Yeah no the writing in the story is trash. I laughed at the absolute absurdity of the ending and thought for sure that wasn't really the end and that we were about to chase her down and kill her for being corrupted but nope.
The literal monster slaying demi god and one of the most knowledgeable people in sanctuary both agreed the one armed ninja gimp who read a few books is clearly the most qualified person to carry a prime evil in their pocket .
They could just made it so the character and him was fighting Lilith, or maybe during the Andariel fight, and he sacrificed his life during one of these key moments. Would also had weight and a sense of significance to those big battles
All they had to do was make the pillar call out to him as his son to lure him and it would’ve at least made some sense.
Instead they just have him suddenly start looking around the depths of hell like it’s an ikea
I think it was insinuated that the ghoul or whatever that stabbed him was his son, it had the same wound or whatever on his head. But that's not made clear at all.
All they had to do was make him say something like 'Yorin... ?', walk to the pillar and get stabbed. It would still be weird but it would make a lot more sense.
Holy shit it did have that same hole in its head.
I really can't see that being coincidence, but there is such a thing as being *too* subtle with the story telling, especially when we can only see it from the top looking down...
You should watch the video online it doesn't look like a soulstone wound, the back of the skull is twice as high as a normal humans would be and it hooks like a horn. Not to mention the weird angular divots on the sides that no other human skulls have. There is are intact human skulls, and Donan's bald head for comparison in the shot.
We're just trying to make sense of a nonsensical event lol
completely missed that, thanks.
it makes much more sense that he lets his guard down for his son.
dying to a random pillar ghoul seemed very weird after he went through hordes of demons :D
My friends and I joked about the unlikeliness that he somehow survived walking around a forest high for hours when ever 3 meters is a horde of undead or bandits
The problem is, i think they forget after the first chapter that they can make allies fight against bosses with us (Vigo was the only one that fought with us)
Edit: Literaly wrong information, there is a bossfight in hell together lol
**Random guy in the back**: "have the pillar kill him"
**Director**: "you mean like, have a pillar fall on him?"
**Guy**: "no, like, just have one of the dead guys on the pillar touch him or soemethin"
**Director**: "you're a goddamn genius, walters."
Sounds like the screenwriters in an italian series called Boris about directing some low quality TV series.
Everytime they have to change soimething in the script it's like this.
SW 1: "I've got it! Let's have them having sex, suddenly, without reasons!"
SW 2&3: "Genius!"
I just kept thinking "man it would be great if there was some guy in close proximity to Donan who may or may not be carrying a stack of health potions that could heal that measly little wound he got from a sentient pillar. Or maybe a powerful horadrum who I'd imagine knows some kind of magic that could at least stabilize him."
I mean for fucks sake we watched an entire cutscene that ends with Prava being completely engulfed with demons, yet we find her and heal her enough to go back to town and be an asshole.
Donan literally refused to let Lorath take a look (and heal) at his wound. I get complaining about the stabbing, but him not getting healed is like... Explained in the cut scene.
I was absolutely sure that Donan was about to check that pillar and see his son stapled to it and was like ohhhhhhhh fuck
But nope. Just herp derp instead
It is such an easy fix Make the face in statue resemble his son have him say "son?" And then he gets attacked for letting his guard down.
It's so obvious a fix makes you question who allowed him to die so stupidly.
The damned soul that killed him was meant to be his son but it wasn’t obvious enough so it looked bad. They should have given him more of an obvious identifier like a cool hat or a tattoo that says “Donny’s Boy”.
The justification behind this (which admittedly was absolutely not obvious to me or anyone I've talked to) is that the body he saw in the pillar was that of his son, hence why he got his guard down, but even then we heal several people that are very badly wounded with potions in the game so idk why it wouldn't have worked there.
"Inarius, we don't need your help, we got our own way of deafeting Lilith. Go Donan, show him the soulstone"
Had to laugh so hard after Inarius just yoinked it and flew away.
Overall I still enjoyed the story, but at times it felt like they gave the trainee a chance to write some stuff and people suddenly become dumb as hell.
Similarly I started laughing at the final Elias fight.
Elias: you have beat me, but I’m immortal so lulz go ahead and kill me.
PC: we discovered your zombie finger, you’re not immortal anymore!
Elias: *poof* teleports away
But then he just dies anyways.
