

Still, some missing pieces:

Adria
The missing arch angel
Imperius

This seems to be the first Diablo game that actually has a 'happy ending'.

P.s. why are people putting things in spoiler tags in a thread that warns there are story spoilers in it?

Well, I think its about par for the course on ending unhappiness.  Heaven got fucked up rather badly, Adria got away (though she's obviously the hook for the expansion), and you didn't save the young girl who ended up having her soul devoured by Diablo.  

Though question on Adria:  Was she always bad, secretly working to help Diablo?  Or was it only after she gave the Dark Wanderer a pity fuck after he killed Diablo and had to jam a giant crystal into his skull, which then corrupted her?

I got the impression it was this. 

As for the end of act 3/act 4.

I was glad Leah was dead - that's how the Diablo universe works. It's grim, but Diablo isn't Starcraft or Warcraft and Shea prime evil corrupts your body your *dead* and beyond redemption. Has happened to numerous characters in the series and would be really odd if Leah somehow survived.

Re Adria - she was working for the prime evils all along. There's a conversation / bit of lore you can find in Act 2 that says the coven was originally led by 2 witches, and then one upped and left leaving Maghda in charge. Adria even says she travelled to Tristram to serve Diablo.

Same here, I was waiting for her to turn out to be the suprise-twist-baddie. Although when she got taken over my first thought was "Oh..noes..they are doing a Kerrigan again"

The ending cutscene (Tyriels narration) felt quite underwhelming...too over-the-top pathetic and not really gripping.

It did. You can see the soulstone falling after Diablo burns up on reentry. Combine with the fact that Adria got away, and there you go.

In general I would say of all the half-assed Metzen-y stories, this one was the half-assed-est of all, but my expectations were low going in.

Meh, I thought it was ok.  Perhaps nothing grand, but it wasn't particularly bad or stupid.  Though I guess Mass Effect 3 lowered my bar for acceptable endings quite a bit.   :awesome_for_real:

On the one hand, the only thing that remotely surprised me was Cain dying so early (had I looked at the achievements or paid the slightest attention to trailers, that probably would not have surprised me either). On the other, there was nothing remotely near Thrall = Green Jesus in terms of "shit this so so bad." So while it was totally by the numbers and bland, it didn't feel more like I was playing someone's self-insert fan fiction than an actual game, so thumb's up, I guess.

Yeah, it wasn't exactly gripping, storywise, but it wasn't utterly cringeworthy or anything.  I wasn't terribly invested in the characters or anything, but it was a decent enough backdrop for the monster fighting and loot gathering.

Honestly my biggest complaint is a technical nitpick -- I wish the video quality of the cutscenes were higher -- video artifacting bugs me.

Wow, I thought they looked great.  Maybe you have a bigger monitor, I'm running at an awe-inspiring 1280x1024 here.   :grin:

On 1920x1200 24" there were places where the compression was pretty noticable.  It's not like they all sucked, or anything, just here and there I could really see the compression artifacts.  It's a nitpick, not a serious complaint.

I didn't notice them either but I don't really have an eye for such things.

Do you mean the cut scenes where it would letterbox and our dudes would have Very Important Dialogue, or do you mean the cinematic cut scenes?


EDIT: Oh oh oh! You know what I noticed! None of the voice acting was terrible! I can't really think of any characters that made me think they grabbed Timmy the Intern out of the hallway and stuffed him inside the recording booth.

I meant the cinematic ones (fancy 3d pre-rendered video).

Whoah, you're right.  The voice acting is pretty great across the board.  And there's a *lot* of voice acting -- not just the mains, but all the random quests, various chatty NPCs, etc.

If you watch the credits you'll notice that a *lot* of people contributed voice talent for this thing -- not 5 people recording all the NPCs, etc.

This makes me want to try adventuring with an NPC buddy, because I've heard that they banter with your hero throughout the way...

Does anyone get into the characters in Diablo? I really like the world of sanctuary and the entire heaven versus hell setting but the actual characters are always just a backdrop to death, explosions and loot. Precious, sweet loot...

They do, and they all have their own little story they'll tell you throughout the acts if you talk to them. They'll also pipe up occassionally during questish conversations, chit chat with people you are temporarily hauling around, etc.

Awesome.  Okay, one more thing on the list of things to do in D3...

The banter repeats quite often, extra annoying if you have subtitles turned on.

Yeah, I've been using the scoundrel with my barbarian - not because he is more useful than the others but because he's funny.  He says something, I say something barbarianish, he rolls his eyes, etc.  It's awesome.

They need a writing award if only for covetous shen.

With the exception of the child emperor, I agree with you. The voice acting and dialogue, especially between the companions and other NPCs, is top-notch.

Thought it was pretty good overall.  The one gripe I have is that we didn't get to fight Imperious.  I spent all of Act 4 waiting for that.  No dice.

Having too much of a story would just make it seem more repetitive. 

Watch the cutscene with leah having her vision again, azmodeus isn't talking to her, he's talking to diablo.

The child emperor did kinda suck, but child characters usually do, so I probably just put it out of my mind immediately.

