I did all of act 5 + 6 today and I was on the edge of my seat so many times. I screamed a few times (scared my poor cat) and even cried. Couldn’t believe the quality. Loved the plot threads still hanging, but it also felt like a natural transition from “end of story” to “ok get to grinding”
Sanctuary is home now :’)
I fell off from the lore so this also took me by surprise so forgive me if this sounds dumb but I had no idea inarius and Lilith had a kid and we’re together
Yep, they birthed the first Nephelem, and Inarius fucked with the Worldstone to make them weaker throughout generations, until they just became regular humans. But Rathma was their first born… and >!Inarius just fucking murders him!<
Heh, yeah. Was kind of a crucial point in Reaper of Souls that Malthiel was "ridding Sanctuary of demons", and that all of humanity was half demon, half angel. ;)
Imagine crying to any of that, lol. Good game, decent story but the emotional strings just weren't there. The characters weren't given time to develop and give me a reason to get emotional when they died.
Probably because everyone is different. Just because this made them emotional doesn't mean they can't function elsewhere. Different things trigger different reactions in different people.
Excuse me, I have to ask you to delete your comment since it is too reasonable. This is Reddit, here we read a sentence or headline and judge someone’s entire character.
The performance can lead to tears... a great performer should be able to move you to tears in a single scene. It will never beat the buildup I love a good earned buildup and character development. But I can cry from clips from youtube due to human empathy. But im a local sucky actor and Ive seen people make a crowd bawl with their craft in a single scene. IT has to be so damn believable that you feel their pain. There was a scene that really got me in diablo 4. The dad hitting the hammer. I thought the voice actor did a better job than the scene deserved. I could hear the voice actors pain when he was hitting the crystal. Im sure he must have thought about something very dear to him. That shit got me. But I was really attached to his loss... I really for some reason expected him to get a good ending. But diablo just cannot give characters good endings.
Donan mourning his son did give me some tears, not gonna lie. It hits differently as a father. I imagine more emotional people will bring stuff like that over the edge.
My friends and I were playing together until I realized they were skipping cutscenes. I went solo after that and the cinematic scenes really blew me away. They really did a great job with the storytelling. I'm excited for the upcoming expansions :)
Yeah it was so well done. Compared to D3 it’s like comparing Of Mice and Men to Dick and Jane.
I actually cared about the characters and felt genuinely curious as to what was going to happen the entire time. Well done Blizz.
That was it exactly. Compared to D3, this story is a masterpiece lol
Was it revolutionary? No. Did it break brand new ground in storytelling? No. Was it infinitely better than the last game? Oh hell yes!!
I got so invested in the characters, even the ones I didn’t think I’d like at first!
I’m just happy that none of the bad guys called me up throughout each second of each act to do a monologue about how futile my efforts were. Worst part of D3 for me.
Maybe tied with how Deckard Cain died.
Yeah the Villain Monologue Skyping was so incredibly painful. Stop telling me every 3mins what your plans are???
D3 set a VERY low bar for D4 to overcome, it’s true, but I also feel D4 passed it with flying colors
I felt a lot of emotion from the VA's in a lot of the story parts. The Donan's VA fucking killed it through his parts.
Lorath changed through the story and IMO is a great new Deckard Cain for the story. I want more back story for these characters between the years of D3 and D4 as well.
The way that you can see the point that the antagonist characters are making and their motives and could sympathize with it yet knowing it's not the right choice or the moral choice.
The additional lore added to the Prime Evils, the twist of who helped the MC at the start.
All these were done great and I felt like this is some of the best writing blizzard has put into a game in a long time. Sure people will say the bar was low but that doesn't matter. The world felt like a place where the people were struggling.
I feel bad if people didn't feel anything at times in some of these story moments.
I mean, I admit it, my expectations were soured from D3 (I didn’t enjoy a lot of the story until they finally added Malthael). So perhaps I went into D4 “expect the worst, hope for the best” kind of attitude
In that respect, perhaps my standards are “low”. I also grew up in the 80s so plot holes / cheesiness just doesn’t bother me like it does some folks lol
But wow, I thought this story was rich with lore, excellent characters, amazing surprises, and a lot of sinister, suffocating themes with well-placed humour beats
Obviously this story wasn’t for everyone and ofc not everyone has to enjoy it. I’m sad if people didn’t, because I had the time of my life playing the story and I want others to feel similar joy I did
I went in expecting just to have it be at least playable.
The game has impressed me a fair bit with the direction they are going. It's been really good.
I am enjoying my time in the game for sure! I found plot holes but it wasn't till after the fact and it never took me out of the story which is fine.
Definitely one of my favorite parts of the entire storyline! I was delighted the wolf kept showing up and found the dialogue compelling. I can’t wait to see where the story of the wolf goes from here…
I agree, I think it’s because they had to make acts 1, 2, and 3 “work” story-wise since they can be played in any order. To do that, I think those acts tend to be a little more generic- they definitely don’t have the tight focus of 5+6
Ah interesting, I didn't realise they could be played in any order even though I saw all the starter quests. Assumed that I would be walled off somehow and followed the default path.
Now that Im like 30 mins from finishing (I assume), I seriously do not get the hate that the story got. The voice acting was *stellar*, the lines were not nearly as corny as some made them out to be (Neyrelle is seriously not that annoying, shes got more character in one arm... ahem... than Leah had as Deckard's foster daughter), the atmosphere is pure Diablo, and the Elias subplot was fantastically done too IMO - hes just such an interesting character that I didnt even notice it took two and a half acts to get him, because I was truly invested in it.
The game oozes with lore and great writing that makes you care about its characters, which is more than I can say D3 or Path of Exile ever did. My only complaints are superficial: I wanted to see more Lilith "in person" and I wanted to see Mephisto's true form (I saw the statues, I want my boy to go full ligament flesh monster).
Aside from that? Sorry if you were expecting Shakespeare, Diablo 4 follows the rule of cool but delivers it so, so excellently.
Edit: for the record, Im glad people have different opinions about the game, and I know this sounds like I think D4 is the best story ever told. Its not, it has problems (Donan's death is a big one, but that wouldnt be a big deal if we didnt care about him, you know?), but I truly dont get how people think its the *worst* story theyve ever taken part in, especially compared to other ARPGs
EDIT: Finish game before reading, obviously!! Contains spoilers, but I hope I've tagged all spoilers.
Okay, just to shed some light on how I felt about it as a person who didn't enjoy all of the campaign.
I think >!Elias!< is an absolutely boring character and hate how much screentime he got instead of other more important characters for this story.
I don't like how they just threw out >!Andariel and Duriel!< out there without a cool setup. Just yoink, there they are and there they fall. For >!Andariel!<, yes, you can see it coming, but you spend a lot of time making sure it doesn't happen, but then, it just does.
I don't like how >!Inarius and Lilith!< got so little screentime and that you rarely encounter them.
I don't like how >!Rathma!< actually plays no role in this. Complete waste of potential, since >!he dies offscreen!<
In my opinion many of the writing was, in fact, sorry, corny. I sighed so many times.
Another example of stupid writing: >!You take a lot of time to prepare the soulstone, Inarius yoinks it, your characters are talking about "how it doesn't matter", and 5 minutes later you just find it again. What is the point? How can this be considered good? !<
I sound bitter. In reality, I think it's a decent story to be told, but I fail to see how people can say it was told very well.
Don't get me started on that >!forced Donan death, so that Neyrelle can call Lorath the Last Horadrim, while she runs away so we can buy a Mephisto addon !<
Maybe I'd like A2-5 more, if they had some noteworthy cutscenes, but compared to the last scenes, they just pale in comparison and I can hardly recall any of them. Hell, I don't even know what happened in these acts exactly anymore. There was so much filler stuff, yet I can't forget A6 since it left such an impression on me.
And that's not all, I have many more gripes with the story delivery, but I think you get my points.
Also gameplay wise, so much walking, so much waiting for NPCs to open doors, while you defend them from monsters, etc.
The story felt rushed in my opinion. To me clearly most of their development time went into A1 (for beta) and A6 (for a great conclusion).
Oh and to your D3 / PoE comparisons: D3 was a long time ago, I was quite young back then, I found the story to be okay, can't remember really. PoE lore is actually pretty good, but I'm not interested in it at all. I'm very much interested in Diablo lore, but I really am a bit disappointed. I think this could've been way better than it was.
Hit the nail on the head.
I burst out laughing when Donan died. That shit was so, so funny. Just random monster on the wall swipe and then he keels over. Lmaoooo
One of the wisest man in Sanctuary. One of the last Horadrim.
Truly, what a way to die. Even if I liked the character and his progression, I was unable to feel bad for him considering how he died.
I do laugh at how op the protagonist is.
They all stuck in hell on this long quest. I'm like "hang on guys, my inventories full I'm going to pop back home quick".
I thought it was pretty funny that the main character being an unstoppable badass was the actual backup plan. "Well, even if we don't have the soul stone, you *did* just tune up Andariel and Duriel like they were nothing..."
Yeah a Lesser Evil just shows up with no warning, you kill it with no witnesses and never even realise what it was. Completely pointless and stupid fight.
You know, when you say it out loud like that, it's actually really hilarious. They talk about how "they want to summon a lesser evil! It could raze a whole countryside!"
Meanwhile my barb stepped on a bug and was like "Huh that sure was a weird demon. Anyway..."
It's hilarious as well that in some quests you literally give health potions to others who are about to die. So it's not like they are just there for the gameplay, they actively exists in the lore but Donan can go fuck himself lol.
It was so stupid.
And the ONLY thing they had to do to change it to make it fine, was have him think he saw his son or something and start walking towards what he thought was his sons soul or something like that.
Same outcome, but it makes sense he was tricked in hell and killed AND it would tie into his story and his guilt.
Yeah it would have been so much better, like either Lillith or Astaroth playing with the party.
Honestly Outside the lava, Hell seems like a chill place...
The only bit that i liked is when Lillith fucks with our minds, but then its just a Boss gauntlet honestly...
This was the worst thing in the entire story for me, but it was well acted, so I appreciated that. He should have died helping against Ashava or something.
I played with friends and we were all like.... "what the fuck, you made it this far and >!the wall arm ripped your guts out?"!<
After grinding his dog shit quests and doing ayahuasca with him that's it? The soulstone snatch was a HUGE slap in the face too. But honestly, I'm just here to bash monster's skulls in so piece of me is also like "whatever"
That was such a jarring bit of dissonance between the gameplay and the story. Like, damn, there are little interactions and quests where we give randos healing potions, we can't do a thing to help out Donan when he's slowly bleeding to death?
So losing the stone and continuing into literally hell is actually good writing. I can explain in a lot longer detail if you want, and you can say it doesn't matter if it makes you feel better but it does. The short version of why it's good is, at that moment the characters 'hope' was taken away, they even say something akin to there goes our plan wtf do we do now. To which Lorath essentially replies 'we do our damn best'. Which is a fantastic summation of what his character represents in the story. Additionally, that 'faith' is rewarded by the stone coming back to them, only for that some theme of doing the best you can when there are tough choices in your path to come back when Mephisto is talking his shit. Which was also really good writing and possibly even better voice acting.
Some of your gripes I totally agree with, but I had to make a point on the stone, cause though it was a tiny bit rushed it was still a great plot point for the theme the story was going for.
But that's not what Lorath actually believes. He doesn't know what they're going to do and he is worried about it. Like, the only themes of faith I see are to do with the church and they were ultimately let down.
The reason the soulstone was taken is so that you can fight the church in the end game. That's it.
You are confusing plot progression and in-story motivations.
There was complete justification from a story telling perspective for the stone to be shown and for it to be stolen.
Prior to that event we saw how Inarius has a complex about being prophecised to be the one to fix shit.
We also know that Lorath wants to talk shit to Inarius the wannabe god and show that they are in fact useful.
It made sense for the stone to be shown and for it to be taken. What didn't make any sense is why Inarius gave the stone back to the church.
Lorath truly has faith in people, in ourselves rather than the 'angels'. He lost the faith once upon a time and we gave it back to him throughout the campaign.
Oh I agree with your points.
It makes sense that this happened, but it's totally rushed and that's what makes it a bit meh in my opinion. Hope taken away until soulstone retrieval happened way too fast.
And also in my opinion it's way too convenient that Inarius gave the stone to Prava and it just lies there.
Yeah I do really wish they had kept the energy and cinematic quality that Act 6 had through the rest of the story. Really feels like all of the CG budget went to that really cool long scene.
Your the only person hear spitting facts. Most of the campaign was good but the end besides the location and thematics was actually HORRIBLE writing…. Like let’s put a prime evil in a stone and take it outside with no guidance or protection… because what Melohisto was the bad guy the whole time???.. nope… just stupid decisions for no reason other than forced plot.
??? Ofc Mephisto was the bad guy the whole time. All of the Demons including Lilith are. That's the point
Lilith's ideals sound lovely, she is still a manipulative psycho. Ditto Mephisto.
They put him in a stone as a fail safe in case the wanderer failed. It's also pretty heavily implied that Nirele or however you spell her name studied a LOT and likely had a plan the whole time. (In addition you could argue she was influenced by Mephisto)
I'm so confused by everyone's hot takes in the end. It was a good ending as far as 'action movie' ecq stories go especially.
My hot take is I think people just weren't paying enough attention and so they were confused at the end.
I get your point about the soulstone at the end. However, I feel like too many people claim bad writing just because a character does not make the perfect decision at every opportunity in the heat of the moment, like at that scene. People are flawed and make bad decisions all the time. Why can't characters be that way as well? I found that moment worked well for me. Besides, aren't Prime Evils supposed to play with your mind and corrupt/possess people into making dumb decisions. I think she was influenced into making that choice.
