I would bet that 99% we are not seeing that much freedom.
Think more of Witcher 3 style choices. You can chose skellige king… But in essence no matter whom you chose they will act the same. Only the end cinematic/soideshow changes.
This is impactful to the story, but it bears almost zero effect on gameplay and quest path. If you strip flavor text, your choice changes nothing in your game.
I agree completely. And knowing Blizzard’s really poor quality of narration in recent years…
Although i doubt that by discarding branches they would up the quality. There would simply be less of the same quality in their case.
My reasoning is: there are people who will work on d4 story almost exclusively for Years. But it will still probably suck. No matter how one tries, if they dont have a storyteller in them - the result will be one-dimentional regardless of how much time they spend.
Thats why it boggles my mind when game studios hire known trash-makers over and over. Like Rianna Pratchett who ruined over a dozen AAA games and still got contracts lining up because if her surname. Or even Kristie Golden. Barely anyone liked BFA story, it was criticised on every forum and Blizzard KNOWS it. And yet, instead of hiring someone new - they stick with her for Shadowlands.
That doesn’t really mean they’re gonna be doing deep storytelling though.
Sounds to me like it’s gonna be the superficial quest-based storytelling we see in games like WoW
I don’t mean multiple stories. I mean multiple routes in the same story. As in, depending on your actions, the story itself changes.
This was actually what I thought the topic was. It’s still more work for the devs. Even if the story would happen in same places, there’s no way to do this without atleast some extra work.
If it was done by making only really small changes, then the effect is barely visible. If it’s done well → lots of extra work.
Decent writing has been one of the most underdeveloped things in gaming since the start, leading to even just average writing being widely applauded when it does occur.
I hope that now that the heat is on Blizzard to prove themselves once again, they will start taking their own IP and their lore a little more seriously, as I feel they have just been doing victory laps in recent years, riffing off of old ideas and retconning where necessary.
On the subject of Diablo specifically, let’s just say I’m setting the bar pretty low as far as storytelling goes. As long as it is of a higher quality than the kids cartoon that was Diablo 3’s story, I will call it acceptable. I do not expect branching storylines. Just a few unexpected twists and surprises alongside some memorable villains would go a very long way.