Me and Amiable were convinced that this guy http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0393222/ (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0393222/)
voiced Covetous  Shen but he's not credited anywhere.

Since we are talking about voice acting now...

I hate that miner-merchant in Act I: "I worked my hands to the bone to bring you these fine goods."

I am sorry but that just creeps me out every time I hear it. No one forced you to mine!

The guy's just trying to justify his overpriced blues.

Did anyone else feel like that because Act 4 is so short that it loses some of its gravity? Kind of, "OH NO DIABLO HAS BECOME THE PRIME EVIL AND HAS TAKEN OVER HEAV....oh he's already dead"

I know that they probably wanted Act 4 to be fast paced and I do like the sort of "assault on heaven" thing you are doing (nice symmetry with the assault on hell that was act 4 D2), but the fact that you plow through it in an hour total makes it seem less plausible to me that Diablo managed to concur the whole place in the time it took me to run through the portal after him ( :awesome_for_real: ).   Even some kind of short quest where you would have had to open your own portal to heaven (say his closes after Tyrael runs through) would've given some sense of time passing for me to make the whole thing seem more plausible.

That being said, from a gameplay perspective, I did love act 4 both times through this time, and perhaps that is the reason they didn't add anything prior to show any passing of time.  Its just sort of a straight up sprint through demon hordes , which is Diablo at its best.

I think the idea is that the whole time he's just ahead of you; he hasn't conquered the whole place he's just managed to stay one step ahead. The scene were Angel Douchebag loses his powers shows that very well I think.

Every time I hear that I think of the song where the line goes, Work your fingers to the bone, what do you get? Bony fingers.

Yeahhh.  So for whatever reason the first time I did this n I didn't get that cutscene.  I guess I was in a group and someone skipped it before it even started playing, so I just got up there and Tyrael had the ! over his head.  I did it again last night and got the cutscene and it made a whole lot more sense to me.  

I thought the voice of the Enchantress was quite aggravating, but I enjoyed all the rest.  The Templar was particularly entertaining throughout my romp through Normal.

The Enchantress gave me a very Luna Lovegood vibe, from the Harry Potter movies.

It is him. He's credited in the end game credits.

I knew him originally from big trouble in little china but god damn that guy has been around forever.

He did.

I spotted that right off... And I soooo wanted him to say "You never could beat me, Egg Shen" at some point.  :grin:

Of course, he does come off as kinda like Chang on Community though...

Damn I guess the IMDB page isnt accurate then. My bad.

Same happened here. I joined a public game - then the "host" left, and eventually some other random dude joined mine - and kept skipping all dialogue and cut-scenes. Public game = not a good way to complete your first run-through if you care at all about following what story there is in the game. I have no idea what happened storywise now, apart from "Diablo may or may not be permanently dead" =P

Well they put so much thought into everything except to remove the spoilers from the Achievements screen. I browsed it yesterday to see what else there was and the achievements spoil the story quite heavily one Achievement is even called

You want to know what ruins the gravity of a shocker moment even more? When you have to accept it as a boss event in CO-OP!

WARNING: BOSS FIGHT OF THAT GUY YOU THOUGHT WAS ON YOUR SIDE IN 60s!

If you didn't see that emperor fight coming a mile away.....

No, I just meant for flow purposes. The turnabouts are fairly obvious.

There's definitely something to be said for doing the first play-through either solo or with friends who'll let you actually see all the cutscenes, conversations, and events.  Glad I did that.

Ahahah, Leah dies? That's awesome and far better than what I expected. I expected her to be the one that REALLY beats Diablo, KOing him with Mary Sue powers after we soften him up.

Don't worry, I'm sure that's how the expansion will end after we bring her back somehow.

Leah was never some badass mary sue though.  She exhibits powers in the beginning sure but never really in a useful manner and it's not 'her' power anyways.  I can see the expansion as 'saving' her somehow, or just redeeming her soul but there's no way she's the next thrall.

Possible spoiler - I was watching the "Making Of" DVD that came with the CE last night and the hint that this is a real possibility.  Not in a "we're working on this" sort of way but in a "It felt to us when we wrote this part that Leah's soul is still out there somewhere and we could see telling that story at some point" sort of way.   I don't know when this DVD was recorded, but its at least a bit dated since the rune system they showed was the old one  :awesome_for_real:

I'm fully expecting the expansion to include Tyreal finding the black soul stone and shoving it in his head because surely this can't go wrong AGAIN.

I was thinking that she was some sort of super nephalem like the whatsit guy who literally ascended to godhood because his existence on Sanctuary was fucking everything up. Adria flipping on us was what I expected but I thought she was going to shove it into her head right at the last moment rather than Leah becoming the prime evil.

The thing is that...well, we're never going to actually destroy the prime evils. You can't make a sequel to a game named Diablo without Diablo being in it. You could have the angels flip on us and decide we're too scary even with the hells vanquished, which would be interesting but again NO DIABLO.

