The ideal Diablo 4 story

General Discussion
1

Diablo 4 act 1:

We are 30years after the events of Reapers of soul.

The awakening of the Nephalem, sanctuary falling in a greater and greater spiral of chaos…

The heroes of D3 became certain that humanity’s survival lays with the destruction of both hell and heaven(since Imperius is hostile to humanity)

Trang-Oul, the dragon of balance can’t bear this kind of imbalance and sends you back to where it all started. Trang-Oul takes your soul and send it back to your younger non-Nephalem self to stop Baal from corrupting the worldstone.(or it could simply be him talk to your former self as a premonition through the void and time)

This is perfectly in the realm of Trang-Oul’s power

trang-Oul, the five points each holding a symbol representing one of the five elements they believe Trang-Oul to be linked to earth, air, fire, water, and time
https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Trag%27Oul#cite_note-SotS-2

Disclaimer:It could simply be him through the void, speaking to your former self, instructing you how to stop Baal as a Premonition dream.

You succeed, but the void being an plane exempt of time and space allows Lilith to witness and remember the reverted events and your time jump

Trang-Oul also being a Being of the void created a window in order to communicate with you, like he did with Rathma, Lilith took note and is a fast learner, she now can do similar and communicates with Rathma to plan how to summon her back

DEkard Cain is alive again and Tyrael is still an Angel

Diablo 4 act 2:

At this moment, Sanctuary just witness the destruction, terror and hatred that the events of Diablo 2 created. Lilith takes this opportunity to ask for assistance for her plan to muzzle Hell once and for all

She claims that she is doing this to protect her children, the humans of sanctuary.

We accept the offer and venture hell with her and Rathma

She manages to becomes one with the burning hells, Rathma emprison her in a soulstone and drive it into the Burning hells core… now having the control over who gets to respawn and having control over all the minions of hells.

The lesser and prime evils flee hell to not be killed and fall under the control of Lilith

They flee to sanctuary where they reek havoc

Diablo 4 act 3-4-5:

You roam sanctuary to kill all the Dark exiled

Diablo 4 expansion:

Having seen the events of the black world stone, Lilith’s plan is to do it again, but we’ll this time. She wants to reborn Tathamet, she’s a mother afterall, birthing is her perk.But this time it’s gonna be done right with the missing parts like the burning hells and the most powerful necromancer to assist the revival

Imperius tries to stop it with his army but get rektd, in the process he miraculously fall on the prison of mirror and rescue Inarius

Back to heaven Inarius is weird. Little the angels now, he’s not one of them anymore, he’s not himself, he’s not anyone. During his torture in the prison of mirrors he elaborated an idea to bring back his tortured face and how to eradicate everything and everybody that lead him there

Back in heaven Inarius takes control of the Crystal arch and tune it on himself to absorb the light&sound of the death angels energy instead of letting them reborn. This process heals him, but can’t heal his heart. It becomes addictive and he can’t stop doing it, so much that he starts killing other angels to feed on them

Inarius becomes a Super Angel, the closest thing to Anu

Lilith’s Tathamet reincarnate wants to destroy heaven but Inarius won’t allow it

In Diablo 4 we aren’t the center of attention, we are side assistance, spectators, trying to limit the destruction created by the battle of gods we witness

Diablo 4 expansion 2:

We get to face the weakened victorious god

Tyrael helps us by informing us of a very powerful Horadrim artefact, strong enough to weaken the Entity down to our level to be able to vanquish it . This artefact was created by Zoltan Kule and Jared Cain and could only be operated through their blood to prevent it from falling in the wrong hands. Dekard Cain being the descendant of Jared offers himself to do it, knowing well that at his age and being a diluted bloodline of jared, it would ultimately kill him.

We defeat the God and in Diablo fashion… we return to status quo since the death of the gods recreated the burning Hells and Heaven

As always, reply to topics you like and interests you, it’s the only way to keep them relevant in these clunky forums

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2

Sry but time travel never does stories a favor

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3

nephalem are terrible.

let the heroes actually become heroes and not born as the most powerful creatures in the universe.

diablo 1 was magnificent because it was scary for a simple human to attempt to ward off literal hell with the aid of artifacts.

being a god and ripping through a million demons like a chainsaw is boring. there’s nothing tense and scary about that.