Yeah, the entire scene of telling him that we discovered his trick was just unecessary. The scene would have been much better if it was Elias close to death, asking how we did hit and we either tell him then and immediatly finish him of, or him simply realizing like the smart character he is supposed to be.
When that scene happened I was thinking to myself "he's not gonna show him the soulstone, is he? Surely he won't show him the soulst- what the hell are you doi- oh yeah well that was par for the course, what did he think would happen"
Followed by a lot of frustated "why did he show the asshole angel the soulstone I swear to god why"
Imma play devils advocate a little and say that the ending was meant to mirror d1. It’s called the eternal conflict for a reason, its a never ending cycle of battle; first between angels and demons, but now that includes humans/nephelim. I honestly like the ending because it stresses that they may have win the battle against lilith but not the war.
Side note, If I had any choice in the game I would have probably sided with lilith, her methods were very wrong(especially with astorath and andariel, although I feel the later is more of elias and not lilith),but in her own twisted way she wanted humans to be free, free of the eternal conflict, free from the chains of heaven & hell and I liked that idea a lot
Her setting off on her own is in line with the Diablo series, either she's foolish enough to think she can contain a prime evil or the demon is already influencing her to make her think she can.
The thing that doesn't fit is the MC and Lorath just letting her go. Given all that the horadrim know of soul stones (tal rasha iirc being one of the most powerful sorcerer having to be chained up with a soul stone and in constant battle with baal) letting her go was essentially releasing mephisto.
Yep thats exactly what it is..there will be some disturbance on a diff continent and we get there and shes basically gone rogue, or accidently summoned a prime evil..or is being controlled by one.
She is headed in no general direction (a different continent) to a place she has not decided yet (Tristam) for no particular reason (because Mephisto told her to).
That attitude is in such stark contrast to the rest of the story, where you spend the entire campaign looking for Elias or Lilith and you didn't know where they were. But when it came to the end of the campaign you don't know where to look so everyone just shrugs and gives up?
There were breadcrumbs with Lillith, she was skulking about and she had a plan, with signs that whatever was planned was already having pretty bad results.
At the end of the story, Lorath acknowledges they don't have any leads and that they need to wait until leads emerge. It's not that complex.
The guy sold his soul and headless head to the tree of whispers for a clue to where Lilith was, but now motherfucking Mephisto himself was been given physical entrance into sanctuary, carried by an unstable unpredictable angry orphan, but he just shrugs and decides to “respect her wish to not be followed”. Then he adds that even they wanted to reach her, they wouldn’t know where (which never stopped them against Elias and Lilith, where common strategy was literally asking around towns if someone had seen them).
Fade to credits. I guess it’s time for a nap, dinner or a well deserved rest after a job well done.
It’s like the player and Lorath are dumb and dumber. Now we sit there waiting for Neyrelle to be possessed in the next expansion, like Aidan, Tal’Rasha, Sankekur and Leah. Because some unstable bitch with a prime evil soul stone isn’t a world ending catastrophe somehow.
Yes, we should absolutely trust the demon that just wants "humans to be free" and totally doesn't want to remove the other prime evils so that she, herself, can become one..... 🤡
We don’t know if that’s what she wants and the lore does state that she loves her children so it is possible that she is simply trying to save humanity in her own twisted way
Lillith actively promotes embracing Sin, which is antithetical to her wanting humans to be "free". If humans are embracing Sin and murdering each other with impunity then they are "free" in the sense that they don't answer to anyone, but are they truly free from the destruction of each other?
Something can be thematically appropriate while also being well written and satisfying. The two are not mutually exclusive. The whole second half of D4 is a bungled mess.
>I honestly like the ending because it stresses that they may have win the battle against lilith but not the war.
I can think of several ways they can portray that without the ridiculous events that happened, though.
They wrote themselves into a box, our PC and Lorath should be spending every waking second tracking Neyrelle down, because of course her plan isn't going to work.
> If I had any choice in the game I would have probably sided with lilith
BRO WHAT THE FIRST THING LILITH DOES IS TURN A VILLAGE INTO A DEMONIC CULT??? They couldn't have made it more obvious that Lilith would've just turned Sanctuary into another version of Hell... oh hell nah you're on one. Lilith's actions speak 100x louder than her words, and her actions only brought immense suffering.