Knowing this, it's obvious we were going to be betrayed and the black soulstone wasn't gonna work. I was 50/50 on Adria being possessed or from some of the Diablo animated stuff I saw Imperius being possessed.

Expansion: Black soulstone plummets to earth and buries itself in a small town. Imperius, envious that he was defeated by Diablo and that the humans have cleansed the Heavens, searches for the soulstone's location on Earth. There, he falls prey to the sways of his own Wrathful nature. There he becomes the fallen angel intent on controlling the Heavens again by any means necessary, and following through on his goal to wipe out humankind from the earth.

Yeah there is approximately a zero percent chance that Mr. Imperious isn't someone we fight in the expansion. Also, his name is stupid.


Clearly you save Leah's soul in Act V, and then it turns into an inn running sim.

I call crazy bartender if that's the case.

If you talk to tyrael right before the last fight he has some dialogues about leah's soul being salvadgable and about the lost angel of wisdom wandering some dungeon called pandemonium.

Seeing as my wizard said something like "I will never rest until I save Leah's soul" or something to that effect, I'm pretty sure her role has not yet ended.

This was *totally* my idea. :grin:

I'm okay with this as long as there's a conversation-tree mini-game where you interview characters from D3 for jobs at your inn.

Needs otome mode as well.

You can't prove anything!  :why_so_serious:

As I said earlier though, the idea that we can save Leah's soul is utter nonsense. People who had far less contact with Diablo have been damned for allo of eternity even if they successful resisted him taking over their body. This isn't Warcraft or Starcraft, and when the entirety of the prime evil possesses your body and it's revealed Diablo is your father your are absolutely stone  cold dead.

Leah isn't something special or amazing, and blizzard need to get away from the idea that everyone can be saved. She's just an unlucky young girl with bad parents.

You seem to be under the impression they give the story any thought beyond "does Metzen think it's a good idea?" And Metzen thinks all sorts of stupid shit is a good idea.

It is heavily, heavily, HEAVILY foreshadowed that Leah is, at the very least, not "gone." I would not be surprised if we save her, OR if we find her soul but she's all warped and shit and we have to kill her again and then phew her soul is at "peace," but Shen, Tyrael and the PC all say shit that is basically telegraphing WE AREN'T DONE WITH LEAH YET YOU GUYS.

I like how Leoric, Aiden, Albrecht (a child), along with the rogue and wizard from D1 are all fucked but the worst Deckard Cain replacement ever isn't.

Well, to be honest they never flat out say all those characters are damned at all, outside of maybe the Wizard and that's because he just goes kinda crazy and becomes a demon summoner.

Not that I am in a Diablo game for the story but it was about as straight forward as expected.  My only gripe is that Cain gets offed so early  in Act I to Mahgda.

I know he is an old man and all, but the dude has been around for a while and survived a lot more than to deserve what I thought was a pretty weak way to kill him.  I like me some Cain so that was a bummer but at least he hangs around via the journal explanations.

He better come back as an angel or something in the expansion - I know some people are annoyed by him but dammit I like to stay awhile and listen.

The Leah thing could still turn into a decent story hook for an expansion. Maybe try to save her, but fail and in the process create Imperiablo. Or succeed in saving her, but at some great cost to the world, so she has to die again to fix stuff.

Not great, but those outcomes would fit the overall mood I'd expect. However, they have more interesting hooks in Imperius, Adria and the other stuff mentioned by Tyrael that just dropping the Leah plot would be best.

Well, there's a few open spots in Heaven's pantheon so I suppose that's possible.   Cain for the new Angel of Wisdom! Tyrael as the new Angel of Valor!

Cain getting bumped off in such a scrublike manner really annoyed me.

Most of D2's background lore is people being in awe of Cain or really bothered by his "presence" like Drognan/Hratli, both of whom can tell that he's extremely powerful somehow despite not really having any magic to speak of. Then in D3 he gets unceremoniously knocked off by a D-Grade villainess in a not-CG'd cutscene.

Tyrael is the new "Archangel" (he's still mortal) of Wisdom. They do need a new Archangel of Justice, though.

Cain's not REALLY dead. He's just pulling a Gandalf.

Yeah I figured Ty would take the 'promotion' to Valor and Cain would step in.  Otherwise.. Cain as Justice? Doesn't quite fit the personality.

Hell, it's Metzen.. we'll wind-up with the Prime Archon or something.  :awesome_for_real:

Somehow Thrall comes through a portal and punches a corrupted Imperius in the nads, saving the day.

Identifying items ain't easy yo.

Except when it is, in D3, lol.

Anyway, I thought the incidental dialogue, banter and voice acting for everything not related to the main plot was pretty good. Dug the followers, townsfolk etc.

Main story plot has Metzen all over it and it's not... good. Almost good in a "wow, this is so goofily dumb" way, but not quite. Act 1 & 2 were still OK since they were all set up, when that set up actually starts getting resolved it goes to dumbville pretty fast. I'm not looking forward to many months of esc-ing out of Diablo's horking speeches at the end there.