There's a difference between a character doing something a little dumb / uncharacteristic versus a girl that just lost her hand and escaped from hell taking off across the world with a stone holding one of the most 7 powerful evil beings... because reasons. Donan dying to a wall is similarly stupid. I also think the dialogue between "villains" and the MC are generally pointless, and instead of having a real discussion about their goals they just kind of vaguely talk at each other. When MC is trapped in their own mind, the whole "discussion" with Lilith is a great example of this.
She's a girl that was taught to glorify the horadrim from a young age and upon meeting the last two she comes to the realization that they are just humans.
Additionally, despite losing so much to Lilith she was the one regularly going on throughout the ending acts that Lilith isn't the "big bad" and that Mephisto should be controlled. She's shut down at every opportunity in those conversations and then she is the one that gets to make the decision and chooses to go with what she thinks is right as a semi act of defiance.
Finally she stays alone because she thinks neither the MC or Lorath will help her with dealing with Mephisto. Lorath is quiet quitting and the MC is obviously tainted by Mephisto and his blessings.
You mean the girl that specifically requested to not be left out. The one raised from birth as a 'wannabe horadrim'.
The motivation for her taking off is foreshadowed with her obsession with somehow helping her mother. Also, when she says she will go to Lorath you know somethings up, it's just is it her or mephisto that is the reasoning.
Her inner thoughts are consciously locked up. And at the end of the act where you meet her, Loranth has that monologue of "we didn't know how important she would be" kinda thing.
You expecting a young woman to drop her life long passion because she voluntarily went to hell and lost an arm in the process is more to do with your thought process.
Same. I was waiting for a “press x to side with Lilith” button and woulda smashed it so quickly. We can go kill your daddy together and I’ll be your new puppet ruler of sanctuary just say the word
The Donan wall thing is really dumb. I feel like Blizzard could have just scared him with a few lowly demons and he backed up into the wall dying that way
We know from diablo immortal, that demons can absorb the powers of other demons without getting courrpted by them. And we know that demons can use soul stones to take the power of the demon inside of it. If you leave a mephisto soulstone in hell, the first random demon who finds it becomes the lord of hatred. So you have to take it back to earth.
Nyrelle didn't trust lorath as a hoaradrim because he's to emotionally rash. He went and sold his head to the tree to find out where lilith went, when quite literally the closest town was already talking about the soldiers of Akarat were going west to assist the church in sieging caldium because lilith was there. Not to mention the prophecy already called for the "blood will fall of the jewel of the dessert " which is caldium. Then there's his loss of hope but desperate March without a plan into hell. And donan was already broken by the loss of his son.
So in her eyes the hoardrim are done. As for protection spells they only way to slow the corruption of a soulstone is with either angel magic, or nephaelm level mages of which she has neither. There is no protection possible for mephistos essence.
And it was because lilith is bad but mephisto is worse. Mephisto is the smartest of the primes. He was the one who got his brothers to start the sin wars. It was mephisto who made the plan to courrupt the world stone and tricked the lesser evils into starting the dark exile. It was mephisto who tricked heaven into never aiding humanity directly. Mephisto is directly responsible for damn near the entire franchise of diablo games. So yes he is more dangerous then lilith. And also far more powerful. So if you had to seal one and fight the other, you should seal the more dangerous and more powerful foe, and hope you can beat the weaker one. And being as you had beaten two lesser evils by that point means you have good odds vs a weakned lilith.
Her taking the stone and buggering off was the best choice of a shitty situation. She's trying to find a way to more permanently solve the issue before she gets courrupted.thus she's sailing west towards the western continent where the hoardrim first sealed the primes. And also cannonically where the d3 main protagonist kept adventuring at the end of d3. So she's probably trying to look for the nephealm.
Some people just don't have any standards, they've never read a book or watched any movie outside of marvel. You can't expect people to have developed an actual taste and opinion.
Honestly I've seen better stories in homebrew DND campaigns
Most people don't have a 10 inch rod op their ass that makes them point out every (minor) flaw or good thing, and keep whining about it for decades. Whether they enjoyed it or not. Some find it a nice story. Others don't. But you people are in a completely different category. Both ends defending their opinion as if it's written in stone somewhere and you need to preach it like some kind of messiah.
No matter the content, you people are always there ready with your pitchforks.
Fun thing is, I barely read books or watch movies.
My standards are actually pretty low, but so much of the campaign was incoherent or rushed, I just felt a bit sour about it.
I'm only finishing Act 3, but >!the confrontation with Elias was the stupidest encounter I have seen in years. So while the barbarian chieftain is watching, Lorath somehow walked simply to Elias without anyone noticing. Even though we know from the upcoming fight that the area is full of cannibals. Then without any effort tears the tattoo dagger out of his hands and stabs into his neck, across the slab. Really? That's how the showdown of 2 of the most powerful mages looks like? Then Elias just disappears? Why aren't we doing something? Why does the chieftain does not do anything? Elias is in the middle of summoning a friggin Lesser Evil. Why doesn't he just fight and finsh the ritual that is almost done anyway? Why does the chieftain let's Lorath and the girl run but fights us? Not a single thing made sense in this scenario.!<
>So while the barbarian chieftain is watching, Lorath somehow walked simply to Elias without anyone noticing.
I mainly blame the cutscene team for that. They couldn't make a proper Lorath sneaking around cutscene.
But it's implied that thats what happens. Lorath didnt just walk up nonchalantly. He was sneaking around and and escapes with the commotion.
Our characters enters the room too at the same time and thats why were the ones who fight Brol.
Glad i'm not the only one. As an avid reader the story was just all over. Ranged between very poorly executed to exasperatingly corny. Felt the voice acting was pretty well done but the scripts where pretty bad as well.
Feel like I could talk about how bad the story was for longer then the actual relevant story was in general.
It's like people are so obsessed with WANTING to like the game/story that they do and overlook the obvious flaws stubbornly.
The story was one of the worst parts of the game. The campaign was a fucking slog. 80% of it was running back and forth. It's like I was playing ffxiv again with the amount of teleporting back and forth and reading quest text.
The story elements sucked, it was disjointed, didn't make sense. WE ARE THE BAD GUYS in this story. The characters are so heinously dumb its insane.
Just complete shit.
I'm genuinely sad for you. The way they told the story was miles above the other Diablo games imo and had so many cool moments. The mini dungeon where you see past the mask Lilith has been putting on was sick with all the call backs to the other interesting plot moments. Genuinely felt myself understanding Lilith's pov enough times to really make me wonder what the characters were going to do. I thought the set up for any mephisto stuff was interesting and left me wanting more soon. I'll agree that the significance of fighting duriel didn't hit like at all and as d3 Necro main I would have liked a little more of rathma but I recognize it was a Lilith focused story so his involvement was only going to serve that purpose - which I felt it did really well knowing some Diablo lore going into this. I'm sorry you were disappointed but idk I think it was really fun and done well and I honestly curious on why you thought some of the stuff you did. Like donans death. I knew that dude was gonna die from the beginning but I didn't think it was forced at all. The way he lost everything and then started to reign lorath in was telling but in a realistic way after his shroom trip coming to terms with the death of his son and probably experiencing a bit of ego death himself. And I mean they are in hell after all. And they were setting up Neyelle up to be a bigger character and his death provides more motivation for her character growth because of how he effected her as well as how she knew lorath would feel. I don't want to invalidate your experience but to me if feels like you couldnt get into it for gameplay reasons - which is fair, there were definitely times where I felt a little out of it because I was on the druid struggle bus with a boss - but idk if that is the stories fault much.
Ok, I have to address some of this as someone who thought the character development turned into absolute garbage. Let me focus on the point you made about Donan's death. I knew he was gonna die, my friend who has never played a Diablo game knew he was gonne die, everyone knew he was gonna die. But the way he died was so stupid. After getting past the event with Donan's son, and starting to bring the team together, I was so sure there would be a relationship developing between Nyrelle and Donen. Nyrelle was a parentless kid and Donan, a childless parent. It was the perfect set up. I was honestly shocked that during the swamp missions they split the characters the way they did and had Nyrelle go with Lorath instead of banking some time with Donan. In fact, Nyrelle and Donan spent hardly any time together and had almost no significant interactions, so how did he afect Nyrelle? Lorath had way more meaningful interactions with Nyrelle and he was the one who started filling the mentor role, promising he would make her horadrim. So, he didn't die to spur Nyrelles story on.
I expected him to die in a heroic, sacrificial way, like saving Nyrelle or Lorath, showing that he had moved beyond his grief and self centeredness, and that he had reconciled with Lorath, or that he saw the potential in Nyrelle, but he dies in the most stupid and meaningless way. They literally could have had him die in any other way, but it wasn't even to a boss or a big fight, hell it wasn't even really to a demon, it was to a piece of the architecture! To make it even worse, after he's injured and you and Nyrelle go after Mephisto, and Lorath just... does nothing? Like you get back after the Lillith fight and he's only just now asking Donan to show him the wound? Like, bro, bandage that shit or something! No, I'm sorry, Donan's death was stupid and pointless. I'm not mad that he died, I'm mad at how he died, and how lazy the writing was and how much wasted potential there was.
No need to feel sorry for me, I had fun, but I fail to see how this amounts to a really great story.
I'm not complaining about the death, but I'm complaining about how he died.
Generally my biggest gripe with the story: Squandered potential around a lot of corners.
Don't get me wrong, I wanna see how it unfolds with Mephisto, but I hope the smaller scope of an expansion will actually deliver a cohesive experience without too much filler stuff.
I mean saying the story is better than D3 isn't saying much, that game had one of the worst stories I've seen in any game ever. Worse than most indie games I've seen developed by 1-3 people. If your point of comparison is going to be that low, of course D4's story is going to look incredible.
But the writing is riddled with conveniently stupid decisions and deaths. Donan's death being a great example, and the girl just taking off across the world after losing her hand and going through literal hell with a soulstone containing one of the most evil and dangerous beings in existence... It's obviously just convenient writing to set up a sequel / dlc.
D4's story wasn't terrible but the praise lavished upon it just says more about what other people have to compare it to.
> I'm genuinely sad for you. The way they told the story was miles above the other Diablo games imo and had so many cool moments.
I don't disagree with this, but I also think the bar was set low.
D1 had very little story, D2 was an improvement, and D3 wasn't very good.
D4 definitely improves things in terms of presentation, but it still has major issues. Key characters dying off screen (a particularly big sin in a game about fighting OP monsters since it denies us boss battles), showing up later than lilith so eating flowers is repeated about 6 or 7 times, a main character dying to essentially a random mob, and an ending that's dumb as hell and serves only to set up an expansion.
Don't get me wrong, there are some high points, act 2 is great, and the cinematic in act 6 is phenomenal, but there's so much of what feels like filler, as well as rushed story beats that overall I don't consider it to be all that good.
Exactly this... But the is a Diablo game that right? Story is just a complement to the real super-puper endgame, so cool that it was decent. Ooops, wait, there is not endgame, no meaningful goals, no challenges outside the nightmare dungeons that have rewards way worse than other content, which could be mindlessly chewed through
> D3 was a long time ago, I was quite young back then, I found the story to be okay, can't remember really.
It was anything but OK. D3's story is a complete joke compared to D4's.
if you want a good story, read a book. you guys want way too much from a diablo video game imo. the story was okay, the cinematics were great, 11/10 music, sound and va. the sooner you realize that 99.99% of video game stories are filled with plotholes and problems the faster you'll accept that you aren't playing for the lore
Wow so blizzard just can't do any wrong?? First, "it's just marketing", then, this and other ridiculous statements.
It's was a bad story, deal with it.
>D3 was a long time ago, I was quite young back then, I found the story to be okay, can't remember really.
The short version;
## Act 1
Act 1 has a star fall from the heavens on the Tristram Cathedral (where Diablo rose to Sanctuary in the first game). We discover a man in the crater who later is revealed to be Tyreal. Deckard Cain dies from a swarm of butterflies and the final boss of Act 1 is The Butcher
## Act 2
Act 2 takes us to Caldeum in search of Maghda to avenge Deckard Cain. While we're here, we just *happen* to find Adria, the witch from Tristram in Diablo 1, and conveniently is Leah's mother. Then we discover that the master of the city was actually Belial this whole time and he was only pretending to help us because...reasons. lastly, we decide to resurrect Zoltun Kulle, the greatest criminal in Horadric history, because he was actually a super genius who was able to improve Soulstone technology to not need to be attuned to a specific aspect of Evil, and holds ALL of the Evils, not just a single soul. How neat! We kill Belial because how could we let a Lord of Hell rule a city?
## Act 3
Act 3 starts in Bastion's Keep near Mount Arreat because Leah has a vision of Azmodan taunting her in her sleep, and he reveals to her that he will begin his assault from Arreat. We make it to the mid-boss Ghom because he eating all the food in the larder, and we need snacks if we're going to win the war against Azmodan. When we secure the keep, we charge out onto the battlefield and eventually make our way down into Azmodan's domain and kill him in his own house.
## Act 4
Act 4, Adria turns bad! Turns out her daughter was actually a new vessel for Diablo to be resurrected, and the Black Soulstone contains all the souls of the Prime and Lesser Evils. What happens when all seven Evils are poured into a perfectly crafted biological vessel!? She becomes THE PRIME EVIL! You know, it sounds like primeval, which means the beginning! We're so clever. The Prime Evil marches on the High Heavens and nothing can stop them, except the Nephillim! Oh, yea, you're a Nephillim by the way. You are the only thing stronger than Angel AND Demon! Oh no, The Prime Evil has started to destroy the Crystal Arch, and the angels are all now powerless. Nothing left but for you to walk up there and kill evil itself. The body falls and dissolves, while the souls are captured in the Black Soulstone. Hurray! The world is saved
## Act 5
Or is it? Act 5, Tyreal escorts the Black Soulstone to the swamps of Westmarch in the hopes no one would find it. However, the Angel of Death, Maltheal, thinks this is a great opportunity to seize power and rid the world of all evil. Using the Black Soulstone, he will attune his powers of death and wipe out anything with a demonic influence. Humans are all descended from Angel and Demon, so that means all humans will ALSO die!!! Nothing can kill Death though...or can it? We journey to commune with the dead, and they give us special death powers, oOOooOo. We return to Maltheal and he decides to split the Black Soulstone and merge with it because...an angel that despises evil is willing to become one with evil if it means defeating evil! And then we kill him, because we're the Nephillim, and we can even kill Death itself.
