Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls

[Maledict]

To be fair, all the enemies perpetually nag you and as far as I'm aware Azmodan isn't most people's object of lust.

The fact that they are still referring to 'the Nephalim' in the trailer surprised me though. For all the lessons they have learnt about the game design, they don't appear to have reflected on the story at all. They should bury that entire concept and the shitty lore behind it in a lead casket 5 miles underground.

[Ironwood]

THE MAIDEN OF LUSTS IS A FUCKING SPIDER IN SUSPENDERS.  SERIOUSLY.

If It wasn't Claudia, I'd be more squicked.

[Ratman_tf]

I thought we played Diablo 3 for the story.

Metzen =/= story unless story=piling steam of shit (with horns and boobs)

I literally laughed out loud when evilLeah transformed into FemmeDiablo in that cutscene and sashayed into heaven.

Why didn't Diablo look like a little kid when he possessed the king's son in the first game?

(Yes, I know it's a retcon, so they could have boobie Diablo.)

[Ingmar]

Didn't FemmeDiablo literally have high-heels and plate boobs? I'm wondering if the social justice warrior brigade ever thought about the combination of all evils being a woman or whatever.

There have been plenty of words spent on Blizzard's female character designs over the years, yes. However from what I've seen, most of the complaining about Diablo's specific design in D3 has been from brodudes whining about how girly the animations are, etc. To me the model does read as somewhat feminine, especially when animated, but it doesn't read as particularly sexualized, not like, say, Kerrigan. Kerrigan is far worse - she's got built in high heels and smooth areas on her carapace that conveniently correspond to her boobs and ass, the face stays human and looks like she's wearing make-up, etc. I think the Diablo model is just alien enough that it doesn't have the same issue - it does have those chest plate things, but they don't really hang like boobs, and iirc the feet are more doglike than anything else - the model is up on its toes, but doesn't have heels I don't think. (A quick GIS didn't turn up one where I could see the feet though so I could be remembering wrong.)

I think they've also gotten more of a pass with D3 on this stuff compared to SC2, at least in terms of visual design, because you can see they've made some progress, what with all the classes having both genders available, there being non-traditional body types like the female barbarian, etc.

The story stuff is terrible from ANY perspective, feminist or not, so there's not a lot of reason to go into depth there.

EDIT: Found picture, no high heels:

[Sjofn]

Diablo does not have high heels in D3. Diablo's legs are indeed dog-like, the "boob plates" are just plates that from the top-down angle look weirdly boob-ish, but from any other angle are just weird shoulder plates.

I actually liked that Diablo was more feminine, due to Diablo's vessel being a woman this go around (or whatever), and found the brodude wailing about how "girly" and thus totally unthreatening Diablo was hilarious, because heaven forbid the big bad who had previously been a brick of fiery meat be anything else. I liked the more lithe form, and found Diablo's visual design interesting, in that it was clearly feminine but not particularly sexualized (unless you're one of those broken people who thinks anything feminine = sex).

Blizzard gets a fair amount of flack for its inability to portray women as actual people, though it tends to get buried in its (well deserved) bigger pile of flack for the fact that all of its story shit is badly written fanfic by a stupid manchild. It's hard to get too angry at how badly they suck at portraying three dimensional women specifically when they're very clearly incapable of portraying three dimensional anything.


edit: As for the "zomg all evils are a woman" thing, that's not ... an issue? Leah (or however you spell her name) winds up being what she is due to the circumstances of her birth, not due to having a vagina. Plus Diablo's taken over dudes before. So gender never enters into it, nor should it. You could change her into Lee, manly man what mans, and the story arc would be exactly the same (except the scoundrel probably wouldn't have a crush on him). That's actually a good thing.

[Ratman_tf]

I found it a little jarring because in the first two game, Diablo looked the same no matter if his host was a little boy or a grown man. So while it is a neat idea that Diablo takes on a corrupted form of his host, I didn't see it in the first two games, and so it's a big honkin retcon.

And I think they chose a woman, a particularly girlish woman with a pretty ribbon in her hair, because women tend to be easier to feel sympathy for.
Just compare the details of the Wanderer's fall in D2 to Leah's corruption in D3.

[Ironwood]

Did the story, even on the first playthrough, manage to make ANYONE feel sympathy for Leah ?

She was a fucking idiot.