Story is pants-on-head retarded.  And the millions of shitty machinima and "my life in a book" cutscenes look like ass and, even worse, jar you out of the action no matter how fast you hit ESC.  The between-Act movies at least look good.  But then words happen.

Advice for any video game designer/writer who is thinking about writing a storyline deeper than "good-v-evil with a 1 plot twist max"

1. Look in a mirror.
2. If you see Leo Tolstoy, go right ahead.
3. If you don't see Leo Tolstoy, replace your idea with "good-v-evil with a 1 plot twist max."
4. If you see Chris Metzen, shoot yourself in the face.

Major story choices that had my head scratching:

-Hazan was clearly Belial after he magically showed up in the sewers to meet you.  This is the Lord of Lies?
-Azmodan, supposedly the master war technician of hell, sounded pretty much like a standard monologuing supervillain making standard monologuing supervillain mistakes throughout the act.  Also if his quest was to take the black soulstone for himself, why is he so far away from it at the end of the act?  A nice twist that could have added some urgency would have been finding the final room empty (or with a mini-boss), with Azmodan already in Bastion's Keep within handreach of the soulstone.
-Cain dying in Act 1 really meant nothing to me, which was sad.  I think the death could have had more impact if it happened at the hands of Adria or Leah at the end of Act 3.

Of course it's Diablo and I'm having plenty of fun making hordes of demons go splat, but an entertaining plot after 10ish years of waiting would have been a nice bonus.

Something that has escaped me:

The black soulstone is used to trap the evils, we do so with Azmodan and Belial. Fine.
But how did the other evils get in there? Diablo, Baal, etc etc...

Adria and some handwaving.

Wait. That doesn't make sense.

Diablo clearly states that he is now all 7 evils in one.
But Adria didn't HAVE the black soulstone until we rescued it in Act 2. So did Mehphisto and 4 other evils silently sneak into Bastion keep while we were out and hid inside the soulstone while no one was watching?

"Hi Mephi! My name is Adria. Please put yourself into that stone here, but dont worry it's totally ok, we let you out again soon. See, its all a plan by your brother" Something like that?

It's kind of funny that in 3rd and 4th acts the demons say nothing except variations of "it's just a flesh wound!"

Apparently she was hanging around and 'marked' their souls so that they went into the black soul stone regardless.

It's utter and complete gibberish tbh, and I presume was done so they can give us Mephisto and Baal in one of the expansions.

They get sucked in when the evil wizard dude completes the soulstone in Act 2. Supposedly Adria had spent the last 20 years tracking the souls down (after Diablo 2, so they were just floating around or whatever, not "free") and 'marking' them somehow so that would happen.

I was sad when Cain died (mostly because of his voice acting for some reason, even though Cain's voice acting is 100% goofy most of the time) but yeah, they timed that all wrong.

Thats the entire storylines issue though. The actual overarching story is fine - cheesy, but suitable for Diablo.

But in terms of narrative and implementation, it's appalling bad on every level and I just don't see how no-ones pointed it out somewhere alongtheline. Is not just 'notgood', it's honestly the first truly shit thing I've seen Blizzard produce. Be it enemies who tell you their plans every step of the way, utterly ridiculous plot holes, nonsensical dialogue, dreadful characterisation or the main characters flat out being awful I'm just astounded at how bad it is.

Tink the worse thing for me is how my character happily proclaims to everyone that he's going to kill belial, then the armies of hell, then azmodan, then Diablo without breaking a sweat. There's no hesitation, no fear, just ridiculous 'I R HERO I KILL YOU'.

Oh, and when the greatest battlefield command in Hells super strategy is 'throw army pointlessly against walls of the biggest castle in existance' you know your on to a winner. Mind you, given apparently the *entire* army of hell was destroyed by one mortal I'm notsure why anyone cared about the demons in the first place?

You are so looking for the wrong things in a Diablo storyline. It's 1-4 people that are HUGELY BAD ASS (and generally know it) versus hell. The end!


This storyline, for all its faults, is still leaps and bounds above Cataclysm's "storyline."  :oh_i_see:

If they kept everything exactly the same but made it so the only time you ever speak to the villains is in person I would cringe less. It's just annoying having them pop up in 'astral form' every time I complete a quest. Does this all go back to that idiotic complaint from The Burning Crusade about how Illidan was too invisible and some people wanted more interaction with the final boss prior to fighting him?

In the Behind the Scenes DVD that game with the CE they talk about the difficulty of telling a good story in a game where you are basically not supposed to stop the action at all.  Part of it they tried to do through books that drop (mainly the back story), but I think way too much of it was done with ridiculous dialog.  And then they layer on the painting style cut scenes every so often just to say "HEY IF YOU WEREN'T PAYING ATTENTION THIS IS WHAT IS HAPPENING."  I think of the three, this is the weakest story, but I think that is also because they spent the most time on it.  With 1 and 2 it was pretty loose and the setting just kind of stood as the main thing which made the whole thing coherent (Hey, its a world, evil is here, save it, and a few side quests). 

By contrast it seems like in D3 they try to make every step you take laden with some kind of main story line significance and in the end that actually just makes it feel pretty forced in most cases.   