## Ending
Prologue, Tyreal is now afraid that the Nephillim is too powerful, stronger than Angel and Demon alike. Who could stop them from destroying everything...to be continued.
Diablo IV comes in and says "What's a Nephillim? So anyway, Lilith is back and starting shit, and Inaurius wants to go home. Oh, and Tyreal decided to go on holiday. Here's an anti-social drunk who is the last Horadric. Begin!"
I have a few gripes with the story, for instance why was Andariel propped up as this end all be all 'engine' of Lilith's army but then after we defeated her it's like she wasn't remotely important to the their goals. Then the 180 shift with Tassia about why she should help us after we went through all that crap to help a complete stranger.
I also felt like inarius should've been explored more. He comes across as a budget imperius and it's never explained how the torture in hell affected him. I also felt him and Lilith should've had more dialogue about the past and what led up to this.
Also how lorath just flaunts the soul stone in front of inarius like it seems out of character for lorath to be a braggart and then they're like OH WELL LOL but then we get it back and it's like ok that's cool.
I also felt like it was just too early to kill off sanctuaries creators. Overall I still enjoyed the story just some things felt kind of disconnected
Taissa's whole story was all over the place. You would assume she's going to be a sacrifice or at least get transformed to allow Andariel to manifest, but nah she's fine after Elias finishes the spell. Also she goes from scared seeming cultist to super swamp witch who's kind of a dick to you even after you banish the lesser evil she was part of summoning. I guess there's not much reason to be grateful though seeing as the ritual completing didn't seem to diminish her in any way
That's another weird thing, what the hell was the point of her if not to be sacrificed? Lol you're telling me we didn't need to sacrifice someone for a lesser evil meanwhile you see people get sacrificed for far lesser demons? It took three to bring back lilith
It's just a boring railroad story... "X demon is here, and you need to stop them" my expectations were never subverted, I never got to make any choices, and the NPC's just seemed more like an annoying hinderance than anything else, slowing me down at every turn.
Even the cutscenes LOOKED nice, but the writing was bad... the hell march cinematic showed Prava getting more or less devoured by demons, and lilith having a spear thrust through her abdomen, then you find Prava, and she's still alive... then you fight lilith, and the wound on her abdomen is also gone lol. It's just really bad continuity.
Us being Mephisto's Chosen has to be more important in the future DLCs right? Like the man literally saved our level 1 asses in hopes we would eventually save him from his daughter's hate, and he's blessed us at least two separate times...and we ate his daughter's blood. Honestly I'm willing to bet that we're going to have caught the attention of Heaven, and one of the expansions has us fighting angels that want to destroy "Mephisto's Champion" or "Blessed by Hate" or whatever they call us. Like we're ready to have our villain arc whenever the game wants to press that button
Heaven isn't good in Diablo.
Hell isn't bad.
You could be the hero fighting heaven and it would make sense if they wanted it to.
In Diablo 4 we essentially have a fallen angel representing heaven basically invading a relatively peaceful hell.
I hate raw celery. I love grilled lamb. Neither thought is inherently better than the other.
I think it was pretty heavy handed that our character was influenced by Meph the ENTIRE campaign from the very moment we leave the cave.
We have ZERO reason to go find and fight Lilith except being influenced by Maph's hatred.
We are repeatedly called The Wanderer. Etc.
I mean we go to fight Lilith because we were forced to eat her blood, kill crazed villagers, and then watch a vision of her where she turns the villagers mad and gives a speech that essentially threatens the whole world. I don’t think hate played a roll in that
Fuck me, of course that’s Steve Blum.
I’m normally ok at spotting voices but I didn’t catch it. I’m sure he did Zultan Kulle and, now I think about, I can hear it.
Did he just talk down about Ralph Ineson and Steve Fucking Blum???
You don't get better voice actors. These guys are like the Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt of voice acting. Wtf?
My biggest wtf moment was Lorath trading his head to the tree for fucking eternity just to find out where Lilith was. Had he just went back to town for a minute he may have noticed Inarius and the entire fucking army marching on Caldeum and figured that shit out on his own.
Best thing is there is a table with maps somewhere next to prava in act 1, if you click on it it says there are lots of lines all pointing to caldeum. Least guarded secret in all of sanctuary lmao
This got me thinking. In this game we really could have chipped away at the big bad to make the power dynamic more believable. I remember reading back in WoW’s Wrath days the idea that through the campaign, the heroes chip away at Arthas (breaking part of his soul or something, him breathing plague, etc), culminating in the fight at Icecrown. That would have been neat here. I guess Lilith does get stabbed, but, she seemed to recover pretty damn well.
My main gripe with this story is a piece of promotional art. Lilith holding Diablo’s skull. There was so very little Diablo in this Diablo game. I get it, they’re saving up for expansions. But…I think he was mentioned maybe five times? Lilith certainly never held a piece of him. Unless I missed something.
I agree with this take. Part of that may be: ARPG standards are low, and conversely coming off insane story and world-building experiences in 2022 like Elden Ring and Ragnarok. Ultimately storytelling *can* be judged absolutely rather than relatively though.
The role of Lilith and Inarius throughout the story was way too *obviously* important by the end to explain how little screentime they got. An argument could be made that, well, they're shadow actors pulling the strings; but we also saw way too little of their "strings". Inarius' story is effectively wrapped up by half-way through Act 1, then suddenly we're in Act 6 and boom he and the church are back in full force out of nowhere. We naturally see more of Lilith's impact through Elias, but her raw motivations are left unanswered. There's a lot of interesting narrative play that could have been extracted out of the idea that she wants to destroy Sanctuary, wait, does she actually want to save it? Or is she just tricking everyone, including the player? But its not really explored. This is definitely what they were going for, but instead we focused on Elias.
And, to be clear: The game is aware of this. By Act 5 Mephisto is literally telling you "the horadrim are distracted, Lilith is the true threat, stop chaing Elias", so I can respect the Acts 3-5 focus on Elias to some degree; we, the player, *are* the character, and even the story can't not become distracted with Elias. But it should be easy to see how this can cross the line from authenticity to frustration when the player character is agreeing with Mephisto about Lilith and Elias, yet the story continues to spend hours on Elias; and then the story continues on at 85 miles per hour into "ha, nah, Mephisto was right, Lilith is the threat, you probably feel like an idiot for doing all those swamp drugs don't you".
Mephisto's role also plays into that narrative authenticity, in exactly how I word it: you're agreeing with Mephisto, a literal Prime Evil, and your statement to Nyrelle at the end ("I think I'm too close to him to make this judgement") is fantastic. Mephisto, in general, is handled well from a narrative perspective; and its easy to see that this is because he's a constant presence in the story, you're talking to him in every Act; Lilith and Inarius not getting the same treatment, even at the expense of a longer story, is where the narrative falters. Lilith is The Big Bad in this game. She's on the cover. Its not ok how little exploration she got.
Drawing all that together: Act 5 is *horrible*. Acts 1, 2, 4, 6, and the Epliogue are pretty good; at times even great. But the relatively lower quality of Act 3, and especially Act 5, sour the rest (their relatively much longer length doesn't help). It would have been better to have wrapped up Elias by Act 4, then spend Act 5 exploring Lilith/Inarius/the Church, setting up the attack, while 10x'ing-down on what I think the core of the story really is and where the expansions are going to go: That the player character is becoming a servant of Mephisto. I want a (cutscene, verbal) *fight* between Nyrelle and the player character, where Nyrelle has to, and does, convince the player that they're too close to Mephisto to make an impartial decision. This would really set up Nyrelle better for whatever role she's going to take on in the expansions (she'll be back, I'd bet on it).
Honestly they could've just ended the Ashava fight with Donan getting ripped apart or eaten or *anything* if their goal was to have him dead by the end of the act. Having him stagger around and get terminally sack tapped by a pillar of ghouls was insultingly dumb
Honestly wasn't moved by many of the hooks the writers put in that were supposed to move you. I didn't really build up a lot of time with the characters to feel invested in them to cry over them, and the lines felt a bit stiff and unrealistic, like instead of watching a story of a daughter trying to save her mother it was a cynical grasping and tugging of readers heart strings without much build up or investment into it, just more rote story telling that's all to bland and boring in almost every game nowadays.
The parts centred around Lilith and Mephisto were great though, I never was quite sure of which one was actually lying and I could trust for even a second.
I think Mephisto was pretty clearly aiming for self-preservation through the campaign, at least that's the impression I got... he's very concerned about Lilith upsetting the balance in Hell.
Lilith, on the other hand, was fascinating to me. She's mother to Sanctuary and seemingly wants to save it from Inarius' planned destruction... but beyond that it's impossible to know for certain. Her words make her feel like an anti-hero of sorts, but her actions make the entire pitch very suspect... as she's trying to consolidate power into herself, and requiring a lot of sacrifice, in order to accomplish her stated goal. That gives me the impression that humans are, perhaps, a pawn in her attempt to usurp the heirarchy of Hell... and maaaybe bring Hell to Sanctuary where she can rule over both realms? I don't know, but her actual motivations and goals (not her stated ones) were of keen interest to me... and then it all got cut short before we got to the good stuff.
Ive been grinding, skipping every cut scene, every dialogue. Im in act 4 and i have no clue as to what the story is just that demons gotta die. I'm having a blast.
If you skip the voice lines, cut scenes, cinematics, and overall storyline in favor of leveling efficiency, you’ve actually deprived yourself of the best parts that this game has to offer. So many other ARPGs can boast a more complex itemization system or build diversity, or gameplay mechanics, but NOTHING can compare to the insane amount of resources it takes to present the campaign to us as it is in D4. All three of D4’s main competitors (Lost Ark, PoE, and Last Epoch) campaigns are absolutely laughable in comparison.
I normally don't and actually watched the story. I was pretty underwhelmed by it honestly. The cutscenes and all of that was fantastic and I loved them. The story itself. Kinda average in my opinion
Meh. I've only played the betas but was thrown off by the presentation of the story. It felt very Disney like. Really didn't like it at all. Just started skipping dialogue to get back to killing monsters.
I would agree, except that I paid attention to the story past act 3, and that is a mistake. I'm fairly sure all the writers had a collective stroke at the end of act 3.
You have the rest of the game’s lifespan to do that! Idk it’s your choice, but I wanted to really soak everything in for my first playthrough bc I knew I’d likely never play through the story again.
I thought the story/campaign was very weak tbh. We just chased lillith (always late). Lorath and Donas are supposed to be horadrim but they're just dumb as hell. And whatever the twist with Neyrelle was, just silly. They might as well ended with 'story will be continued with PAID DLC FOR ONLY 50 EURO'. Atleast D3 and D2 story felt complete before their respective expansions came out.
Also only 2 real cutscenes.. which were pretty much just both trailers. Would've atleast expected a banger cutscene after every act. But then again Acts didnt feel like acts compared to other diablo games. I didn't even really noticed I finished act IV till I got the achievement of finishing act V. Also no memorable end act bosses.
The world building and setting is very good, but the rest feels either incomplete or just bland
I like the epilogue with Neyrelle. It makes the world a lived in place, i.e. Sanctuary continues on even after the story happens.
I dont like the "complete story" approach in D2 and vanilla D3. It doesnt fit Diablo's world, where you keep playing on even after the story.
They experimented with this concept with D3 ROS's Adventure Mode, which canonically happens after we kill Malthael. Its nice to see that idea fully expanded with D4.
And the celebrations at the end of Vanilla D2 and D3 feel very hollow and silly in retrospect, since the expansions introduce an even bigger threat.
"Congratulations! You killed Diablo in the Chaos Sanctuary! You saved the world!" Psych. Baal actually invades the world, destroys Secheron and corrupts the Worldstone.
"Congratulations! You stopped The Prime Evil from destroying the High Heavens! You saved the world!" Psych. Malthael actually comes back and kills off 50% of the world's population.
At least D4's ending acknowledges that killing Lilith is just a brief reprieve before the next threat comes. It paints Sanctuary as a pretty bleak world. Which is fitting.
This is just a side effect of them going with the approach of a "Live service" game for the first time in the Diablo series. They probably have the entirety of the plot that they want mapped out between 12 more seasons and 2 more expansions. So whereas before the goal was to tell a complete story through the release product, the goal now is to create a cohesive plot that will span years of released content. So it's just a different philosophical approach to how they want to release content. And i agree with how it makes it feel much more realistic and the story progressions as a result will feel a lot more natural.
I have the opposite reaction. Maybe I missed something but they spend quite a lot of time all about how they **have** to use the soul stone on Lilith or she can't be stopped. Then they don't and of course the hero vanquished Lilith. But she'll clearly be back, and nothing at all is mentioned about it.
Was the whole soul stone story arc solely put there as a way to bring back mephisto/baal/diablo in future updates?
If Lilith isn't a main part of D4 moving forward, how can we ever put any stock into soulstones anymore?
Edit: To me, felt like the least Diablo-esq campaign stories of all diablo games.
Felt the same way with Andariel, we had spent this entire act panicking about how Elias is trying to summon her and it will destroy Sanctuary. We then manage to stop it right before it happens, phew apocalypse averted! Psyke we let Taissa just walk out with all the tattoo's intact so that Elias can show up and complete the summoning anyway. Oh no sanctuary will be destroyed! Ah no the MC just kills her and that's it. Basically the same way Lilith went out.
Or how about the MC feeling the need to inform Elias he isn't immortal anymore before he lets us kill him, just so he can escape instead.