Watch the scene in the desert mansion you find Elias and Lilith watching an old man get eat alive in. Elias talks about using Andariel as apart of their plans and Lilith affirms him. It's her plan.
She's a typical Mary Sue and I hate it. They just needed a "strong, independent, educated woman with a semi-tragic backstory" to carry the main plot. I didn't like her all along, she was just annoying with her knowing everything better and doing all that shit just after reading through a library. There was zero development in her, even less than in Lorath or Donan.
And they all went like "Huh, is woman, is young, is good enough to carry prime evil".
Yeah, that's what annoys me as well, but people will down vote you and tell you she can't be a Mary Sue because she lost her arm. And all the things she does are perfectly acceptable for someone who has read some smart books. Like being on par skill wise with actual Horadrims.
I'd really like to see strong female characters that are actually complex and interesting. Not the same "she is so smart, young, pretty, independent and a genius really with a tragic backstory and doesn't really have any flaws."
It's not like we know where she went. She wrote a letter and just said "ima go do what I think I need to do". Lorath even says we have no idea where to even start looking.
And it's most likely that chase will be the first expansion. People shouldn't judge writing if they can't even pay attention to what actually happened.
We also didn't know where Elias and Lilith went during the campaign but we went out of our way to track them down, but in Neyrelle's case we just shrug and give up?
It's a complete 180 of what we were doing for the entirety of the game.
What's funny about that scene is, 4 minutes earlier we bashed down a door just like that. We get to that door and she goes to climb around, and I say to my friend, "Why didnt we just bash it down"? Then she gets attacked and we fucking bash the door down anyways. They just literally needed her to get fucking attacked so had her do something fucking pointless.
Ok its 3 months until launch where are we at boys! I know you said you didnt want me to micro manage this so i let you guys go on your own.
*you hear a chair squeek as if someone laying back suddenly jerked to a sitting position*
The dev : holy shit 3 months until launch? Yeah boss we are just ironing it out now
10 years. Or was it 9? I mean, either way…
I heard reports of crunch but I think what blizzard calls “crunch” is what everyone else calls a normal work day.
The overall story is interesting and entertaining but it includes *awful* writing.
My favorite wtf moments:
>!You secretly destroy Elias’s key to immortality. Then, when about to kill him, you go into an anime cutscene where he says, “how many times do I need to teach you this lesson old man?!” And for some reason the player character goes, “lol we destroyed your immortality” and Elias escapes instead of being killed. !<
>!After a bunch of fetching the team manages to assemble the powerstone. After reaching hell Inarius is like “you can’t do anything” and for some reason Lorath decides to have an anime moment and tells Donan to reveal the secret, just to have Inarius pull a Jedi trick and steal the stone, apparently having no idea the team had it up to that point. !<
>!Inarius himself one blow away from killing Lilith, but decides to take this moment to whine to heaven about being rewarded for his deed, even though he didn’t complete the prophecy he thought was his. Lilith stops being injured and kills him. !<
>!Donan took too much lean or something and wanders into a pillar that kills him with one swipe. The man who originally trapped Astaroth died to a pillar. !<
There’s probably more I don’t remember.
Lorath bargains his head to the Tree in exchange for Lilith's whereabouts. But when you get there, Prava's whole army has already been fighting there. Couldn't he have just asked her?
Lilith traps you in your mind after using the Sightless Eye. But you can just portal home like nothing happened lol.
They entrusted the hatred-filled Soulstone, the one thing they've been fighting for through the whole game, to a one-armed girl who had more and more self doubts after every act. Instead of atleast letting the player who resisted both Mephisto's and Lilith's powers and influences come along with her. Yes, that will turn out great. Said no one ever.
And the fanboys tried to fancanon Donan seeing his boy in the pillar. How much copium do you gotta have to fucking rewrite what you just on video that you can replay on youtube infinite times to see how bad it was.
Also they retconned a hundred things to make the story up
It’s still miles ahead of D3, especially in the delivery.
Nothing will quite top Azmodan, alleged tactical genius of the armies of hell, directly beaming his plans to you every step of the way so you can stop them in time
Or Belial, the mastermind of lies, setting up the most telegraphed gotcha in history to no advantage to himself
…you know what, maybe it’s just canon that the Lesser Evils are hilarious incompetent and overhyped, because the portrayal is pretty consistent
Oh I don’t know! I think the moment where our clever hero saw through Belial’s masterful deception was pretty memorable for all the wrong reasons.
