Maybe I missed some lore in the other Diablo games? I’m currently rift pushing on a crusader in D3 and I’m reminded how bizarre some of the quests were around the crusaders, I think a stronghold even painted them as genocidal.
Anyone else feel the same way?
They’re terrible people because they have a persistent and motivational reason to massacre other ideologies or to completely eradicate their opposing ideology: hell’s influence
But they have a more presence in lore because they’re a human-made type of movement, so we hear more from them than what we would hear down in Hell
You know how the spectrum of radicalization is not a straight line, but a U shape instead where at some point the extended exaggeration of expression of idea becomes the same?
Well it seems to me to play of the history of the catholic church and their murderous/torturous methods of “following the light”. A kind of misguided “road to hell is paved with good intentions” kind of thing.
Good answers I guess. But why let us play one in D3.
Are Paladins part of that movement?
They’re zealots who attempt to enforce order, to a tyrannical degree in the name of the High Heavens. They mistakenly believe that the angels are on our side and humanities saviours against Hell. They’re wrong about that one.
The angels want to supress our nephalem potential, and as long as that remains in check, they’re ambivalent to our existence. If it suits their goals, they will use us when needed, like kicking Hell out of the High Heavens in D3. Tyrael is the only angel that cares about us.
I don’t remember it ever saying how much time has past between D3 and D4 (granted, my memory sucks). It’s thus possible that quite a bit of time has passed. If that’s the case then an organization which started out with good intentions, ie in D3, has become corrupted over time by hell. This could explain the schism between D3 and D4 regarding the crusaders and how they are portrayed.
Paladins and Crusaders, from what I remember, were part of the same group but they split.
Where did my nephilim go in d4??? Where is my slavic monk!??
Paladins were eradicated due to them becoming corrupted. Crusaders were a split group of Paladins. It’s my theory that the Paladin class will be coming to the game, but it will be Tyrael that has rebuilt the order.
Those were the paladins. The paladins became corrupted by evil. Some of them recognized it and split off and formed the crusader order to try and find a way to cleanse the paladin order from the corruption. They were unsuccessful though and as we have seen in the D4 sidequest the crusaders themselves are beginning to be demoralized in their quest.
In Diablo universe, if you want to wield the Light, you cant have any doubts.
If you doubt just a tiny bit, Light just doesnt happen.
There are 2 ways to reach this state of mind: pure faith and pure hate.
Mephisto was aware of this and thats how he corrupted Zakarum. Looks like same happened to Crusaders at some time between D3 and D4.
I wouldnt be surprised it was because of Inarius as that angel was full of hatred.
Your playable character and follower are two of the good ones. There’s even some stuff in Act 1 where you kill one of your followers old friends that have been corrupted.
In D4, the crusader mobs are part of the misguided followers of Inarius, the ones killing people of Caldeum and then getting massacred in Hell.
That is definitely not the message of Diablo. This particular religion is bad, because it’s led by a fanatic and worships a corrupted angel, blindly doing its bidding.
Religion in Diablo is a tool, only as good as the person yielding it. Not that unlike real life…
No. The key is just balance. You cant trust Angels nor Demons.
We are just a tool for them and thats why we should push them away from sanctuary for good
We can only hope!!!
Sure, I can understand the easy religion picking but… ummm… if we want to go with named demons we’ve only killed Diablo three times, the other primes once, Andariel + Duriel twice, and the other lesser evils one each.
In addition, outside of your characters and Decard Cain the game has clearly promoted Tyrael as the “best” (in terms of good) character in the series who is… an angel. In addition, Auriel (Angel of Hope), in the lore is probably the next in the “good” series of participants in the Eternal Conflict.
Edit:
Inarius was suppose to be a flawed character and was made one. He was a less interesting character than Lilith because he was written too much at that goal.
All of the named Angels outside of Tyrael show what happens when ideals are taken too far. Valor (Imperius) and Wisdom (Mathael) both showed logical end points to those ideals in the conflict but were not balanced in any way by some sort of self-governance
I think modern trends influenced the story. Diablo 1 and 2 were simple stories of good vs. evil. Diablo 3 started complicating that story. IMO Diablo 4 went full anti-religion in its story. Any religion is portrayed negatively other than druids. This makes sense considering how new age interpretations of paganism have become sanitized and accepted in main stream culture. On the other hand, the religion of the light is clearly meant to represent Christianity and the message seems to be that it is corrupt and evil. Meanwhile, Malificent oops I mean Lillith is portrayed in a sympathetic manner. If you ask me, typical anti-religious viewpoints were popular amongst the writers.
I like this idea. Game needs a plate wearing melee class.
Doesn’t feel like a Diablo game to me without the Paladin archetype.
There was some dataming showing strings about “Valor” and “Justice” (and also runewords and sets). So, maaybe we’ll see paladins ?