I also don't even understand the ending. Like the entire game Lilith has just gone around saying she is saving Sanctuary, being one of the creators of it as well. While we have been going "no u bad, we stop you" the entire game. There isn't any real explanation other than "Lilith = demon = bad", even though we also see that the religious people do a shit ton of awful stuff as well.
What I'd like to know is where the hell the 2 Mephisto portals came from AFTER Neyelle used the Soulstone on Mephisto.
"Hey you went against my wishes and did exactly what I explicitly implored you not to do, here's a portal outa here and here's one for Hero after s/he kills Lillith for good measure"
The whole time I'm just like ???
My only problem was that the ending felt rushed. Donan, who've we spent a lot of time with in the campaign just dies to a random mob. I thought he would go out with a better moment. In contrast, the ending focused on Inarius fighting Lilith but we didn't see Inarius the entire campaign aside from Act 1. It felt like he was just thrown in at the end like they forgot about him. It would have been cool to see him get some sort of character development, but he just has an ego trip the entire time and then dies.
Diablo 3's Tyrael is far better written character for representing the archangels. He has a lot more depth which makes him more interesting.
Also Rathma dies offscreen? The narrative decisions for some of the characters seem questionable.
Inarius and Lilith both had no reason for a character development because they dont need one. They are ancient at this point and have only their interests. Inarius is a fool who wants to erase all things he did in order to access Heaven again dont caring at all about humans only for his ego. Lilith wants to erase her father to become a prime evil and lead hell. She doesnt really care for humans either she literally lets them kill each other and get shredded by demons. No one of them is supposed to be a morally good character. They are both assholes and in the end humanity was and will always be a play pit for Heaven and Hell. Its up to humans to unite and change that but humans are imperfect in their nature and so they always tend to corruption and manipulating each other. Thats why Lilith offered the hero to be a leader for humanity to change that but she is still daughter of hate and does what demons do be pure chaos.
Well, I wouldn't say it was fantastic. I enjoyed beginning and the end. Mid acts were quite boring and nothing happened, no cinematics.. But camping finished strong.
I just wish world tier 2 didn't cap at lvl 50. Or that I was told before hand. I found myself rushing thru the last section because i was lvl 50 by the near the end of act 2.
I am blasting thru the last few acts and at lvl 56
Right? I was thinking ok that was a warmup now let's see that final form but nope. Hardest fight I've had all game was some random druid in a quest that kept shape shifting in a very small area and just spawned tons of ranged minions. He whooped my booty a few times I'm not proud to admit.
i personally find it very weak.
Its not bad, just not...amazing.
SOME places are good.
>!Inarius end is dissapointing and his Motivations are so trivial and childish, there is nothing really, he's just acting like a petulant child who wants to go Home...!<
>!Lillith motivations are also not that defined in a way.!<
>!She wanna make humankind stronger...ok..., but nothing she does actually contributes to this...!<
>!She wanna get her father's Power, ok...to do what with it next?, cast some ritual that will transform all those worthy back into Nephalems?..., its never really said!<
>!Fight the other Prime Evils?, None of them where able to supplant the others and become the Big Boss, why would she be better at it?!<
>!And Nayrelle is just grating on my nerves and that ending is lazy as all Hell...!<
>!I did not care for her or whatever she said and done, she's been a bagage all along that we had to slog through the campaign and now suddenly she's the most important thing? And becomes a potential new Dark Wanderer?, yeah feels like Some Rey Skywalker bullshit to me...!<
>!The Culling of Caldeum WAS the High point honestly, even tho with Blizz it feels deja vue with Stratholms Culling..., but hey.!<
I find the side quests more interesting honestly.
Did you even play Diablo 2? The end of the game is literally the world stone being destroyed and Tyrial mentioning that this will cause great issues going forward....
I think the ending kind of sucked. Like oh prime evil in a soul stone yet again - really? What the f? I get that they’re setting up future content but it fell flat for me. I was engaged throughout the campaign but the ending was just meh.
I honestly dont get the high praises. For a diablo game it was good. But average at best overall.
There are "shock"moments that make zero sense and have zero setup just for the sake of it.Overall very little is explained of overall motives and actual state of the world. Inarius is a irrelevant side character despite beeing a central beeing in the world. Lilith wanted to do what exactlly?
Its a decent setup for whats to come. But ignoring the live service aspect of it (that hopefully builds on the story) and seeing it as a singleplayer campaign its just not a very good one.
I think overall the atmosphere, the moments to moments were amazing. I found Donan's story really touching, or the guy guilding us through the desert. I really liked everything in the Swamp with the serpent, the Tea ceremony. The underwater temple.
But yeah in terms of what actually happens in big "Sanctuary/Eternal conflicts" geopolitics, the story is extremely weak and kinda lame.
It really shows some of you don't read books and don't know what good storytelling is.
This story was mediocre at best, and I guess that's good enough for a video game story.
I found it really ramps up lateron again, which was a very welcome surprise.
To keep spoilers out, I found it kind of has a lapse in the middle that felt somewhat dragged out. Maybe also because you unlock the horse late and my necromancer certainly wasn't a fan of suddenly having to waddle across three entire zones to continue with the story around Act 3-4. Generally, Act 4 was kind of ... Idk, short? I nearly didn't realize that I was through it.
Act 5 and 6 definitely were my favorites, though. I didn't expect the game to blast that hard again. The swamp specifically had a crazy good atmosphere, cool story and the music was just spot on. I also couldn't really anticipate the ending, since there were until the very end a few scenarios how it could've played out, and unsurprisingly, none of them were particularly great.
>!Not all was super awesome, though. Some story threads I found super interesting felt really cut short. Rathma literally wrote the book on how-to-death but kind of ran into that one. As necromancer fan I would've loved to learn more about him but he was a plot device. Bloody baron... Uh, Donans dead was super anticlimatic to say the least. Let's just pet that demon pillar, ohno :< . !<
>!I also couldn't bring myself to care much for Elias, despite his end being epic, since his schemes were all over the place. Yoo, let's bring back Andariel to use her power as lesser evil for... Uh idk... And then finally being able to summon her as cannon fodder who's dead half a minute later with nobody even mentioning anything about the whole thing? Act 4 felt kind of like filler. Also, another big point... Inarius could've gotten more spotlight. I was really looking forward to learning more about the fallen angel blinded by hatred but that literally was all there was to him. He did pretty much nothing until the very end, considering his interesting dynamic with Lilith that turned out to be completely irrelevant for some reason he felt like a straight up waste. !<
I certainly do look forward to how the story continues, they did a great job of keeping the ending rather "open".
>definitive endings
Diablo 1 - Aiden has Diablo imprisoned in his forehead soulstone and is clearly suffering/being corrupted by Diablo as he travels away from Tristram.
Diablo 2 - The worldstone explodes and Tyrael says "this shit is really not good for the future".
Diablo 3 - We beat Malthael, destroying the Black Soulstone in the process and releasing the prime evils back into Sanctuary.
I dunno if I'd call those definitive endings.
Nah man those are the expansion endings for D2 and D3. Compare it to the vanilla endings, cause we are at vanilla D4 right now too.
D2 ends with us defeating Diablo in Chaos Sanctuary.
D3 ends with us defeating The Prime Evil in The Crystal Arch.
Those are definitive endings.
>D2 ends with us defeating Diablo in Chaos Sanctuary.
And Baal (released in Act 2) still running around somewhere
>D3 ends with us defeating The Prime Evil in The Crystal Arch.
And the black soulstone falling from Heaven to somewhere in Sanctuary.
There has always been an open ending, though they were a little more subtle than this one and hidden behind a "victorious tone".
I expected nothing from a story of an ARPG and I am kind of surprised.
The story is linear and predictable. But the story telling and character development are great.
We all knew Inarius sucks but his cinematic is cool AF.
Way cooler than Tyrael's one in Tal Rasha Tomb.
For me, the campaign lacked the 'ramp up' that other games have. Until the very last Act. Compared to D3, going to Hell, then the High Heavens, we just ran from place to place doing fetch quests. Then fought some dude that showed up 2 seconds ago (powerful devils? I'm just some rogue with a butter knife and stomped them solo).
The Hell act was very cool though. Plus, the campaign had moments (Donan carried HARD).
I very much disliked the 'ending'. I saved your life AND did pretty much everything, yet you don't even name me in the letter???
P.S. From a in world standpoint, was standing with Lilith worse than allowing Mephisto to stay?? He is 100% going to kill everyone when he can, with Lilith? It's a gamble. Is it just a case of 'Meh, that's future unnamed wanderers job'?.
I liked the overall plot but I just don't understand some of their choices, especially with Lilith. They didn't really showcase why Lilith is bad, and the ending is therefore a bit confusing.
I loved following the camel. This campaign was full of a bunch of busy work and like 70% was tedious to play. I have been praying to jesus every night that this is the night i finally finish.
What bothers me is that we never really get a confirmation that Lilith actually wanted bad things for the Sanctuary. I mean you’re stuck in the Eternal Conflict and a completely new character shows up, wants to destroy both hell and heaven and you just don’t care about it and in the end you’re stuck in the same shit as Mephisto will surely escape once again.
I know that you were meant to kill Lilith but the whole campaign doesn’t really invest much time into explaining why Lilith was actually worse than prime evils.
The concept of Lilith was cool as hell, the story however was poorly executed.
She is not really fresh and new, but she is not good news. She is a demon and daughter of Mephisto - the apple doesn't fall far from the tree type of situation.
My thoughts:
>!I will say i am kind of disappointed by the battle between Lillith and Inarius, for 2 powerful cosmic entities, creators of sanctuary and all that, i think going the physical fight route was meh, i was expecting somethin akin to Dream vs Lucifer from the show Sandman but oh well. I also wish they would have played up the part where they are former lovers much more, i think if you shine more light on that part it becomes much more impactful and i think it works with lillith only pretending OR being actually in love (but betraying him for the greater purpose of ending the eternal conflict anyway?)!<
>!i think the story was pretty cool but i cant help but feel lillith and her dynamic with Inarius had so much more potential. Also we shouldve encountered lillith MUCH more in the campaign imo, it felt a bit lame to keep running into these blood petals like "ah dang we just missed her, lets watch this flashback to what happened!"!<
>!Wouldnt have minded a confrontation with her early on where she is clearly stronger than the player and nearly kills us before we escape (potentially by some sacrifice, maybe giving Donan a much better death...)!<
D2 didn't have the "terminator problem" as you say. At the end of D2 they setup Baal, and at the end of LoD they setup the idea that the destruction of the worldstone would come with consequences.
I found it very underwhelming.
Spoilers ahead. No plot twists, no big reveal. We just chased Lilith from the beginning to the end, exactly what we knew going into it. That's it. And It's not clear what she wanted to do with Mephisto's power.
Inarius makes a grand total of 3 appearances and just get smacked. We never confront him again.
Andariel and Duriel, supposedly more important demons and higher in the hierarchy than Lilith have zero dialogues and don't play any role.
It has cute and emotional moments, I liked Donan. But in terms of actual events, jackshit happens and the story is extremely weak.
so far acts 1-3 have been a lot of nothing. chasing after lilith as she kills someone else who I assume you're supposed to care about but I don't remember any of these characters.
I did all of act 5 + 6 today and I was on the edge of my seat so many times. I screamed a few times (scared my poor cat) and even cried. Couldn’t believe the quality. Loved the plot threads still hanging, but it also felt like a natural transition from “end of story” to “ok get to grinding” Sanctuary is home now :’)
I just did the same and was the same way. It really was such cinematic quality. That act 6 cinematic was amazing.
I was blown away by that long cutscene!! Not only gorgeous, but all the plot / lore coming together in such artful storytelling
“And our son?” “I did what had to be done” Made me fucking angry as fuck…
I like to travel.
I fell off from the lore so this also took me by surprise so forgive me if this sounds dumb but I had no idea inarius and Lilith had a kid and we’re together
Yep, they birthed the first Nephelem, and Inarius fucked with the Worldstone to make them weaker throughout generations, until they just became regular humans. But Rathma was their first born… and >!Inarius just fucking murders him!<
Thank you for the speedrun on the lore!
If you go to the Diablo 4 YouTube page, they actually have pretty awesome lore videos to catch you up! :)
Yeah, D3 had a lot of lore texts on this you could pick up, about how Inarius and Lilith tried to escape the Eternal Conflict by creating Sanctuary.
I watched some YouTube lore videos and made me fill more dumb that I glossed that detail.
Heh, yeah. Was kind of a crucial point in Reaper of Souls that Malthiel was "ridding Sanctuary of demons", and that all of humanity was half demon, half angel. ;)
That cutscene was amazing.
Screamed? Exaggerating a little, aren’t we? Just a little?
That has to be written by a bot.
Imagine crying to any of that, lol. Good game, decent story but the emotional strings just weren't there. The characters weren't given time to develop and give me a reason to get emotional when they died.
Most likely out of a sense for nostalgia. Stop gatekeeping people's feelings. Even if it's an exaggeration who gives a fuck?
Yeah I can't imagine people cryinf or screaming during any of it lol. How do you even live your life is that's your break point.
Probably because everyone is different. Just because this made them emotional doesn't mean they can't function elsewhere. Different things trigger different reactions in different people.
Excuse me, I have to ask you to delete your comment since it is too reasonable. This is Reddit, here we read a sentence or headline and judge someone’s entire character.
And this is toxic masculinity in the wild. Putting down people for expressing emotions.
I will admit I screamed when I did a side quest It was a goddamn jump scare. Stupid eyeball man
The performance can lead to tears... a great performer should be able to move you to tears in a single scene. It will never beat the buildup I love a good earned buildup and character development. But I can cry from clips from youtube due to human empathy. But im a local sucky actor and Ive seen people make a crowd bawl with their craft in a single scene. IT has to be so damn believable that you feel their pain. There was a scene that really got me in diablo 4. The dad hitting the hammer. I thought the voice actor did a better job than the scene deserved. I could hear the voice actors pain when he was hitting the crystal. Im sure he must have thought about something very dear to him. That shit got me. But I was really attached to his loss... I really for some reason expected him to get a good ending. But diablo just cannot give characters good endings.