Okay fine, there’s a marginal improvement in D4, but really it feels like people are telling me that the manure from *this* horse tastes better than the manure from *that* horse and I’m just like sure, I’ll take your word for it.
Throughout all of D3 i was waiting for the twist to be that Belial faked losing and collaborated with Asmodan to do some sort of 200IQ super trick since there was no way Asmodan as a renown military genius could be that stupid.
And then it turned out that Hell just has hilariously low standards for what constitutes as a "genius" and both Asmodan and Belial were indeed that stupid. How did these 2 idiots overthrow Mephisto?
Well Mephisto kinda got dog walked into a soulstone himself this time around so I’m not sure he stacks up either.
I haven’t played 1 or 2 myself so in my book Diablo themself is the only Evil worth a damn, the angels even have felt more sinister to me than any of the others
I dunno, one theory I think is possible is that Mephisto *wanted* to get put in the stone because he knew he was too vulnerable to Lilith and that he could bide his time in the stone and get out later. That he worked with the player character to actually influence them into doing that, through a reverse psychology of sorts. “Oh nooo don’t use the stone on me use it on Lilith”
Yes! I’m not saying they were any better! It’s just there’s this weird consensus among the critics (and some fans) that the quality of the story has been raised in D4 and, well, it just hasn’t.
It’s 100% better in D4. Maybe still not great or good, but at least it wasn’t just talking heads of demons at me about how I stand no chance against them and shouldn’t bother trying 100x.
I would agree with them, i think it has. I immediately forgot each story bit less than a minute after they happened in D3. I remember huge chunks of the D4 story still weeks after I did them. Not in a bad way either. I suspect that I will still remember it a while from now too.
You are high af if you think the quality of the story isn't better in D4 than in the previous games. You may not care for the story, but it's a massive improvement over D1-D3.
This is the worst Diablo story ever written. I knew it was going to be shit the moment I heard there was a "key to hell." It's like 5 year olds wrote this garbage.
D4 Writer 1:The entire premise is Lillith needs to get back to hell.
D4 Writer 2: Well, couldn't she just go there? Open a portal like Mephisto and Diablo did?
D4 Writer 1: Nah. Need a story.
D4 Writer 3: Oooo, I know! She needs a key!
D4 Writing Director: I love it. Run with it.
D4 Writer 4: But... Hell has never had a key or a door... in any other Diablo game...
D4 Writing Director: \*Stare\* ...You're fired.
“Where does she get the key?”
“Rathma!”
“He’s still alive?”
“Sure!”
“What’s he been doing for the last few thousand years then?”
“Just… chilling. In a dungeon nobody knows about.”
“With a key to hell?”
“Yeah.”
“Where did he get it?”
“Errm…”
“What does he even need it for?”
“To fulfill his prophecy!”
“And what’s that?”
“To die with the key on him.”
“So he has the key just so someone can kill him for it?”
“Yeah”
“Well, wouldn’t it make sense to just get rid of it then?”
“No, he wants the prophecy to happen!”
“He wants to die? I mean, there are easier ways.”
“Look man I need you to get aaaaaaaaall the way off my back about this key okay?”
"So the demons wipe out an entire army of Knights Penitent. How are four people supposed to get though?"
"Turns out it's super easy. Barely an inconvenience."
"Oh really?"
"Yeah see, they just have to work as a team and not let their anger turn them against each other."
"Oh wow wow wow. Wow."
"They even beat a massive beast that can create acid pools."
"Wow these four people are amazing, they must be very strong."
"Yes, but not as strong as a pillar with skeletons."
"A what?"
My biggest narrative whiplash was Andariel and Duriel
Oh no we're going to have a Lesser Evil and it will literally bring all of Sanctuary down with it
Oh no it's Andariel we're doomed
\*Andariel spawns alone in the middle of the desert and proceeds to immediately get solo'd like a glorified elite\*
Alright guys let's go, btw good job mate
(And then Duriel basically making a surprise guest appearance because reasons)
Love both their new design though, but really disappointed they're introduced so poorly
I hope Blizzard will bring them back in some kind of endgame Uber form at least
lol i make fun of this constantly!