It may go back to them not understanding the nature of that complaint, perhaps. The "Illidan was too invisible" complaint was really "we were given basically no reason to believe he was anything like a threat to Azaroth, so why should we give a shit?" That Kael'thas lieutenant dude you killed in a 5 man, who was a slightly recurring dude, felt more fulfilling to people because a) we knew who he was by the time we killed him, b) we knew he was up to no good and c) he shit talked us once. The problem is, Blizzard took this to mean any face time was good face time (as evidenced by Arthas showing up every two fucking minutes in WotLK). I thought they had gotten better at it with Deathwing, but it was hard to tell since his motivation was so retarded I had a hard time getting past it to give a shit about him as a villain either.  :why_so_serious:

I think there's a happy medium there somewhere, Azmodan certainly didn't need to chit chat the entire way (although I didn't mind the Claudia Black demon talking shit through HER whole dungeon, and I thought Magdha was fine as a talky villainess too). Mainly I think Belial was tragically wasted as the Lord of Lies. He could've been there every step of the way, without it being telegraphed and in more than just Annoying Child Form, in a way that worked. But alas! Metzen'd.

Still, the fact Tyrael didn't become a full-bore mary sue self-insert was nice.

That kid was just so transparently going to be a villain. "Hey, how are you here in this secret evil hideout?" "Oh, yeah.. I uh.. found an amulet that lets me uh.. talk to you?"

Here's all the story a Diablo game ever needs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KC9ajvJ8jM4

I think that is actually one of the key moments in the Diablo storyline for me.  Because it represents something pretty simple - the hero's failure.  Obviously the hero wins, more or less, but it sort of sets up the fact that the player character isn't really a match for Diablo in all facets (even if he can beat him in combat).  Even in Diablo 2 I felt like my hero was really struggling against all hell breaking loose.

But in Diablo 3 they turn that all around.  In Diablo 3 you are the superior to the demons/angels, you are set up from pretty early on for a sure victory.  I think the whole thing would've been superior without the nephalem thing.  Sure, my hero would sitll be badass, but then at least my badassery would be self earned or something, this nephalem thing was just bestowed, and it felt cheap.

Yeah pretty much.

Are the nephalem mentioned at all in Diablo2? Because I don't remember it at all. I mean the Horadrim and Tal Rasha are fucken awesome, but I don't remember Nephalem at all... I honestly don't mind the Angel stuff, but yeah the Nephalem and the retcon of Leoric's older son slaying Diablo and becoming the Dark Wanderer is just Blizzard/Metzen crap through and through

After doing a little poking around it seems like this nephalem thing is fleshed out in the Sin War books.  But fucked if I am going to read novels to get up to speed on Blizzard lore.

We'll expect 1000 words by Wednesday, then.  Thanks.

Yeah, the entire Nephalim thing is dragged over from the books. That's another thing blizzard have to stop doing - stop releasing shit novels and then relying on them for the in game story. Was particulary badly handled in this game though it has to be said - there wasn't even a scene where it was revealed you were a Nephalim. Just flipped straight into it.

It basically tells you you're one when you're able to go into the flooded temple. You can kind of piece together everything from the little journal snippets if you're thorough about finding all of them. (I didn't even know there were novels and pretty much felt like I understood what was going on the whole way through.) It isn't as bad of a 'read novels to understand wtf' as WoW has been from Wrath onward IMO.

Oh trust me, I found every snippet. It's like some disease or something - I was so proud when I finally unlocked the 'heard ever conversation in the game' achievement! ;-)

But yes, at the drowned temple its hinted at you are a Nephalim, and then next stage everyone is just calling you one. Doesn't explain properly what they are, and seems ridiculous to be focussing on it given humans have already kicked the prime evils asses all across the world once before. You could remove it entirely from the game and it would only improve it.

(and possibly stop people wondering how Tyrael made himself mortal, given that humans are half angel / half demon so how could taking his wings off turn him human).

Listening to Cain talk about the MORLUUUUUoooooo, is a running joke in my group of friends.

His voice acting cracks me up. Also we make up random tomes voiced by our own version of Cain where he talks about taking a dump in the woods over there that one time.

They're not going to stop.  They've flat-out said that since the Arthas and other novels have done so well they're going the other way and ramping-up your need to read them if you want to know wtf is going on in the game world.  There will be no/ little backstory in Blizzard games until this crashes, just accept things in medias res and go with it.  

What's that, Cain's dead? Oh, it's explained in the $9 paperback? Ok then.  Huh.. I'm some sort of prophesied savior  and I need to read the D3 book to understand. All right then.    

Someone's trying to grow them into a media empire vs. just a game company.   I almost expect a fully animated movie ($19.99!) prior to the next SC2 expansion so you understand why Kerrigan's a bug again and why the Protoss decided to kill all humans.

I mean, I wasn't confused by the nephalem thing, I just didn't like it.  I'd much rather just be a normal human who overcomes the odds than a super special human who SHOULD win.  Just a personal preference I guess.  Disliked the same thing about being Dragonborn in Skyrim, for example.