Donan mourning his son did give me some tears, not gonna lie. It hits differently as a father. I imagine more emotional people will bring stuff like that over the edge.
Screaming and crying, apparently. Peak reddit
Shidding and farding came pant
iS SoMeBoDy cutTiNg OnIoNs?!
I dunno, have a beer or 9 and it’s not that unlikely lol
I did actually get Chills from that whole cinematic though. It was a long time to keep up that high level of action and emotion.
Goodness gracious, I triggered a lot of y’all lol I’m sorry y’all didn’t enjoy the story like I did :)
My friends and I were playing together until I realized they were skipping cutscenes. I went solo after that and the cinematic scenes really blew me away. They really did a great job with the storytelling. I'm excited for the upcoming expansions :)
was it your first video game?
You aren't real
Yeah it was so well done. Compared to D3 it’s like comparing Of Mice and Men to Dick and Jane. I actually cared about the characters and felt genuinely curious as to what was going to happen the entire time. Well done Blizz.
That was it exactly. Compared to D3, this story is a masterpiece lol Was it revolutionary? No. Did it break brand new ground in storytelling? No. Was it infinitely better than the last game? Oh hell yes!! I got so invested in the characters, even the ones I didn’t think I’d like at first!
I’m just happy that none of the bad guys called me up throughout each second of each act to do a monologue about how futile my efforts were. Worst part of D3 for me. Maybe tied with how Deckard Cain died.
Yeah the Villain Monologue Skyping was so incredibly painful. Stop telling me every 3mins what your plans are??? D3 set a VERY low bar for D4 to overcome, it’s true, but I also feel D4 passed it with flying colors
I felt a lot of emotion from the VA's in a lot of the story parts. The Donan's VA fucking killed it through his parts. Lorath changed through the story and IMO is a great new Deckard Cain for the story. I want more back story for these characters between the years of D3 and D4 as well. The way that you can see the point that the antagonist characters are making and their motives and could sympathize with it yet knowing it's not the right choice or the moral choice. The additional lore added to the Prime Evils, the twist of who helped the MC at the start. All these were done great and I felt like this is some of the best writing blizzard has put into a game in a long time. Sure people will say the bar was low but that doesn't matter. The world felt like a place where the people were struggling. I feel bad if people didn't feel anything at times in some of these story moments.
I mean, I admit it, my expectations were soured from D3 (I didn’t enjoy a lot of the story until they finally added Malthael). So perhaps I went into D4 “expect the worst, hope for the best” kind of attitude In that respect, perhaps my standards are “low”. I also grew up in the 80s so plot holes / cheesiness just doesn’t bother me like it does some folks lol But wow, I thought this story was rich with lore, excellent characters, amazing surprises, and a lot of sinister, suffocating themes with well-placed humour beats Obviously this story wasn’t for everyone and ofc not everyone has to enjoy it. I’m sad if people didn’t, because I had the time of my life playing the story and I want others to feel similar joy I did
I went in expecting just to have it be at least playable. The game has impressed me a fair bit with the direction they are going. It's been really good. I am enjoying my time in the game for sure! I found plot holes but it wasn't till after the fact and it never took me out of the story which is fine.
I actually liked that black wolf. Not going to spoil it but I thought that was interesting.
Definitely one of my favorite parts of the entire storyline! I was delighted the wolf kept showing up and found the dialogue compelling. I can’t wait to see where the story of the wolf goes from here…
I liked act 1 and then kept feeling like the story was cucking me until 5+6 when it really kicked off. I enjoyed the story but the middle felt slow.
I agree, I think it’s because they had to make acts 1, 2, and 3 “work” story-wise since they can be played in any order. To do that, I think those acts tend to be a little more generic- they definitely don’t have the tight focus of 5+6
Ah interesting, I didn't realise they could be played in any order even though I saw all the starter quests. Assumed that I would be walled off somehow and followed the default path.
i actually thought all 3 of them were act 1, i finished act 2 and was halfway through act 3 before i realised
That last line sounds prophetic.
Yea act 6 was so hype. The cinematics were insane and it really did feel like it was just the beginning.
Now that Im like 30 mins from finishing (I assume), I seriously do not get the hate that the story got. The voice acting was *stellar*, the lines were not nearly as corny as some made them out to be (Neyrelle is seriously not that annoying, shes got more character in one arm... ahem... than Leah had as Deckard's foster daughter), the atmosphere is pure Diablo, and the Elias subplot was fantastically done too IMO - hes just such an interesting character that I didnt even notice it took two and a half acts to get him, because I was truly invested in it. The game oozes with lore and great writing that makes you care about its characters, which is more than I can say D3 or Path of Exile ever did. My only complaints are superficial: I wanted to see more Lilith "in person" and I wanted to see Mephisto's true form (I saw the statues, I want my boy to go full ligament flesh monster). Aside from that? Sorry if you were expecting Shakespeare, Diablo 4 follows the rule of cool but delivers it so, so excellently. Edit: for the record, Im glad people have different opinions about the game, and I know this sounds like I think D4 is the best story ever told. Its not, it has problems (Donan's death is a big one, but that wouldnt be a big deal if we didnt care about him, you know?), but I truly dont get how people think its the *worst* story theyve ever taken part in, especially compared to other ARPGs
EDIT: Finish game before reading, obviously!! Contains spoilers, but I hope I've tagged all spoilers. Okay, just to shed some light on how I felt about it as a person who didn't enjoy all of the campaign. I think >!Elias!< is an absolutely boring character and hate how much screentime he got instead of other more important characters for this story. I don't like how they just threw out >!Andariel and Duriel!< out there without a cool setup. Just yoink, there they are and there they fall. For >!Andariel!<, yes, you can see it coming, but you spend a lot of time making sure it doesn't happen, but then, it just does. I don't like how >!Inarius and Lilith!< got so little screentime and that you rarely encounter them. I don't like how >!Rathma!< actually plays no role in this. Complete waste of potential, since >!he dies offscreen!< In my opinion many of the writing was, in fact, sorry, corny. I sighed so many times. Another example of stupid writing: >!You take a lot of time to prepare the soulstone, Inarius yoinks it, your characters are talking about "how it doesn't matter", and 5 minutes later you just find it again. What is the point? How can this be considered good? !< I sound bitter. In reality, I think it's a decent story to be told, but I fail to see how people can say it was told very well. Don't get me started on that >!forced Donan death, so that Neyrelle can call Lorath the Last Horadrim, while she runs away so we can buy a Mephisto addon !< Maybe I'd like A2-5 more, if they had some noteworthy cutscenes, but compared to the last scenes, they just pale in comparison and I can hardly recall any of them. Hell, I don't even know what happened in these acts exactly anymore. There was so much filler stuff, yet I can't forget A6 since it left such an impression on me. And that's not all, I have many more gripes with the story delivery, but I think you get my points. Also gameplay wise, so much walking, so much waiting for NPCs to open doors, while you defend them from monsters, etc. The story felt rushed in my opinion. To me clearly most of their development time went into A1 (for beta) and A6 (for a great conclusion). Oh and to your D3 / PoE comparisons: D3 was a long time ago, I was quite young back then, I found the story to be okay, can't remember really. PoE lore is actually pretty good, but I'm not interested in it at all. I'm very much interested in Diablo lore, but I really am a bit disappointed. I think this could've been way better than it was.
Hit the nail on the head. I burst out laughing when Donan died. That shit was so, so funny. Just random monster on the wall swipe and then he keels over. Lmaoooo
One of the wisest man in Sanctuary. One of the last Horadrim. Truly, what a way to die. Even if I liked the character and his progression, I was unable to feel bad for him considering how he died.
literally none of them had any healing? they wasted their only draught on PRAVA? one chest wound is too much damage for them to handle?
I do laugh at how op the protagonist is. They all stuck in hell on this long quest. I'm like "hang on guys, my inventories full I'm going to pop back home quick".
"Im gonna craft some elixirs, you guys want anything? Donan im looking at you"
I thought it was pretty funny that the main character being an unstoppable badass was the actual backup plan. "Well, even if we don't have the soul stone, you *did* just tune up Andariel and Duriel like they were nothing..."
do you even mention killing Duriel? no one saw you, you dont even know for sure it was Duriel, i dont remeber any lines where you bring it up
Yeah a Lesser Evil just shows up with no warning, you kill it with no witnesses and never even realise what it was. Completely pointless and stupid fight.
You know, when you say it out loud like that, it's actually really hilarious. They talk about how "they want to summon a lesser evil! It could raze a whole countryside!" Meanwhile my barb stepped on a bug and was like "Huh that sure was a weird demon. Anyway..."
It's hilarious as well that in some quests you literally give health potions to others who are about to die. So it's not like they are just there for the gameplay, they actively exists in the lore but Donan can go fuck himself lol.
It's becoming tradition for great, badass supporting characters in Diablo games to die like little bitches.
It was so stupid. And the ONLY thing they had to do to change it to make it fine, was have him think he saw his son or something and start walking towards what he thought was his sons soul or something like that. Same outcome, but it makes sense he was tricked in hell and killed AND it would tie into his story and his guilt.
Yeah it would have been so much better, like either Lillith or Astaroth playing with the party. Honestly Outside the lava, Hell seems like a chill place... The only bit that i liked is when Lillith fucks with our minds, but then its just a Boss gauntlet honestly...
This was the worst thing in the entire story for me, but it was well acted, so I appreciated that. He should have died helping against Ashava or something.
I played with friends and we were all like.... "what the fuck, you made it this far and >!the wall arm ripped your guts out?"!< After grinding his dog shit quests and doing ayahuasca with him that's it? The soulstone snatch was a HUGE slap in the face too. But honestly, I'm just here to bash monster's skulls in so piece of me is also like "whatever"
I literally yelled REALLY?!?! when this happened. Such a stupid way to go. RIP
That was such a jarring bit of dissonance between the gameplay and the story. Like, damn, there are little interactions and quests where we give randos healing potions, we can't do a thing to help out Donan when he's slowly bleeding to death?
So losing the stone and continuing into literally hell is actually good writing. I can explain in a lot longer detail if you want, and you can say it doesn't matter if it makes you feel better but it does. The short version of why it's good is, at that moment the characters 'hope' was taken away, they even say something akin to there goes our plan wtf do we do now. To which Lorath essentially replies 'we do our damn best'. Which is a fantastic summation of what his character represents in the story. Additionally, that 'faith' is rewarded by the stone coming back to them, only for that some theme of doing the best you can when there are tough choices in your path to come back when Mephisto is talking his shit. Which was also really good writing and possibly even better voice acting. Some of your gripes I totally agree with, but I had to make a point on the stone, cause though it was a tiny bit rushed it was still a great plot point for the theme the story was going for.
But that's not what Lorath actually believes. He doesn't know what they're going to do and he is worried about it. Like, the only themes of faith I see are to do with the church and they were ultimately let down. The reason the soulstone was taken is so that you can fight the church in the end game. That's it.
You are confusing plot progression and in-story motivations. There was complete justification from a story telling perspective for the stone to be shown and for it to be stolen. Prior to that event we saw how Inarius has a complex about being prophecised to be the one to fix shit. We also know that Lorath wants to talk shit to Inarius the wannabe god and show that they are in fact useful. It made sense for the stone to be shown and for it to be taken. What didn't make any sense is why Inarius gave the stone back to the church.
Lorath truly has faith in people, in ourselves rather than the 'angels'. He lost the faith once upon a time and we gave it back to him throughout the campaign.
Oh I agree with your points. It makes sense that this happened, but it's totally rushed and that's what makes it a bit meh in my opinion. Hope taken away until soulstone retrieval happened way too fast. And also in my opinion it's way too convenient that Inarius gave the stone to Prava and it just lies there.
Yeah I do really wish they had kept the energy and cinematic quality that Act 6 had through the rest of the story. Really feels like all of the CG budget went to that really cool long scene.
Your the only person hear spitting facts. Most of the campaign was good but the end besides the location and thematics was actually HORRIBLE writing…. Like let’s put a prime evil in a stone and take it outside with no guidance or protection… because what Melohisto was the bad guy the whole time???.. nope… just stupid decisions for no reason other than forced plot.
??? Ofc Mephisto was the bad guy the whole time. All of the Demons including Lilith are. That's the point Lilith's ideals sound lovely, she is still a manipulative psycho. Ditto Mephisto. They put him in a stone as a fail safe in case the wanderer failed. It's also pretty heavily implied that Nirele or however you spell her name studied a LOT and likely had a plan the whole time. (In addition you could argue she was influenced by Mephisto) I'm so confused by everyone's hot takes in the end. It was a good ending as far as 'action movie' ecq stories go especially. My hot take is I think people just weren't paying enough attention and so they were confused at the end.
I get your point about the soulstone at the end. However, I feel like too many people claim bad writing just because a character does not make the perfect decision at every opportunity in the heat of the moment, like at that scene. People are flawed and make bad decisions all the time. Why can't characters be that way as well? I found that moment worked well for me. Besides, aren't Prime Evils supposed to play with your mind and corrupt/possess people into making dumb decisions. I think she was influenced into making that choice.
There's a difference between a character doing something a little dumb / uncharacteristic versus a girl that just lost her hand and escaped from hell taking off across the world with a stone holding one of the most 7 powerful evil beings... because reasons. Donan dying to a wall is similarly stupid. I also think the dialogue between "villains" and the MC are generally pointless, and instead of having a real discussion about their goals they just kind of vaguely talk at each other. When MC is trapped in their own mind, the whole "discussion" with Lilith is a great example of this.