[Rendakor]

What IW said. In D2 I at least felt bad for The Wanderer since he was supposed to be my character from D1.

[Maledict]

Not at all but that's an endemic problem with Blizzard now. They don't show, they just tell - endlessly and repetitively. All their recent games (SC2, D3, WoW) have suffered from the fact they now 'have the technology to tell the stories they wanted to tell'.

It's really quite embarrassing that the company responsible for the original Starcraft + Broodwar storyline is also responsible for the pile of garbage that is SC2. They keep wanting us to feel sorry for and emphasise with characters who I'd rather never hear from again - and they don't seem to understand *why* they keep failing at this.

[Yegolev]

Did the story, even on the first playthrough, manage to make ANYONE feel sympathy for Leah ?

She was a fucking idiot.

Agree.  The first third of the game she's calling Uncle Cain a senile doofus (YEAH HE'S DEAD NOW, HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW YOU CUNT), and she's narratively useless once Tyrael shows up.  Three protagonists is too many.

[Ironwood]

Yeah, and it's been done to death the problems with that relationship between Leah and her Uncle.

If your Uncle goes senile and starts claiming he's the head of Tesco, that's one thing.  It's slightly different if he believes in Cars being real and you stand in the middle of the motorway saying 'don't be stupid uncle, cars don't exist.'

Utter utter drivel was written.  And only skippable in small chunks with the spacebar.

[Malakili]

Leah was insufferable, poorly written even in her insufferability, and didn't even really advance the plot at any point.  Her character literally could have been kidnapped by Adria before the game even started, and act 3 could have ended the same way with Adria showing up stealing the Black Soulstone, Diabloifying Leah and the game would have been better, and probably made more narrative sense too.

Diablo 2's story was pretty clear, we're chasing after Diablo and we're always a step behind.

Diablo 3's story was 3 chapters of "No one really knows what the hell is going on, let's kill some demons I guess" followed by one poorly written chapter of "we're chasing Diablo."

[Paelos]

It doesn't even make sense why the demons are showing up.

[Maledict]

I just loved the fact that the battle plan for Hell's greatest general was 'throw hordes of minions at the biggest, most pointless citedal in history'. No wonder the Sin War went on for so long if that's the level of warfare. Mind you this was also the game with

 - the worlds most obvious twist in history (emperor Hakan)
- the immortal line 'Be'lial, the Prince of Lies? betray me? Never!'

An you are right, there was no reason given for the demons at all. They just suddenly turned up everywhere randomly.

[Ironwood]

Wasn't it because Tyrael fell to Earth ?

That always bugged me ;  "I have come to Earth to warn you that my coming to Earth will Herald The End Times !!"

"Yeah ?  Well fuck off arsehole."

[Malakili]

Wasn't it because Tyrael fell to Earth ?

That always bugged me ;  "I have come to Earth to warn you that my coming to Earth will Herald The End Times !!"

"Yeah ?  Well fuck off arsehole."

Tyrael is the reason the undead rose in/around the Cathedral I think.  But it doesn't seem clear to me how this becomes a full blown demonic invasion.  The cultists seem to have something to do with it, but they are never really developed sufficiently to explain it.  Acts 1 and 2 are ultimately tied up in the Cult sort of run by Magdha but who reports to Belial. Azmodan seems to invade directly from hell, so Act 3 makes some kind of sense, even if his plan was clownshoes.

[Paelos]

There's no seeming plan for any of it. Also, a fallen angel causes undead? What? That never made sense to me either.

[Ironwood]

It was Zoltan Khule that totally baked my noodle;  Why in the name of fuck did we go to all that trouble to ressurect you and then bean you one in the scone after we did ?  Damn your inevitable betrayal !!

I mean, he had the black soulstone, which we need to suck demons, so we had to raise him to life to get it, even though it was clear we'd bean him the moment he did.  I just.  I just. I don't even.  And the endless, endless fucking non stop 'Hey, you'll never defeat me, whoops you did, it doesn't matter'

Arg.

Sam wrote this all better for the front page.  I'm going to shut up.  I  know I promise that every fucking time, but I really am.

[Malakili]

It was Zoltan Khule that totally baked my noodle;  Why in the name of fuck did we go to all that trouble to ressurect you and then bean you one in the scone after we did ?  Damn your inevitable betrayal !!