Na, you are super capitalist buys latest bad-ass magic gear from E-bay so you can punch the literal personification of evil in the nads.

First mention of the nephalem is in D2 expansion, the three warriors who bar you entrance to the worldstone area are nephalem.

The Ancients.

Free level!

That's like saying liver cancer is better than ebola.  True, but not comforting. 

I didn't read any outside information at all, and I'm pretty sure I understand that the Nephalim are the progeny of the demons and angels that fled to Sanctuary, that the worldstone was used to dampen their strength, and when it was shattered, that power started coming back.  So unless there's something I'm missing that's hugely important, that info is totally in the game.

That said, I sorta agree that it would be cooler to just be a normal human, but whatevs.  Not a serious issue (such as the Lord of Lies being a hilariously poor liar).

Seriously, the more I think about it, the sadder Belial makes me. The Lord of Lies has such huuuuuuge potential waaaaaaaah.

How do you know he wasn't trying to be captured? Huh? Huh?

(http://i.qkme.me/3phw0u.jpg)

I actually vaguely held out hope that you never actually killed him (as you only see his illusion form die), but the total lack of any indication later on that Diablo diidn't actually have Belial's "real" soul later on kinda killed that theory for me.  While you could run with that in an expansion, it'd be pretty lame that it wasn't telegraphed in the slightest.

I won't lie, I totally cracked up when she expressed outrage and disbelief that Belial might've maybe not been 100% honest with her. It was possibly my favorite moment with her, because it was so unbelievably dumb it wrapped around to so-bad-it-is-AWESOME for me. <3

Maybe he's more like a manager and doesn't really do much lying himself. He just does paperwork, handles employee conflicts and does performance reviews.

 :heart:

This would actually explain a lot of the story and the other characters as well.  :awesome_for_real:

It would have been much more acceptable as a story if the character voices weren't so obviously evil EVEN WHILE THEY HELP YOU.

In regards to the evil wizard:  I see where they were going with him, in that he wasn't "really" evil, he was trying to bring power back to humans so we wouldn't live at the whim of angels/demons.  Which would have worked spectacularly since he moustache twirls from the moment you meet him and pretty much holds up a big neon sign saying "EVIL BASTARD".  Except the storytelling wasn't very good and what could have been a good flip, making him the good guy and the horadrim/angels being the people keeping humans down, was instead swept under the rug.

He is the other Lost Opportunity Character, yes. But he has a magical evil laugh, so I like him anyway. <3

I also liked the fact that when he is there he is all like "I am emperor and while i could not help you at court, i can help you now!" and does so, by opening a gate

Just finished normal at last.

I now wish I could just switch the entire storyline off and never see/hear it again.

I much preferred D2s

Why did we kill the evil wizard guy anyway? He held up his end of the bargain, then seems to be scratching his head over wtf the soulstone's been tampered with, then we kill him.  Was that Adria's doing, eliminating someone who was about to reveal her plan?

I think I might have nodded off during the monologueing and missed something.

He wouldn't give over the black soulstone so you had to kill him.

Is it just me or does Diablo carry more than a passing resemblance to Kerrigan Oueen of Blades?

My first thought was "WTF? THAT'S Diablo?" I know it was Leah bu that has to be the worst rendering of Diablo I've seen.

In D1 and 2 he was bulky and muscular and designed to terrify - in D3 it's like Mr Diablo stepped out of his office and his secretary is there to chat to you and offer you a cup of tea and make you feel comfortable as you await your imminent doom.

I know Blizzard likes putting tits and arse and hourglass figures on everything and that Kerrigan is the Destroyer of Humanity that you would like to fuck, but watering down Diablo's intimidation factor? Seriously Blizzard.

But we just hit Kulle until he fell over, why did the previous attempt to do the same have to divide his body parts up and bury them in elaborate crypts under the sand?

I'm about to kill him in Hell, Lyndon is great in the lead-up, and a lot of it just doesn't make sense the more backstory you get from multiple playthroughs.  They totally need to bring him back as the Archangel of Evil Cackles in Act 5 after we smack down Imperious and company. 

I thought Diablo was perfectly fine design-wise, except his shoulder plates from the top-down angle DID sort of look like boobs. And he was totally swinging his hips seductively in his busting into heaving cinematic. No naturally occurring high heels, though.


Buuuut I don't find "vaguely feminine" automatically "less intimidating," I suppose.

His boobs were heaving?

I found myself wishing they had actually had Jennifer Hale do the Diablo voice too, with whatever sorts of post-effect stuff to make it sound demonic.

Whoops, meant Heaven. I am totally leaving that mistake, though!  :why_so_serious:

What I took from the lore books was they couldn't hurt him enough to outdamage his health regen - something weird about his blood being sand. They were just 'above average' folks who teamed up to take down someone who was comparatively super-powerful. The player character is "nephalem" which makes them more powerful than Kulle, or his equal, or something.

Edit: even with my explanation it still doesn't make any sense. Oh well.