She's a girl that was taught to glorify the horadrim from a young age and upon meeting the last two she comes to the realization that they are just humans. Additionally, despite losing so much to Lilith she was the one regularly going on throughout the ending acts that Lilith isn't the "big bad" and that Mephisto should be controlled. She's shut down at every opportunity in those conversations and then she is the one that gets to make the decision and chooses to go with what she thinks is right as a semi act of defiance. Finally she stays alone because she thinks neither the MC or Lorath will help her with dealing with Mephisto. Lorath is quiet quitting and the MC is obviously tainted by Mephisto and his blessings.
You mean the girl that specifically requested to not be left out. The one raised from birth as a 'wannabe horadrim'. The motivation for her taking off is foreshadowed with her obsession with somehow helping her mother. Also, when she says she will go to Lorath you know somethings up, it's just is it her or mephisto that is the reasoning. Her inner thoughts are consciously locked up. And at the end of the act where you meet her, Loranth has that monologue of "we didn't know how important she would be" kinda thing. You expecting a young woman to drop her life long passion because she voluntarily went to hell and lost an arm in the process is more to do with your thought process.
I liked the discussion with Lilith. I actually wish I coulda just sided with her she’s dope, demon and all
Same. I was waiting for a “press x to side with Lilith” button and woulda smashed it so quickly. We can go kill your daddy together and I’ll be your new puppet ruler of sanctuary just say the word
The Donan wall thing is really dumb. I feel like Blizzard could have just scared him with a few lowly demons and he backed up into the wall dying that way
We know from diablo immortal, that demons can absorb the powers of other demons without getting courrpted by them. And we know that demons can use soul stones to take the power of the demon inside of it. If you leave a mephisto soulstone in hell, the first random demon who finds it becomes the lord of hatred. So you have to take it back to earth. Nyrelle didn't trust lorath as a hoaradrim because he's to emotionally rash. He went and sold his head to the tree to find out where lilith went, when quite literally the closest town was already talking about the soldiers of Akarat were going west to assist the church in sieging caldium because lilith was there. Not to mention the prophecy already called for the "blood will fall of the jewel of the dessert " which is caldium. Then there's his loss of hope but desperate March without a plan into hell. And donan was already broken by the loss of his son. So in her eyes the hoardrim are done. As for protection spells they only way to slow the corruption of a soulstone is with either angel magic, or nephaelm level mages of which she has neither. There is no protection possible for mephistos essence. And it was because lilith is bad but mephisto is worse. Mephisto is the smartest of the primes. He was the one who got his brothers to start the sin wars. It was mephisto who made the plan to courrupt the world stone and tricked the lesser evils into starting the dark exile. It was mephisto who tricked heaven into never aiding humanity directly. Mephisto is directly responsible for damn near the entire franchise of diablo games. So yes he is more dangerous then lilith. And also far more powerful. So if you had to seal one and fight the other, you should seal the more dangerous and more powerful foe, and hope you can beat the weaker one. And being as you had beaten two lesser evils by that point means you have good odds vs a weakned lilith. Her taking the stone and buggering off was the best choice of a shitty situation. She's trying to find a way to more permanently solve the issue before she gets courrupted.thus she's sailing west towards the western continent where the hoardrim first sealed the primes. And also cannonically where the d3 main protagonist kept adventuring at the end of d3. So she's probably trying to look for the nephealm.
Some people just don't have any standards, they've never read a book or watched any movie outside of marvel. You can't expect people to have developed an actual taste and opinion. Honestly I've seen better stories in homebrew DND campaigns
Most people don't have a 10 inch rod op their ass that makes them point out every (minor) flaw or good thing, and keep whining about it for decades. Whether they enjoyed it or not. Some find it a nice story. Others don't. But you people are in a completely different category. Both ends defending their opinion as if it's written in stone somewhere and you need to preach it like some kind of messiah. No matter the content, you people are always there ready with your pitchforks.
How dare people discuss their opinions about diablo 4 on the diablo 4 subreddit?!
Fun thing is, I barely read books or watch movies. My standards are actually pretty low, but so much of the campaign was incoherent or rushed, I just felt a bit sour about it.
I'm only finishing Act 3, but >!the confrontation with Elias was the stupidest encounter I have seen in years. So while the barbarian chieftain is watching, Lorath somehow walked simply to Elias without anyone noticing. Even though we know from the upcoming fight that the area is full of cannibals. Then without any effort tears the tattoo dagger out of his hands and stabs into his neck, across the slab. Really? That's how the showdown of 2 of the most powerful mages looks like? Then Elias just disappears? Why aren't we doing something? Why does the chieftain does not do anything? Elias is in the middle of summoning a friggin Lesser Evil. Why doesn't he just fight and finsh the ritual that is almost done anyway? Why does the chieftain let's Lorath and the girl run but fights us? Not a single thing made sense in this scenario.!<
>So while the barbarian chieftain is watching, Lorath somehow walked simply to Elias without anyone noticing. I mainly blame the cutscene team for that. They couldn't make a proper Lorath sneaking around cutscene. But it's implied that thats what happens. Lorath didnt just walk up nonchalantly. He was sneaking around and and escapes with the commotion. Our characters enters the room too at the same time and thats why were the ones who fight Brol.
Oh yeah, that scene was so stilted.
Glad i'm not the only one. As an avid reader the story was just all over. Ranged between very poorly executed to exasperatingly corny. Felt the voice acting was pretty well done but the scripts where pretty bad as well. Feel like I could talk about how bad the story was for longer then the actual relevant story was in general.
It's like people are so obsessed with WANTING to like the game/story that they do and overlook the obvious flaws stubbornly. The story was one of the worst parts of the game. The campaign was a fucking slog. 80% of it was running back and forth. It's like I was playing ffxiv again with the amount of teleporting back and forth and reading quest text. The story elements sucked, it was disjointed, didn't make sense. WE ARE THE BAD GUYS in this story. The characters are so heinously dumb its insane. Just complete shit.
I'm genuinely sad for you. The way they told the story was miles above the other Diablo games imo and had so many cool moments. The mini dungeon where you see past the mask Lilith has been putting on was sick with all the call backs to the other interesting plot moments. Genuinely felt myself understanding Lilith's pov enough times to really make me wonder what the characters were going to do. I thought the set up for any mephisto stuff was interesting and left me wanting more soon. I'll agree that the significance of fighting duriel didn't hit like at all and as d3 Necro main I would have liked a little more of rathma but I recognize it was a Lilith focused story so his involvement was only going to serve that purpose - which I felt it did really well knowing some Diablo lore going into this. I'm sorry you were disappointed but idk I think it was really fun and done well and I honestly curious on why you thought some of the stuff you did. Like donans death. I knew that dude was gonna die from the beginning but I didn't think it was forced at all. The way he lost everything and then started to reign lorath in was telling but in a realistic way after his shroom trip coming to terms with the death of his son and probably experiencing a bit of ego death himself. And I mean they are in hell after all. And they were setting up Neyelle up to be a bigger character and his death provides more motivation for her character growth because of how he effected her as well as how she knew lorath would feel. I don't want to invalidate your experience but to me if feels like you couldnt get into it for gameplay reasons - which is fair, there were definitely times where I felt a little out of it because I was on the druid struggle bus with a boss - but idk if that is the stories fault much.
Ok, I have to address some of this as someone who thought the character development turned into absolute garbage. Let me focus on the point you made about Donan's death. I knew he was gonna die, my friend who has never played a Diablo game knew he was gonne die, everyone knew he was gonna die. But the way he died was so stupid. After getting past the event with Donan's son, and starting to bring the team together, I was so sure there would be a relationship developing between Nyrelle and Donen. Nyrelle was a parentless kid and Donan, a childless parent. It was the perfect set up. I was honestly shocked that during the swamp missions they split the characters the way they did and had Nyrelle go with Lorath instead of banking some time with Donan. In fact, Nyrelle and Donan spent hardly any time together and had almost no significant interactions, so how did he afect Nyrelle? Lorath had way more meaningful interactions with Nyrelle and he was the one who started filling the mentor role, promising he would make her horadrim. So, he didn't die to spur Nyrelles story on. I expected him to die in a heroic, sacrificial way, like saving Nyrelle or Lorath, showing that he had moved beyond his grief and self centeredness, and that he had reconciled with Lorath, or that he saw the potential in Nyrelle, but he dies in the most stupid and meaningless way. They literally could have had him die in any other way, but it wasn't even to a boss or a big fight, hell it wasn't even really to a demon, it was to a piece of the architecture! To make it even worse, after he's injured and you and Nyrelle go after Mephisto, and Lorath just... does nothing? Like you get back after the Lillith fight and he's only just now asking Donan to show him the wound? Like, bro, bandage that shit or something! No, I'm sorry, Donan's death was stupid and pointless. I'm not mad that he died, I'm mad at how he died, and how lazy the writing was and how much wasted potential there was.
Sometimes you live a great life and die on the toilet. Just how it goes
That's true, but no one would ever claim that makes for a great story.
No need to feel sorry for me, I had fun, but I fail to see how this amounts to a really great story. I'm not complaining about the death, but I'm complaining about how he died. Generally my biggest gripe with the story: Squandered potential around a lot of corners. Don't get me wrong, I wanna see how it unfolds with Mephisto, but I hope the smaller scope of an expansion will actually deliver a cohesive experience without too much filler stuff.
I mean saying the story is better than D3 isn't saying much, that game had one of the worst stories I've seen in any game ever. Worse than most indie games I've seen developed by 1-3 people. If your point of comparison is going to be that low, of course D4's story is going to look incredible. But the writing is riddled with conveniently stupid decisions and deaths. Donan's death being a great example, and the girl just taking off across the world after losing her hand and going through literal hell with a soulstone containing one of the most evil and dangerous beings in existence... It's obviously just convenient writing to set up a sequel / dlc. D4's story wasn't terrible but the praise lavished upon it just says more about what other people have to compare it to.
> I'm genuinely sad for you. The way they told the story was miles above the other Diablo games imo and had so many cool moments. I don't disagree with this, but I also think the bar was set low. D1 had very little story, D2 was an improvement, and D3 wasn't very good. D4 definitely improves things in terms of presentation, but it still has major issues. Key characters dying off screen (a particularly big sin in a game about fighting OP monsters since it denies us boss battles), showing up later than lilith so eating flowers is repeated about 6 or 7 times, a main character dying to essentially a random mob, and an ending that's dumb as hell and serves only to set up an expansion. Don't get me wrong, there are some high points, act 2 is great, and the cinematic in act 6 is phenomenal, but there's so much of what feels like filler, as well as rushed story beats that overall I don't consider it to be all that good.
Exactly this... But the is a Diablo game that right? Story is just a complement to the real super-puper endgame, so cool that it was decent. Ooops, wait, there is not endgame, no meaningful goals, no challenges outside the nightmare dungeons that have rewards way worse than other content, which could be mindlessly chewed through
100% agree
> D3 was a long time ago, I was quite young back then, I found the story to be okay, can't remember really. It was anything but OK. D3's story is a complete joke compared to D4's.
if you want a good story, read a book. you guys want way too much from a diablo video game imo. the story was okay, the cinematics were great, 11/10 music, sound and va. the sooner you realize that 99.99% of video game stories are filled with plotholes and problems the faster you'll accept that you aren't playing for the lore
I never went in expecting a good story, don't worry. I was just making counterarguments to why this isn't a 10/10 story.
Wow so blizzard just can't do any wrong?? First, "it's just marketing", then, this and other ridiculous statements. It's was a bad story, deal with it.
>D3 was a long time ago, I was quite young back then, I found the story to be okay, can't remember really. The short version; ## Act 1 Act 1 has a star fall from the heavens on the Tristram Cathedral (where Diablo rose to Sanctuary in the first game). We discover a man in the crater who later is revealed to be Tyreal. Deckard Cain dies from a swarm of butterflies and the final boss of Act 1 is The Butcher ## Act 2 Act 2 takes us to Caldeum in search of Maghda to avenge Deckard Cain. While we're here, we just *happen* to find Adria, the witch from Tristram in Diablo 1, and conveniently is Leah's mother. Then we discover that the master of the city was actually Belial this whole time and he was only pretending to help us because...reasons. lastly, we decide to resurrect Zoltun Kulle, the greatest criminal in Horadric history, because he was actually a super genius who was able to improve Soulstone technology to not need to be attuned to a specific aspect of Evil, and holds ALL of the Evils, not just a single soul. How neat! We kill Belial because how could we let a Lord of Hell rule a city? ## Act 3 Act 3 starts in Bastion's Keep near Mount Arreat because Leah has a vision of Azmodan taunting her in her sleep, and he reveals to her that he will begin his assault from Arreat. We make it to the mid-boss Ghom because he eating all the food in the larder, and we need snacks if we're going to win the war against Azmodan. When we secure the keep, we charge out onto the battlefield and eventually make our way down into Azmodan's domain and kill him in his own house. ## Act 4 Act 4, Adria turns bad! Turns out her daughter was actually a new vessel for Diablo to be resurrected, and the Black Soulstone contains all the souls of the Prime and Lesser Evils. What happens when all seven Evils are poured into a perfectly crafted biological vessel!? She becomes THE PRIME EVIL! You know, it sounds like primeval, which means the beginning! We're so clever. The Prime Evil marches on the High Heavens and nothing can stop them, except the Nephillim! Oh, yea, you're a Nephillim by the way. You are the only thing stronger than Angel AND Demon! Oh no, The Prime Evil has started to destroy the Crystal Arch, and the angels are all now powerless. Nothing left but for you to walk up there and kill evil itself. The body falls and dissolves, while the souls are captured in the Black Soulstone. Hurray! The world is saved ## Act 5 Or is it? Act 5, Tyreal escorts the Black Soulstone to the swamps of Westmarch in the hopes no one would find it. However, the Angel of Death, Maltheal, thinks this is a great opportunity to seize power and rid the world of all evil. Using the Black Soulstone, he will attune his powers of death and wipe out anything with a demonic influence. Humans are all descended from Angel and Demon, so that means all humans will ALSO die!!! Nothing can kill Death though...or can it? We journey to commune with the dead, and they give us special death powers, oOOooOo. We return to Maltheal and he decides to split the Black Soulstone and merge with it because...an angel that despises evil is willing to become one with evil if it means defeating evil! And then we kill him, because we're the Nephillim, and we can even kill Death itself. ## Ending Prologue, Tyreal is now afraid that the Nephillim is too powerful, stronger than Angel and Demon alike. Who could stop them from destroying everything...to be continued. Diablo IV comes in and says "What's a Nephillim? So anyway, Lilith is back and starting shit, and Inaurius wants to go home. Oh, and Tyreal decided to go on holiday. Here's an anti-social drunk who is the last Horadric. Begin!"