I mean, he had the black soulstone, which we need to suck demons, so we had to raise him to life to get it, even though it was clear we'd bean him the moment he did.  I just.  I just. I don't even.  And the endless, endless fucking non stop 'Hey, you'll never defeat me, whoops you did, it doesn't matter'

Arg.

Sam wrote this all better for the front page.  I'm going to shut up.  I  know I promise that every fucking time, but I really am.

Zultan Kulle actually didn't even betray us.  We just kill him because, um, he has black robes and says some vaguely menacing things.  He says something like "Oh shit, something is going majorly wrong here, someone is fucking with us, the demons are already in here, that doesn't even make sense."  And then we kill him because uh, I don't know.

If I had any choice in the matter that's the point at which you team up with Kulle, put an arrow through Adria's head, and if Leah protests, her too.

[Fabricated]

And the nephilim thing, which I bet money is meant as a way to get rid of our characters after D3's whole arc is finished.

One of the original nephilim basically was forced to rise to godhood and leave sanctuary because he was so powerful his mere existence on the plane was destroying it.

Once the D3 storyline is donewith I imagine our characters will be forced to ascend to godhood and leave Sanctuary so the next batch of heroes can show up. I imagine they might even have the nephilim become the badguys in place of the sorta permanently defeated prime evils for a bit until Diiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaaaabbbbloooooooo gets brought back as some contrivance to keep the name making sense.

[Soulflame]

I think the demons show up because the world stone was keeping them out, and the destruction of it allowed them to invade the world.

So, once again, it's Tyrael's fault.

[Paelos]

I thought the demons showed up because Thrall left.

[Ironwood]

LOL

[Yegolev]

Alright.  Here's a question.  Once I rise to power and create a real D2LoD clone that everyone likes, who does and who does not actually want a story?

[schild]

I don't even want the character to move. I want the monsters to just come to me in a black space and drop loot when I wack them with my Cudgel of Healing.

[Malakili]

Get the atmosphere right and the story doesn't matter.

[Ingmar]

It matters insofar as it provides some structure, but yeah this is not a genre that benefits from constant NPC chatter. I think if you took the pop-up chatter away from Azmodan and whatshername (Claudia Black spider lady) that the structure/pacing/look&feel of Act 3 is just about perfect for how a game like that should work.

[schild]

That's funny because I found Chapter 3 to be the worst one in the game with, by far, the most phoned-in atmosphere.

It was just big devil stuff and fetch quests.

I'm not sure I want quests in a game like this to be honest. I need to think on that.

[Ingmar]

I thought Act 2 was by far the worst. Just endless boring bland brown desert shit.

[schild]

Chapter 2 wasn't good either.

That's how bad Diablo 3 is.

But then, Lut Gholein and Kurast were fucking terrible in Diablo 2 also.

[schild]

Basically, even with two absolute shit chapters in Diablo 2, the loot and gameplay was so much better that it didn't matter to nearly any of us.

Which is why I said:

I don't even want the character to move. I want the monsters to just come to me in a black space and drop loot when I wack them with my Cudgel of Healing.

[Paelos]

Game story is one of the most overblown elements in pretty much all games. I don't need a great story if the elements work well.

I'll continually point at Mount and Blade, Just Cause 2, the Mario games, etc. They have bare bones if no story whatsoever, but I've dumped hundreds of hours into them because they work so well.

[Malakili]

I'm not sure I want quests in a game like this to be honest. I need to think on that.

I thought Diablo 2 handled quests really well.  Basically one over arching quest per act, and then a bunch of effectively optional quests that would explain things you came across through the course of the act and give you a reward for actually doing them.

Diablo 3's one quest after the other format is just awful by comparison.

[Soulflame]

I really liked that, if you looked, you could read about the backstory of the Sin War, and the struggle between heaven and hell.  I certainly don't think anything like that needs to be more than lore books you can voluntarily interact with.

[Yegolev]

I also have that feel.

0. Loot.
1. Environments must be interesting, you'll spend a lot of time there. (black space LOL)
2. No need for cutscenes.  For one, it disrupts pacing.  For two, who cares?
2.5. I'm a big fan of lore that can be gleaned but is otherwise not obvious.  I hold Demon's/Dark Souls high in this regard.  Diagolev: The Game will feature bookshelves that you can read from or smash or ignore.
3.

Why do three question marks make a crying face?