8 Likes
4

Yep, this story is made specifically to bring this back

Put to sleep the boring Nephalem trope and bring us back to helpless human status being victims of fate

There is also still room for Leah’s heritage but more like a sidequest, allow her to be the dEkard Cain assistant/successor she was meant to be

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5

Pretty sure the full story with Lilith is already written in stone by this point. They are only working on endgame systems and fleshing out graphics and such now along with more character development and fine tuning.

6

You would be surprised in what order they do stuff

Diablo 2 act 5 was meant to be act 4 up until a few weeks before launch, they decided to change the story and go for Baal expansion. This explains why act 4 only has 3 quests, it wasn’t meant to be act4

Similar thing with reapers of soul, Diablo 3 expansion was meant to have Imperius and the high heavens fight you but they changed their plans and therefor the story

Also, look at stuff like ashes of creations Devs reports, they build the game and it’s engines and mechanics, and then build the story

7

Your “ideal D4 story” is actually called “Retcon D3 and Immortal”.

Do you have a source on that ?
The imperius cut in RoS was a change made relatively early in development. Nothing like the 100% retcon you’re proposing for a game close to be finished.

8

It’s not a retcon…

The events of Diablo 3 are needed for the situation lead Trang-Oul to innact

The events of Diablo 3 are also super important for Lilith to learn everything about the dark soulstone

That’s the issue

You see it as jumping back the linear timeline when in fact it’s keeps getting forward

9

Your “ideal story” and mine are so vastly different that it would take too much effort to even attempt to care so I won’t. Suffice that should they implement an iota of yours, I hope every element is skippable.

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10

If the story would be like this, I would throw up blood and die. I almost did just by reading it. Awful.

11

no man, this is not good.
Good now - 90% people dead, nephalems power lost, evils back, Lilith back. Pain, blood, fear - everywhere.

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12

Oh the classics “ your idea is bad and mine is good but I won’t tell you mine because it doesn’t exist or it’s worse as well because I’m not a creative person and I hate everybody who bring ideas because of it”

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13

Ok, well here is the thing. Blizzard has not asked for any help writing the story. If they had come to the forums posting and asking us to all get together and help them write the story for Diablo 4, then sure such ideas would have merit. But they didn’t and they don’t want help, they already wrote the story they want to tell and our only job is to enjoy it (or not) once it’s made available.

14

not true, they encourage feedback and discussion and they participate in it as well, so dont speak for people you don’t speak for, especially when they have literally said otherwise.

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15

Just because they didn’t ask for help doesn’t mean we may not discuss it. The story is something that Blizz, and really any developer, will keep close to their chest. They want you to be able to enjoy it with all its plot twists when you play. Movie directors and book authors don’t tell you the story before release either, and for the same reason.

I don’t think that precludes them listening to good ideas. Every artist I’ve ever spoken to says they look for inspiration everywhere, because you never know when or where a great new idea will come. Maybe Blizz will listen, maybe they won’t, but we can certainly talk about it as fans.

This is probably the biggest issue I have with the Diablo universe right now. We just had the Thanos event in Sanctuary. We just had the Diablo equivalent of the Black Plague. Huge parts of the population have died off. It’s not a small thing. It’s a totally destabilizing thing.

So many of our stories are influenced by real life horrors. World War I has spawned so many sci-fi and fantasy experiences, for example, because of the sheer slaughter that took place. For history buffs, Dan Carlin’s podcast really does a good job of laying out just how awful some of those battles were and what they actually did to the psyche of Europeans. Europe never really recovered its former glory. Depopulation has its price. Ask the Russians what that looks like. Between Stalin’s purges and WWII, they depopulated terribly.