 

And who knows really, maybe we just beat him up enough to take the soulstone away and he's happily regenerating away where we left him.

One can hope.  :heart:


And maybe he'll want to beat up Adria with us!  :why_so_serious:

After two games with a pretty consistent appearance

(http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080818200527/diablo/images/8/82/Diablo2xd5.gif)(http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080715160743/diablo/images/4/42/Diablo.gif)

It was kinda jarring to go to sexyDiablo.

(And who wants to fuck Kerrigan?  :ye_gods: I bet her vajayjay is full of leech mouths and shit like that.  :uhrr:)

I thought I was alone in thinking Diablo had a sexy little sashay number going on.  It was one of those "did I just see that?" moments.

Diablo manifests characteristics of the host  - in this case Leah. (So says Metzen on the Behind the Scenes DVD, don't shoot the messenger).  I actually didn't mind it myself *shrugs*.

I was leaning toward the side that thought Diablo resembled the queen from Aliens. I think it was the tail...

I am hating the story more and more as I play. I can't hit spacebar/escape fast enough to MAKE THE STORY STOP OH GOD.. seriously, it's so bad it could be used for torture. The image earlier on this page is a good representation of this. I feel like they wanted us to think Maghda was something other than a monocle-wearing mustache-twirling cartoon villain when they have Leah say stuff like 'she's toying with us!' or having Magdha say stuff like "let the games begin!" as if she's some kind of chess-master. I just want to kill mobs but I'm continuously interrupted by whatever villain of the act saying idiotic shit like 'you're dooooooooomed' or some variation over and over.

 :uhrr: I don't hate the concept, but in execution I think Diablo wound up looking goofy.

Wait until the last act, where Diablo tries to guilt-trip you into giving up and walking away. It's your fault Leah dies! It's your fault Cain dies! Give up and go home!
Also annoying: Belial's great deception (WHO COULD IT BE), and Adria's sudden but inevitable betrayal are both things you see coming a mile away.

I really didn't have a problem with the story. I don't expect a deep literary narrative from Blizzard games, but I wasn't really disappointed with much. Cain getting killed off by a mid-boss was pretty stupid (Maghda should have been the end boss of Act 1 which would have largely fixed that) but the rest was all about what I expected. There were plenty of "DOOD THAT WAS EPIC" moments my friends and I had over Mumble while watching the cutscenes.

I agree with the Maghda bit. It seemed totally obvious to me that she was the Act 1 boss, then..a wild butcher appears!  Then you gank her in what is a boring/easy boss fight mid way through Act 2 to no fanfare (despite the fact that my character insists he/she is pissed and will get revenge for Cain).  In fact, to a degree a large part of Act 1 -> Mid Act 2 felt kind of meandering and weird story wise.

The end of Act 2, Act 3 and Act 4 at least all had clear direction and purpose (I especially like Act 3) and it almost felt like the beginning was just Blizzard trying to force Tristram into the story and figuring out how to get to the good part.

Although it hurt my brain, I was able to ignore the story well enough on my first play through on normal. What I cannot stand is how it gets interjected so incessantly on replays, I'd like for all vestiges of that garbage be removed. Pissed me off that the blue name that responded (with mostly good responses) to the long list of suggestions recently, blithely and senselessly passed on the request for a cutscene skip checkbox, fuck him for not elaborating. I'd like for more than that even, I want all vestiges of the story and the idiotic characters removed on subseqent playthroughs, hate the Leah character, fucking bow in her hair, and how all that goes. Plus the "I'm so and so demon here to blah blah blah" yeah yeah how about you fuck off and drop some level appropriate gear?

Funny story rephrasing, copy pasted in thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/uin6w/someone_on_the_official_forums_retells_the_story/

The whole Diablo thing in 3 struck me as more Cell from DBZ, but he does have a passing resemblance to the queen in Aliens 2/PvA.

I think the character you're playing makes some of the stuff slightly less/more silly depending.

If you're a Wizard, you flat out laugh at Maghda when she gets indignant at you suggesting she was set up.

Something like, "HA! Belial is the lord of LIES, fool."

Yeah, I think the DH was also like "um, duh?" if I remember right. I could just be letting the wizard and demon hunter get sort of mixed in my brain. They both have a lot of bitchy lines, you see, so it's entirely possible they get muddled in there.

In other news, Blizzard are happy with D3's story so I guess we can expect the expansion to be just as bad. Jay said that Blizz got lots of 'positive feedback' on the story, and calls out a guy for saying the story was bad.

Which puzzles me, because it should be pretty obvious to anyone that the story is a fucking joke.

DIABLO: CAN YOU TELL I'M A GIRL THIS GAME??? I CAN'T STOP TALKINGGGGGGG   :awesome_for_real:

Thanks for the link Sir Fodder.

That's the good thing about having a customer base in the 'millions'.  I'm quite sure they DID get a LOT of positive feedback, because 9 million people contains a nice percentage of utter retards, madmen and children.  However, I'd be calling them outright liars if they said the greater percentage of feedback said the story was good.