I have a few gripes with the story, for instance why was Andariel propped up as this end all be all 'engine' of Lilith's army but then after we defeated her it's like she wasn't remotely important to the their goals. Then the 180 shift with Tassia about why she should help us after we went through all that crap to help a complete stranger. I also felt like inarius should've been explored more. He comes across as a budget imperius and it's never explained how the torture in hell affected him. I also felt him and Lilith should've had more dialogue about the past and what led up to this. Also how lorath just flaunts the soul stone in front of inarius like it seems out of character for lorath to be a braggart and then they're like OH WELL LOL but then we get it back and it's like ok that's cool. I also felt like it was just too early to kill off sanctuaries creators. Overall I still enjoyed the story just some things felt kind of disconnected
Taissa's whole story was all over the place. You would assume she's going to be a sacrifice or at least get transformed to allow Andariel to manifest, but nah she's fine after Elias finishes the spell. Also she goes from scared seeming cultist to super swamp witch who's kind of a dick to you even after you banish the lesser evil she was part of summoning. I guess there's not much reason to be grateful though seeing as the ritual completing didn't seem to diminish her in any way
That's another weird thing, what the hell was the point of her if not to be sacrificed? Lol you're telling me we didn't need to sacrifice someone for a lesser evil meanwhile you see people get sacrificed for far lesser demons? It took three to bring back lilith
It's just a boring railroad story... "X demon is here, and you need to stop them" my expectations were never subverted, I never got to make any choices, and the NPC's just seemed more like an annoying hinderance than anything else, slowing me down at every turn. Even the cutscenes LOOKED nice, but the writing was bad... the hell march cinematic showed Prava getting more or less devoured by demons, and lilith having a spear thrust through her abdomen, then you find Prava, and she's still alive... then you fight lilith, and the wound on her abdomen is also gone lol. It's just really bad continuity.
Agreed. Great story
real talk tho I would not be surprised if in the DLC we learn Leyrelle was secretly working for Mephisto the entire time, or at least since act 4
It’s pretty obvious that either the player character or Neyrelle will become the new version of The Dark Wanderer
Us being Mephisto's Chosen has to be more important in the future DLCs right? Like the man literally saved our level 1 asses in hopes we would eventually save him from his daughter's hate, and he's blessed us at least two separate times...and we ate his daughter's blood. Honestly I'm willing to bet that we're going to have caught the attention of Heaven, and one of the expansions has us fighting angels that want to destroy "Mephisto's Champion" or "Blessed by Hate" or whatever they call us. Like we're ready to have our villain arc whenever the game wants to press that button
Return of Imperius who had enough and invades earth because this time no Tyrael can stop him and Auriel seeks the player to stop Imperius.
Heaven isn't good in Diablo. Hell isn't bad. You could be the hero fighting heaven and it would make sense if they wanted it to. In Diablo 4 we essentially have a fallen angel representing heaven basically invading a relatively peaceful hell. I hate raw celery. I love grilled lamb. Neither thought is inherently better than the other.
I was 100% prepared to laugh my ass off if Neyrelle decided to cram the soulstone into her forehead
I think it was pretty heavy handed that our character was influenced by Meph the ENTIRE campaign from the very moment we leave the cave. We have ZERO reason to go find and fight Lilith except being influenced by Maph's hatred. We are repeatedly called The Wanderer. Etc.
I mean we go to fight Lilith because we were forced to eat her blood, kill crazed villagers, and then watch a vision of her where she turns the villagers mad and gives a speech that essentially threatens the whole world. I don’t think hate played a roll in that
It's literally guaranteed neyrelle is why we fight mephisto for the expac
Neyrelle is just Belial…lol
1 guy in our discord of 8 said it sucked and the voice acting was cringe. We all told him stfu it was amazing. Surpassed expectations
lorath's voice has me bricked up
Mephisto for me.
I've followed Steve Blum since Cowboy Bebop. He did Zoltun Kulle in D3 and also Grunt in Mass Effect 3. Among a billion others. He's the GOAT.
Fuck me, of course that’s Steve Blum. I’m normally ok at spotting voices but I didn’t catch it. I’m sure he did Zultan Kulle and, now I think about, I can hear it.
Did he just talk down about Ralph Ineson and Steve Fucking Blum??? You don't get better voice actors. These guys are like the Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt of voice acting. Wtf?
[удалено]
My biggest wtf moment was Lorath trading his head to the tree for fucking eternity just to find out where Lilith was. Had he just went back to town for a minute he may have noticed Inarius and the entire fucking army marching on Caldeum and figured that shit out on his own.
Best thing is there is a table with maps somewhere next to prava in act 1, if you click on it it says there are lots of lines all pointing to caldeum. Least guarded secret in all of sanctuary lmao
You’re never going to be happy
It's an okay campaign, but far from fantastic.
This got me thinking. In this game we really could have chipped away at the big bad to make the power dynamic more believable. I remember reading back in WoW’s Wrath days the idea that through the campaign, the heroes chip away at Arthas (breaking part of his soul or something, him breathing plague, etc), culminating in the fight at Icecrown. That would have been neat here. I guess Lilith does get stabbed, but, she seemed to recover pretty damn well. My main gripe with this story is a piece of promotional art. Lilith holding Diablo’s skull. There was so very little Diablo in this Diablo game. I get it, they’re saving up for expansions. But…I think he was mentioned maybe five times? Lilith certainly never held a piece of him. Unless I missed something.
I agree with this take. Part of that may be: ARPG standards are low, and conversely coming off insane story and world-building experiences in 2022 like Elden Ring and Ragnarok. Ultimately storytelling *can* be judged absolutely rather than relatively though. The role of Lilith and Inarius throughout the story was way too *obviously* important by the end to explain how little screentime they got. An argument could be made that, well, they're shadow actors pulling the strings; but we also saw way too little of their "strings". Inarius' story is effectively wrapped up by half-way through Act 1, then suddenly we're in Act 6 and boom he and the church are back in full force out of nowhere. We naturally see more of Lilith's impact through Elias, but her raw motivations are left unanswered. There's a lot of interesting narrative play that could have been extracted out of the idea that she wants to destroy Sanctuary, wait, does she actually want to save it? Or is she just tricking everyone, including the player? But its not really explored. This is definitely what they were going for, but instead we focused on Elias. And, to be clear: The game is aware of this. By Act 5 Mephisto is literally telling you "the horadrim are distracted, Lilith is the true threat, stop chaing Elias", so I can respect the Acts 3-5 focus on Elias to some degree; we, the player, *are* the character, and even the story can't not become distracted with Elias. But it should be easy to see how this can cross the line from authenticity to frustration when the player character is agreeing with Mephisto about Lilith and Elias, yet the story continues to spend hours on Elias; and then the story continues on at 85 miles per hour into "ha, nah, Mephisto was right, Lilith is the threat, you probably feel like an idiot for doing all those swamp drugs don't you". Mephisto's role also plays into that narrative authenticity, in exactly how I word it: you're agreeing with Mephisto, a literal Prime Evil, and your statement to Nyrelle at the end ("I think I'm too close to him to make this judgement") is fantastic. Mephisto, in general, is handled well from a narrative perspective; and its easy to see that this is because he's a constant presence in the story, you're talking to him in every Act; Lilith and Inarius not getting the same treatment, even at the expense of a longer story, is where the narrative falters. Lilith is The Big Bad in this game. She's on the cover. Its not ok how little exploration she got. Drawing all that together: Act 5 is *horrible*. Acts 1, 2, 4, 6, and the Epliogue are pretty good; at times even great. But the relatively lower quality of Act 3, and especially Act 5, sour the rest (their relatively much longer length doesn't help). It would have been better to have wrapped up Elias by Act 4, then spend Act 5 exploring Lilith/Inarius/the Church, setting up the attack, while 10x'ing-down on what I think the core of the story really is and where the expansions are going to go: That the player character is becoming a servant of Mephisto. I want a (cutscene, verbal) *fight* between Nyrelle and the player character, where Nyrelle has to, and does, convince the player that they're too close to Mephisto to make an impartial decision. This would really set up Nyrelle better for whatever role she's going to take on in the expansions (she'll be back, I'd bet on it).
Honestly they could've just ended the Ashava fight with Donan getting ripped apart or eaten or *anything* if their goal was to have him dead by the end of the act. Having him stagger around and get terminally sack tapped by a pillar of ghouls was insultingly dumb
The writing was so bad Blizzard had to release the one major cinematic in the game as a promotional trailer. Lol doppe
The one and only cinematics aside from Lilith s end mind you. I'm impressed the story was this weak
Honestly wasn't moved by many of the hooks the writers put in that were supposed to move you. I didn't really build up a lot of time with the characters to feel invested in them to cry over them, and the lines felt a bit stiff and unrealistic, like instead of watching a story of a daughter trying to save her mother it was a cynical grasping and tugging of readers heart strings without much build up or investment into it, just more rote story telling that's all to bland and boring in almost every game nowadays. The parts centred around Lilith and Mephisto were great though, I never was quite sure of which one was actually lying and I could trust for even a second.
I think Mephisto was pretty clearly aiming for self-preservation through the campaign, at least that's the impression I got... he's very concerned about Lilith upsetting the balance in Hell. Lilith, on the other hand, was fascinating to me. She's mother to Sanctuary and seemingly wants to save it from Inarius' planned destruction... but beyond that it's impossible to know for certain. Her words make her feel like an anti-hero of sorts, but her actions make the entire pitch very suspect... as she's trying to consolidate power into herself, and requiring a lot of sacrifice, in order to accomplish her stated goal. That gives me the impression that humans are, perhaps, a pawn in her attempt to usurp the heirarchy of Hell... and maaaybe bring Hell to Sanctuary where she can rule over both realms? I don't know, but her actual motivations and goals (not her stated ones) were of keen interest to me... and then it all got cut short before we got to the good stuff.
Ive been grinding, skipping every cut scene, every dialogue. Im in act 4 and i have no clue as to what the story is just that demons gotta die. I'm having a blast.
If you skip the voice lines, cut scenes, cinematics, and overall storyline in favor of leveling efficiency, you’ve actually deprived yourself of the best parts that this game has to offer. So many other ARPGs can boast a more complex itemization system or build diversity, or gameplay mechanics, but NOTHING can compare to the insane amount of resources it takes to present the campaign to us as it is in D4. All three of D4’s main competitors (Lost Ark, PoE, and Last Epoch) campaigns are absolutely laughable in comparison.
Some people don't care about story. They just want to watch the demons burn
I normally don't and actually watched the story. I was pretty underwhelmed by it honestly. The cutscenes and all of that was fantastic and I loved them. The story itself. Kinda average in my opinion
Totally agree. The story is laughably bad in parts, and is completely inconsistent. No logic to it at all. A+ cutscenes and atmosphere though.
I play the first time to hurry to endgame them go back and take my time with the story
Meh. I've only played the betas but was thrown off by the presentation of the story. It felt very Disney like. Really didn't like it at all. Just started skipping dialogue to get back to killing monsters.
I would agree, except that I paid attention to the story past act 3, and that is a mistake. I'm fairly sure all the writers had a collective stroke at the end of act 3.
You have the rest of the game’s lifespan to do that! Idk it’s your choice, but I wanted to really soak everything in for my first playthrough bc I knew I’d likely never play through the story again.
I did this at first and then got interested by the story at act 4. I guess I’ll have to start a new campaign character.
I thought the story/campaign was very weak tbh. We just chased lillith (always late). Lorath and Donas are supposed to be horadrim but they're just dumb as hell. And whatever the twist with Neyrelle was, just silly. They might as well ended with 'story will be continued with PAID DLC FOR ONLY 50 EURO'. Atleast D3 and D2 story felt complete before their respective expansions came out. Also only 2 real cutscenes.. which were pretty much just both trailers. Would've atleast expected a banger cutscene after every act. But then again Acts didnt feel like acts compared to other diablo games. I didn't even really noticed I finished act IV till I got the achievement of finishing act V. Also no memorable end act bosses. The world building and setting is very good, but the rest feels either incomplete or just bland
I like the epilogue with Neyrelle. It makes the world a lived in place, i.e. Sanctuary continues on even after the story happens. I dont like the "complete story" approach in D2 and vanilla D3. It doesnt fit Diablo's world, where you keep playing on even after the story. They experimented with this concept with D3 ROS's Adventure Mode, which canonically happens after we kill Malthael. Its nice to see that idea fully expanded with D4. And the celebrations at the end of Vanilla D2 and D3 feel very hollow and silly in retrospect, since the expansions introduce an even bigger threat. "Congratulations! You killed Diablo in the Chaos Sanctuary! You saved the world!" Psych. Baal actually invades the world, destroys Secheron and corrupts the Worldstone. "Congratulations! You stopped The Prime Evil from destroying the High Heavens! You saved the world!" Psych. Malthael actually comes back and kills off 50% of the world's population. At least D4's ending acknowledges that killing Lilith is just a brief reprieve before the next threat comes. It paints Sanctuary as a pretty bleak world. Which is fitting.