This is the kind of world that the survivors of D3’s events would be living in. Society breaks down. Survivors who made it through the Reapers’ culling might not survive the winter because there’s no food being grown on the farms. Depopulation continues for years until some manner of stability can re-emerge on local, highly tribal areas. Then you get a baby boom. Not all of those are wanted. They’re products of crimes of men desperately seeking comfort. But there are many who are wanted. Child labor is a real thing on any farm. You simply need the help and kids are fully capable of doing chores.

Times for a generation are hard. The kids grow up to know suffering and hard work, but as they say hard times create hard people. The unwanted kids might get adopted, but many turn to thievery or simply die on the street. Fast forward that idea 10-20 years, and you have the basis for someone to organize all that crime into a mercenary fighting force - maybe for good, maybe for ill. In Somalia, it perpetuated civil war and famine in the 1990s. There’s still no real functioning central government there, just tribal strong men fighting.

Anyone who has grown up poor doesn’t forget it. As they reach adulthood, their habits are dictated by what they went through. They’ll horde food and be insistent that food is never wasted. Ask anyone who lived through the Great Depression or the world wars. They’re suspicious of thieves and merchants because you simply can’t risk being ripped off when money’s tight and you had to break your back for any that you could get. There’s no mercy for criminals. People value their cheap thrills. Life is hard and you still want to feel joy and experience beauty and love. You still want to laugh and enjoy life when you can. Sometimes those things are innocent enough. Traveling troubadours, singers, artists, and circuses would always be popular breaks from the monotony of farming or blacksmithing or carpentry, etc. Some of it’s not innocent. Underground fights to the death, “ladies of the night” (and “gentlemen of the night,” let’s be honest), intoxicant use, especially alcohol.

We also have to think about the population here. It’s young. The old people were killed off first. Anyone old or sick were culled in a very Darwinian sense. That has major social consequences. There is lots of attention paid to raising children, when they’re “old enough” to do adult things. Kids grow up fast because they have to. That elderly class that used to pass on their knowledge and life experience to the next generation are all gone. You don’t have stabilizing adult forces in the game very often. Think about the trope of kids with no father figure. More practically, this also means people don’t know how to do things. The old masters who knew such things aren’t there to teach. Maybe there’s a rare Deckard Cain left, but this is going to have huge social consequences. How do you build a building? How do you manage a forest for reliable wood? How do you plant fields efficiency, rotate crops, so you don’t deplete the soil? How do you mine and smelt ores? How do you wield this type of magic or that? What does this rune mean? Does anyone remember how to read or write? People may be figuring out all of these very essential things again for the first time - a period of rediscovery. Old lessons learned were forgotten.

That last one is so critically important for RPGs. Where does a player get his power? Go talk to a trainer and get your new skill. Go talk to the old guy who tells you about the item you found. Go read the book (you can read, right?).

A real post-ROS world is going to be very different than anything we typically think of with Medieval fantasy. I’m hoping the writers are thinking about this stuff. It’s an enormous opportunity if done right.

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16

No, I have no solid idea on what Diablo story I would like but I can and did state yours is not it.

17

Indeed, it’s a bit of a reason as to what I’m looking forward to seeing comes next. Even before Diablo 4 was unveiled, I knew that the situation following Diablo 3 RoS would’ve been beyond devastating. Even though we didn’t know the total number of deaths due to Malthael’s actions, we did know that with both the reapers attacking major cities and Maltahel’s usage of the Black Soulstone; an enormous number of humans were slaughtered. Enough so, that the impact of it would (or should) be felt even a century later.

If there was one thing that I didn’t hope to see Diablo 4 story go, was for people to mostly treat the events of the previous game as a myth, and/or their lifes being relatively peaceful until some recent demonic events take place some weeks earlier. So imagine my surprise and delight that for the most part, the world really had gone to crap, and Lilith’s arrival seemingly made it even worse. Exploring that world will be enjoyable for me.

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18

I’m hoping has already been made.

19

Not about the story tho.

20

Lol nowhere I saw them say

“Discuss and share feedback with us on the game… BUT NOT THE STORY”

people are free to suggest and discuss of what they want anyway, nowhere people are like “Hey blizzard you have to do this! Do it do it”

It must be sad being you, being the fun police

3 Likes