lol it released as hot trash and they dressed it up over time to be sexier hotter trash but yeah, you’re pretty correct here. It was still fun for me to mindlessly slay demons and monsters and get god tier good with little to no effort or brain power.
D4’s story is by and large a huge improvement and expansion of the lore of the world of sanctuary which is terrific and I’d have preferred to see more from Inarius… We didn’t even see Tyrael, but we know he’s out there, and I’d like to have actually seen or heard some sort of involvement from Diablo somewhere…since it’s a game named after him.
But gotta do more than one expansions to make your money. Treating the game like a MMORpg model, 80 dollar expansions twice a year for 40 years. Just wait till Diablo 5…probably have to pay to play seasons.
The story was nothing but escort and fetch quests, except for the occasional “stand here and click things while I monologue” quest. We had no reason to brandish the soulstone at Inarius either, much less even let him know we had it, and him stealing it served exactly zero purpose, since we literally got it back five minutes later, when he went to fight Lilith without it. Lorath just conveniently forgot to mention that the zombies we were fighting on the shipwreck could kill you with a single bite, Meshif conveniently forgot about the camel full of healing potion he was leading around on a leash, Donan just had to see what would happen if he got too close to the pillar of damned souls in the depths of hell. And after that, Neyrelle wanders off on her lonesome AGAIN, except it’s in the literal depths of hell this time, after we got ambushed BY THE LANDSCAPE.
Elias was literally the same almost-stationary boss FIVE FRIGGIN TIMES, and then we stopped the fight to gloat the last time, letting him almost get away. All of the characters are playing dodgeball with the idiot ball, and the quests are a slog, especially with no way to teleport to the entrance of story dungeons, which is extremely annoying when they’re nested like in the Black Lake or whatever.
I did appreciate the Tree of Whispers, though. The acid-trip-flavored magic is a nice breath after all the Heaven and Hell.
It’s not the end of this story, and we know from the end of RoS that Diablo is around. My guess is they’re going to use Diablo’s inevitable return as a post-game story arc.
They’ve done the “Diablo is back?!?!” for three games now. Doing it a fourth time I think would have taken away from how strong Lilith is as an antagonist.
Antagonist, also anti-hero because they had to make her seem like she was just trying to help. So predictably stupid to me. Also the rest of that comment I made also says I’m aware the story isn’t over since I’m aware of the expansions upcoming.
Up to this point, has there been any indication at all that angels come back? Kind of seems like when they die, they die.
Though he did die while he was no longer in the grace of Heaven, so maybe he’ll be back as a demon or we find him in hell (if angels can even be punished). Seriously, we don’t know a whole lot about the workings of angels, even though we went to Heaven.
They call it an eternal conflict, so the angels/heaven side has to resurface somehow. Prime Evils exist but there has to be an equivalent in Heaven to balance things out for the conflict to be eternal. We definitely need more time exploring the Angel Lore but that gets really hard to tackle. I’m so glad I’m not a writer for this series because I’d be way more bald than I am already.
Story was 4/10. Act 4 goes off the rails and is pretty cool. The last cinematic is amazing. But blizz did what blizz does and ruined their own characters. Inarius has no screen time at all, and Lillith only got fleshed out for 5 whole minutes at the very very end. Wasn’t satisfying at all.
Well, does the same angel have to resurface or do they get replaced? Why would Inarius get reborn after losing the backing of Heaven? Or would he come back with a blank slate instead of full memories like the Primes?
There is no way Prava should have survived. She gets swarmed by hundreds of demons in the cinematic. There should have been nothing left of her but a small bloodstain. But at least she gives us a new group of mobs to fight!
I’m fairly certain that was a flashback in the CS and we found her AFTER her thrashing going by all the crusader corpses along the way (which makes her calling us heretics even more insane… Donan is the only reason she’s ALIVE)
She’s doing that to hide from the world that her faith led to the slaughter of all those people so she can stay in power. Our character and Lorath are the only other people that know what happened in Hell.
Even if you don’t like the story, I struggle to understand how anyone could think Diablo IV’s story is the worst in the franchise unless you’re pre-dispositioned to disliking it. Lilith is by far the most interesting villain this franchise has seen, and she steals the show anytime she’s on-screen. Compare that to Diablo 3, whose villains are nothing more than caricatures/archetypes with the primary villain (that being Diablo) being introduced at the end of the third act and killed off in less than an hour. Then there’s Diablo 2, whose villains aren’t even addressed fully beyond the occasional name-dropping to give you an end goal for each act.
In Diablo IV, there’s an actual narrative. In Diablo 3, a narrative exists but it’s as barebones as “these things are happening.” In Diablo 2, there isn’t even a narrative. It’s just exposition-dumping at the beginning of each quest to give you context for what to do and where to go.
I don’t think Diablo IV is going to win any awards for its narrative, but to say it’s the worst in the series is very obviously either bait to rile people up, or rose-tinted glasses from someone who grew up playing Diablo 2/3 and can’t separate themselves objectively from those games.