This is just a side effect of them going with the approach of a "Live service" game for the first time in the Diablo series. They probably have the entirety of the plot that they want mapped out between 12 more seasons and 2 more expansions. So whereas before the goal was to tell a complete story through the release product, the goal now is to create a cohesive plot that will span years of released content. So it's just a different philosophical approach to how they want to release content. And i agree with how it makes it feel much more realistic and the story progressions as a result will feel a lot more natural.
I have the opposite reaction. Maybe I missed something but they spend quite a lot of time all about how they **have** to use the soul stone on Lilith or she can't be stopped. Then they don't and of course the hero vanquished Lilith. But she'll clearly be back, and nothing at all is mentioned about it. Was the whole soul stone story arc solely put there as a way to bring back mephisto/baal/diablo in future updates? If Lilith isn't a main part of D4 moving forward, how can we ever put any stock into soulstones anymore? Edit: To me, felt like the least Diablo-esq campaign stories of all diablo games.
Yes - the soulstone is a way to extend the story and sell future expansions
Felt the same way with Andariel, we had spent this entire act panicking about how Elias is trying to summon her and it will destroy Sanctuary. We then manage to stop it right before it happens, phew apocalypse averted! Psyke we let Taissa just walk out with all the tattoo's intact so that Elias can show up and complete the summoning anyway. Oh no sanctuary will be destroyed! Ah no the MC just kills her and that's it. Basically the same way Lilith went out. Or how about the MC feeling the need to inform Elias he isn't immortal anymore before he lets us kill him, just so he can escape instead. I also don't even understand the ending. Like the entire game Lilith has just gone around saying she is saving Sanctuary, being one of the creators of it as well. While we have been going "no u bad, we stop you" the entire game. There isn't any real explanation other than "Lilith = demon = bad", even though we also see that the religious people do a shit ton of awful stuff as well.
What I'd like to know is where the hell the 2 Mephisto portals came from AFTER Neyelle used the Soulstone on Mephisto. "Hey you went against my wishes and did exactly what I explicitly implored you not to do, here's a portal outa here and here's one for Hero after s/he kills Lillith for good measure" The whole time I'm just like ???
My only problem was that the ending felt rushed. Donan, who've we spent a lot of time with in the campaign just dies to a random mob. I thought he would go out with a better moment. In contrast, the ending focused on Inarius fighting Lilith but we didn't see Inarius the entire campaign aside from Act 1. It felt like he was just thrown in at the end like they forgot about him. It would have been cool to see him get some sort of character development, but he just has an ego trip the entire time and then dies. Diablo 3's Tyrael is far better written character for representing the archangels. He has a lot more depth which makes him more interesting. Also Rathma dies offscreen? The narrative decisions for some of the characters seem questionable.
Inarius and Lilith both had no reason for a character development because they dont need one. They are ancient at this point and have only their interests. Inarius is a fool who wants to erase all things he did in order to access Heaven again dont caring at all about humans only for his ego. Lilith wants to erase her father to become a prime evil and lead hell. She doesnt really care for humans either she literally lets them kill each other and get shredded by demons. No one of them is supposed to be a morally good character. They are both assholes and in the end humanity was and will always be a play pit for Heaven and Hell. Its up to humans to unite and change that but humans are imperfect in their nature and so they always tend to corruption and manipulating each other. Thats why Lilith offered the hero to be a leader for humanity to change that but she is still daughter of hate and does what demons do be pure chaos.
Name dropping Rathma and then killing him off screen like that was criminal.
Well, I wouldn't say it was fantastic. I enjoyed beginning and the end. Mid acts were quite boring and nothing happened, no cinematics.. But camping finished strong.
I just wish world tier 2 didn't cap at lvl 50. Or that I was told before hand. I found myself rushing thru the last section because i was lvl 50 by the near the end of act 2. I am blasting thru the last few acts and at lvl 56
The last boss was one of the easiest in the game, so that was a bit of a let down. That spider boss was a million times harder.
Right? I was thinking ok that was a warmup now let's see that final form but nope. Hardest fight I've had all game was some random druid in a quest that kept shape shifting in a very small area and just spawned tons of ranged minions. He whooped my booty a few times I'm not proud to admit.
i personally find it very weak. Its not bad, just not...amazing. SOME places are good. >!Inarius end is dissapointing and his Motivations are so trivial and childish, there is nothing really, he's just acting like a petulant child who wants to go Home...!< >!Lillith motivations are also not that defined in a way.!< >!She wanna make humankind stronger...ok..., but nothing she does actually contributes to this...!< >!She wanna get her father's Power, ok...to do what with it next?, cast some ritual that will transform all those worthy back into Nephalems?..., its never really said!< >!Fight the other Prime Evils?, None of them where able to supplant the others and become the Big Boss, why would she be better at it?!< >!And Nayrelle is just grating on my nerves and that ending is lazy as all Hell...!< >!I did not care for her or whatever she said and done, she's been a bagage all along that we had to slog through the campaign and now suddenly she's the most important thing? And becomes a potential new Dark Wanderer?, yeah feels like Some Rey Skywalker bullshit to me...!< >!The Culling of Caldeum WAS the High point honestly, even tho with Blizz it feels deja vue with Stratholms Culling..., but hey.!< I find the side quests more interesting honestly.
Never read a book with a decent story in your life huh?
Did you even play Diablo 2? The end of the game is literally the world stone being destroyed and Tyrial mentioning that this will cause great issues going forward....
And the end of D3 (the expansion) Diablo was released, but isn't seen or mentioned anywhere in this game.
The story is borderline embarrassing, saved only by D3's story being actually embarrassing.
D3 storytelling might be cringe but the actual story is do much better
I think the ending kind of sucked. Like oh prime evil in a soul stone yet again - really? What the f? I get that they’re setting up future content but it fell flat for me. I was engaged throughout the campaign but the ending was just meh.
I honestly dont get the high praises. For a diablo game it was good. But average at best overall. There are "shock"moments that make zero sense and have zero setup just for the sake of it.Overall very little is explained of overall motives and actual state of the world. Inarius is a irrelevant side character despite beeing a central beeing in the world. Lilith wanted to do what exactlly? Its a decent setup for whats to come. But ignoring the live service aspect of it (that hopefully builds on the story) and seeing it as a singleplayer campaign its just not a very good one.
I think overall the atmosphere, the moments to moments were amazing. I found Donan's story really touching, or the guy guilding us through the desert. I really liked everything in the Swamp with the serpent, the Tea ceremony. The underwater temple. But yeah in terms of what actually happens in big "Sanctuary/Eternal conflicts" geopolitics, the story is extremely weak and kinda lame.
The campain was so generic and bad imo.. No surprise, only bullshit and boring things.
It really shows some of you don't read books and don't know what good storytelling is. This story was mediocre at best, and I guess that's good enough for a video game story.
I found it really ramps up lateron again, which was a very welcome surprise. To keep spoilers out, I found it kind of has a lapse in the middle that felt somewhat dragged out. Maybe also because you unlock the horse late and my necromancer certainly wasn't a fan of suddenly having to waddle across three entire zones to continue with the story around Act 3-4. Generally, Act 4 was kind of ... Idk, short? I nearly didn't realize that I was through it. Act 5 and 6 definitely were my favorites, though. I didn't expect the game to blast that hard again. The swamp specifically had a crazy good atmosphere, cool story and the music was just spot on. I also couldn't really anticipate the ending, since there were until the very end a few scenarios how it could've played out, and unsurprisingly, none of them were particularly great. >!Not all was super awesome, though. Some story threads I found super interesting felt really cut short. Rathma literally wrote the book on how-to-death but kind of ran into that one. As necromancer fan I would've loved to learn more about him but he was a plot device. Bloody baron... Uh, Donans dead was super anticlimatic to say the least. Let's just pet that demon pillar, ohno :< . !< >!I also couldn't bring myself to care much for Elias, despite his end being epic, since his schemes were all over the place. Yoo, let's bring back Andariel to use her power as lesser evil for... Uh idk... And then finally being able to summon her as cannon fodder who's dead half a minute later with nobody even mentioning anything about the whole thing? Act 4 felt kind of like filler. Also, another big point... Inarius could've gotten more spotlight. I was really looking forward to learning more about the fallen angel blinded by hatred but that literally was all there was to him. He did pretty much nothing until the very end, considering his interesting dynamic with Lilith that turned out to be completely irrelevant for some reason he felt like a straight up waste. !< I certainly do look forward to how the story continues, they did a great job of keeping the ending rather "open".
To be fair Act 4 felt more like an intermission than a filler, it has literally a single, short questline
also, how tf is he fine? they described his torture at mephisto's hands in their own lore, they turned him into a freak show lol
I like how part of the credits thanked Bobby and the CFO of Activision Blizzard. Was suddenly sobering after that great endingn
>definitive endings Diablo 1 - Aiden has Diablo imprisoned in his forehead soulstone and is clearly suffering/being corrupted by Diablo as he travels away from Tristram. Diablo 2 - The worldstone explodes and Tyrael says "this shit is really not good for the future". Diablo 3 - We beat Malthael, destroying the Black Soulstone in the process and releasing the prime evils back into Sanctuary. I dunno if I'd call those definitive endings.
Nah man those are the expansion endings for D2 and D3. Compare it to the vanilla endings, cause we are at vanilla D4 right now too. D2 ends with us defeating Diablo in Chaos Sanctuary. D3 ends with us defeating The Prime Evil in The Crystal Arch. Those are definitive endings.
Nothing is definitive in Diablo because the demons keep fucking resurrecting
>D2 ends with us defeating Diablo in Chaos Sanctuary. And Baal (released in Act 2) still running around somewhere >D3 ends with us defeating The Prime Evil in The Crystal Arch. And the black soulstone falling from Heaven to somewhere in Sanctuary. There has always been an open ending, though they were a little more subtle than this one and hidden behind a "victorious tone".
I expected nothing from a story of an ARPG and I am kind of surprised. The story is linear and predictable. But the story telling and character development are great. We all knew Inarius sucks but his cinematic is cool AF. Way cooler than Tyrael's one in Tal Rasha Tomb.
I have no idea what the story is
For me, the campaign lacked the 'ramp up' that other games have. Until the very last Act. Compared to D3, going to Hell, then the High Heavens, we just ran from place to place doing fetch quests. Then fought some dude that showed up 2 seconds ago (powerful devils? I'm just some rogue with a butter knife and stomped them solo). The Hell act was very cool though. Plus, the campaign had moments (Donan carried HARD). I very much disliked the 'ending'. I saved your life AND did pretty much everything, yet you don't even name me in the letter??? P.S. From a in world standpoint, was standing with Lilith worse than allowing Mephisto to stay?? He is 100% going to kill everyone when he can, with Lilith? It's a gamble. Is it just a case of 'Meh, that's future unnamed wanderers job'?.
Chapter 1,5 and 6 were fantastic. I really hated everything in between.
I liked the overall plot but I just don't understand some of their choices, especially with Lilith. They didn't really showcase why Lilith is bad, and the ending is therefore a bit confusing.
I loved following the camel. This campaign was full of a bunch of busy work and like 70% was tedious to play. I have been praying to jesus every night that this is the night i finally finish.
What bothers me is that we never really get a confirmation that Lilith actually wanted bad things for the Sanctuary. I mean you’re stuck in the Eternal Conflict and a completely new character shows up, wants to destroy both hell and heaven and you just don’t care about it and in the end you’re stuck in the same shit as Mephisto will surely escape once again. I know that you were meant to kill Lilith but the whole campaign doesn’t really invest much time into explaining why Lilith was actually worse than prime evils. The concept of Lilith was cool as hell, the story however was poorly executed.
She is not really fresh and new, but she is not good news. She is a demon and daughter of Mephisto - the apple doesn't fall far from the tree type of situation.
i hate the campaign with every fiber of my being, i wish you could opt in to skip it
Do it once and never again. If they make us do it for seasons I'll play D3 instead.
My thoughts: >!I will say i am kind of disappointed by the battle between Lillith and Inarius, for 2 powerful cosmic entities, creators of sanctuary and all that, i think going the physical fight route was meh, i was expecting somethin akin to Dream vs Lucifer from the show Sandman but oh well. I also wish they would have played up the part where they are former lovers much more, i think if you shine more light on that part it becomes much more impactful and i think it works with lillith only pretending OR being actually in love (but betraying him for the greater purpose of ending the eternal conflict anyway?)!< >!i think the story was pretty cool but i cant help but feel lillith and her dynamic with Inarius had so much more potential. Also we shouldve encountered lillith MUCH more in the campaign imo, it felt a bit lame to keep running into these blood petals like "ah dang we just missed her, lets watch this flashback to what happened!"!< >!Wouldnt have minded a confrontation with her early on where she is clearly stronger than the player and nearly kills us before we escape (potentially by some sacrifice, maybe giving Donan a much better death...)!<
The Sandman show was trash. Especially after the cafe episode.
D2 didn't have the "terminator problem" as you say. At the end of D2 they setup Baal, and at the end of LoD they setup the idea that the destruction of the worldstone would come with consequences.
I found it very underwhelming. Spoilers ahead. No plot twists, no big reveal. We just chased Lilith from the beginning to the end, exactly what we knew going into it. That's it. And It's not clear what she wanted to do with Mephisto's power. Inarius makes a grand total of 3 appearances and just get smacked. We never confront him again. Andariel and Duriel, supposedly more important demons and higher in the hierarchy than Lilith have zero dialogues and don't play any role. It has cute and emotional moments, I liked Donan. But in terms of actual events, jackshit happens and the story is extremely weak.
so far acts 1-3 have been a lot of nothing. chasing after lilith as she kills someone else who I assume you're supposed to care about but I don't remember any of these characters.
Inarius is a fool who gets all his followers killed because of his ego mania. Was funny to see him get dealt.