I was watching the story videos on YouTube (which are awesome IMO), but I noticed they seemed to change the cannon. When they are going over D1’s history, they say King Leoric had 2 sons, Aiden and a younger one.
Apparently Diablo had morphed or something with the younger one, because “Aiden killed his little brother when he slew Diablo” — I don’t get that, the boy-prince was found on an alter with Lazurus, already dead.
But also, then it goes on to say Aiden slew Diablo and plunged the soulstone into his head, meaning Aiden was the hero we played as. This makes no sense, as I’m 98% when you walk around Tristram you’re treated as a new-comer, not the prince.
It’s done for lore purposes as the game got more popular. Instead of some nameless person, it’s the son of King Leoric who went insane after killing his brother and shoved the crystal in his head.
They retconned the hero from D1 into the Dark Wanderer and Leoric’s son in D2 iirc, and then in D3 they retconned him(Diablo/Dark Wanderer) into Adria’s lover and Leah’s father.
I don’t remember D1 ever saying the boy on Lazarus’ altar was Albrecht with absolute certainty. I’m pretty sure it was just a boy to show how twisted Lazarus was and how he was into human sacrifice. Albrecht was 100% the vessel of Diablo by this point in the game.
Games get retconned because developers rarely if ever know if they’ll make sequels for certain. They have to find a way to make the story continuous. Diablo is no exception.
In Diablo III which completely destroyed the lore. Other things you may have missed:
Cain gets killed by some purple butterfly demon who’s literally as weak as a… well butterfly.
Adria the witch from D1 ends up being the mastermind behind all the events of D1… instead of Lazarus which was just idiotic.
There’s more but those are the main ones really… they basically took a dump on what made Diablo I so dark and gritty and streamlined the story for casuals.
You can look up the definition of retcon and see that adding additional information that causes a revised interpretation of past events falls under the definition…
Retcon is a shortened form of retroactive continuity, and refers to a literary device in which the form or content of a previously established narrative is changed .
the act, practice, or result of changing an existing fictional narrative by introducing new information in a later work that recontextualizes previously established events,
I don’t care if you care, I think your interpretation of that definition is incorrect.
Technically EVERY new fact added ‘casts new light on past events’ - every new story ‘casts new light on past events’ in that world. I could make an argument about literally EVERY STORY EVENT in EVERY STORY EVER ‘casting new light on past events’. But does that make every story event ever a retcon? No. Because a retcon is a specific type of change to lore which is, in my experience, contingent upon there being a defined past established narrative that is being changed, as Avalon listed.
And thus we can disagree about where the boundaries on what type of change counts, and I think your interpretation is way too broad and doesn’t leave room for ever writing anything without being accused of retcon.
You want to cite Avalon’s copy/pasted definition when it literally says:
Can you read? Serious question?
I don’t mind being corrected but at least don’t be completely wrong when trying to correct someone and then come off as an absolutely arrogant moron when you’re incorrect.
There is no EXISTING narrative about WHO the warrior from diablo 1 was.
There was no written lore about who he was. He was just ‘a warrior’. He had no established history, thus it is not retconning to ESTABLISH that history for the first time.
The operative word in the definition is that it requires an ‘EXISTING’ narrative to change. That’s the part you’re missing. Again: Any new fact recontextualizes existing narratives. Any expansion of the world recontextualizes all pre-existing lore. But it only becomes a retcon if you are CHANGING an EXISTING narrative.
That is the key.
There was no existing narrative to change. Thus this is not retconning.