Also, Diablo had tits that wiggled out the way.  What the fuck was all that about?

Those were from Leah :awesome_for_real: :ye_gods:

Haha...glad it's just not me who was botherd by that.

Also:


Instant classic. Thanks Lord Fodder!

The worst part is leah mentions fighting skeletons or some shit with her uncle when she's following you.

Re-animated corpses? Normal.
Demons? Whoa whoa, watch all that fantasy bullshit.

I have found that the mashing of the spacebar makes the storyline so much better

That is all

Maybe I am swimming against the stream here, but I am enjoying the storyline.

Slowly going through this (I am playing 5-6 different toons, including hardcore ones now in their teens) all the classes except Barb and WH), and I still have not finished Act IV (though close to final Boss with highest toon). But I find the banter to be comedic, and entertaining in a campy way. The follower banter is fun too, as it seems to be a bit different for the various character combos.

But agreed, that they should give you an option to turn off the cutscenes after you've seen them already.

I enjoyed the follower storylines. The main story, not so much.

Personally I enjoyed the storyline. But I didn't expect a literary epic from a game that is about as mechanically deep as left click, right click, loot with random stats. Oh and q for potion!

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1217291/D3/sacrilege.png)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4whm2aCBQk&feature=related

This series is just great.

I don't ever think we'll see a D4.  Jay Wilson, and the harshness that followed him due to his firing from the position, showed Blizzard that you can't have a good looking piece of garbage (with both shitty drop rates and a shitty story).

I don't believe that you can have a game with good drop rates and no story, these days.  WoW has ruined that for us.   We're tired of making up stories, we want to be entertained.  But that's just my opinion.

Path of Exile?

I don't need any story beyond "I need you to go kill everything in that place.  By the way, you can keep all the shit you find.  You're welcome."

I just want the story to be about ME. I'm the one playing the damn game and saving the world.

I also don't want any parts of the story to be told in fucking novels before the game even releases.

I must admit this pisses me off almost as much as anything else.  I was supposed to read a shitty novel that I've never heard of to understand what's going on?  I'm sorry but that is stupid.

Path of Exile has a story, but you pretty much have to talk to all the NPCs about everything. But really there's not a lot to it so far since not all of the main game's acts are complete; you're an exile, duh. You're dumped on the shithole island of a former world-conquering power that mysteriously destroyed itself of its own hubris, and while fucking around playing hero to the locals you start catching hold of a plotline where the pricks who exiled you are on the island too looking for some awesome macguffin or another they're totally convinced they can control or use that totally won't summon some cthulumonster or turn their leader into a crazy god or some shit that you have to kill.

All the talking fills in the story of what happened to the eternal empire, then some bits of the people who came before them, then why you should probably hate this Piety chick you've been bumping into off and on. The backstory to the world is reasonably fleshed out so far, but ironically where it falls apart is why some of the classes give a shit since they decided to give them all a cursory backstory. Like half of the classes wouldn't give a shit to chase piety, even for "revenge".

Diablo 3 has had 2 games, bad novels, and a PnP game to flesh its world out and it makes it pretty clear why all the characters care. The star is a bad omen, oh shit the demons are back, you're the destined whatever naphalem, kill creepy bootydiablo. With like 2 really lame as shit twists.

My point is just that with PoE you can basically ignore all the story and have a perfectly fun time playing the game.  The character building mechanics are the big draw.  If you care about the story you can find out more.  If you don't, its a nice monster killing romp.

Diablo 3 shoves the story down your throat at every opportunity to the point where it is too much.  First, every 10 minutes you get another quest or part of a quest. None of the quests are optional or can be done out of order (with the exception of the "events" you find as you go).  Then, after every handful of quests you get a cutscene recapping the story with a voice over.  It gives the whole experience a very lineral/on rails feeling that Diablo 2 avoided and even Diablo 1 managed to avoid even though it WAS extremely linear.


I actually like Diablo 3's combat, I think it is the best the genre has seen.  But in terms of how they present the story, I without a doubt prefer Path of Exile, even though the plot itself in PoE is quite thin.

I agree the combat is good, that's why I keep playing it.

I miss the randomness the most though. I can play every map in my sleep at this point. War never changes.

The story in D3 is best experienced with enthusiastic use of the spacebar.

Yeah, I definitely agree on the randomness point.  Even those areas which are "random" have pretty regular patterns.

This is where D1 excelled, you had barely a handful of NPCs to talk to and the non-random portion of the game was tiny.

Same complaint as City of Heroes and every game to attempt 'random' since 3-d became the norm instead of Sprites.  3d puzzle bits are harder to create and use in a real random fashion, as I understand it.  Bloodworth can expound on the reasons, I'm sure.

Minecraft seems to do a fine job of it, though.

Minecraft uses the same approach as sprites & tiles because of its bitcube nature.  "Random" in 3D is 1x1x1 cubes stacked instead of 1x1 tiles arrayed.

Torchlight 1/2 and Path of Exile all do a better job of random levels. The only areas that didn't feel exactly the same to me were some of the indoor areas of Act 3...and that was about it really.