Imagine that instead of all the hand drawn ingame cutscenes in which your character explains where he comes from and what he/she is doing next in the story, the backstory of your character would be told via class specific lore books that regularly drop in the world during your playthrough.
This would very much work like the Crusader lorebooks that drop on every new character you make which explain who the Crusaders are, but it would be specific for every class. If you play a DH, then Demon Hunter lorebooks drop, if you play a Wizard, Wizard lorebooks drop, etc…
These lorebooks probably would not tell the story of the specific character you are playing (like in the cutscenes), but they would explain who the “clan” or the community is your character is coming from, so that would leave open more room for the players imagination of who the character actually is.
Oh, and they should be narrated by Deckard Cain.
I know that I would prefer class lorebooks over the character ingame cinematics, but what about you?
inb4: I am not asking for this to be implemented, just wanna spark a discussion about what could have been, just for fun.
I’d personally like both. I actually quite like the combination of CGI cutscenes bookending the chapters and hand drawn cutscenes in between… my main disappointment with the current state of the story is that they didn’t finish off ROS with a CGI cutscene.
Lorebooks add to the world building and would have been a great way to give each class more backstory. The barbarian got a nice bit of backstory in Act 3 and the Crusaders got theirs via RoS but other classes could have done with something too.
I thought they made the characters (or at least some them) appear more cocky, self-aggrandizing and arrogant and imo the first hand drawn cinematic at the beginning gave your character too much of a specific identity.
In D2 it appeared as if you were just one out of many Paladins, Necromancers, Sorceress, Assassins, etc, but in D3 you are a very specific character/personality.
If lorebooks would regularly drop that tell the background story of your character’s “clan” (but not your character itself), it would have left open more space for someones imagination of who the character you are playing is.
It is a minor thing, but I personally would have preferred that.