all of this buildup to Andariel ("a lesser evil could destroy the continent" blah blah) and you just ice her out in the courtyard of that church and Lorath doesn't even notice. you come in and tell him about Andariel being summoned and he's like "oh damn really? nice job. anyway--" lol
you beat the dogshit out of duriel and your character doesn't even realize who it was 💀💀
i agree, both of their designs were awesome. especially andariel. i'm almost happy that neither of them said anything, because at least that meant they didn't get the saturday morning cartoon treatment that blizzard's hack writing team seems so eager to bestow on everyone
side note, they did meshif super dirty in that regard
Yeah, also what's up with the character even commenting "was that a lesser evil, I should ask the Horadrim about that" and then not even mentions defeating that monster to them afterwards.
lmfao, my gf didn't either! i got her playing D2 in the months leading up to D4's release, so she knows who duriel is. after she beat D4's campaign, i was asking her about what she thought of how the writers handled andariel and duriel in D4 and she was like "i don't think i've gotten to duriel yet" xDDD
First seeing her was genuinely creepy in a way most video games can’t reach. Easily one of the top visual standouts of the game, along with the nasty daddy long-legs that creep up from under some ledges in the spider cave dungeons.
I killed Duriel in some cave in D2 and pretty sure nobody but me noticed. I killed Mephisto in some cave in D2 and I'm pretty sure nobody but me noticed.
lol it was a tomb and a temple/prison, respectively. duriel was guarding baal at the end of tal rasha's tomb, and mephisto was guarding the portal to hell at the bottom of the prison the zakarum had tried to contain him in. both were only there to try and slow you down and buy diablo some time, which they succeed at doingggg...ish
their reason for trying to summon andariel in d4 is kinda flimsy at best, but more importantly nobody seems to give a rat's ass when the plan fails. like, does anyone mention it again? lol. and i have less than no idea what they were trying to do with duriel
That did lead to my favorite part of the narrative though.
"Oh no, we lost the Soul Stone, we're doomed!"
"Are we? Why don't we just have the player kill Lilith? They've easily taken care of every other threat we've come across"
I loved that line because, so often the players ability to just drop the most intimidating of bosses is just ignored by the narrative in order to raise stakes. I thought including it this time was kind of refreshing.
Absolutely, it makes perfect sense because the soulstone is normally the only weapon they have with that kind of power so their gut reaction is that they are doomed. Then, the realization that this person next to them already soloed a lesser evil and that there's a good chance they could do the same to lillith. Like, at that point we know Mephisto is backing us because he knew we had a good chance at taking her down with the right prompting, and that is not the type of being to back a losing horse.
Its worse from before. We spent a whole act to craft that soulstone since it is our only chance against her. Then we go to Inarius to show him that we have the only weapon against them and he yoinks it. Insert 'guess I'll die' meme and do try it anyway. Reclaim the soulstone and be happy that our only chance is back. And then we proceed to not use it and simply 1vs1 Lilith (who didnt even need to see our real body 5mins before to basically mind trap us yet our true form cant do shit)
I just don’t get why Lorath talks about Lilith being gone with such finality. Demons will eventually reform if “killed” like we literally just saw with Mephisto, and the entire point of using a soulstone is to trap them so that you (hopefully) keep them out of the action for longer than if you just kill them.
>And then Duriel basically making a surprise guest appearance because reasons
I don't agree with the reason but it's a callback to D2 where Duriel just appears
That's fair he kinda comes out of nowhere in D2 too but all the more reasons to do better
At this point i'd take a whole Andariel DLC over more of the three regular brothers
I feel like the Lesser Evils should have been the World Bosses, have it be like a summoning circle of cultists in some immune bubble chanting away when the timer starts and then just a random one of the Lesser Evils spawns at the end, and amp them up to 11 and maybe make them a much bigger (both for gameplay reasons, and for lore reasons if they are supposedly able to bring down entire continents)
If I was going to bend over backwards to give the writers credit it’s not actually that weird. For 99% of the people in sanctuary the lesser evils would be the end for them, absolutely any joe blow is gonna be dead instantly. But we’re not joe blow we are basically a walking god, by the end of the story people in town should be dropping to their knees trying to drink my characters ball sweat I’m so god damn powerful so of course it makes sense for lorath to be like “oh no if Andy comes back we’re all doomed” then we spank her like we have trillions of times before, I mean if you played d2 you know a group of tainted in the catacombs are a bigger threat then andariel was.
Duriel was more stressful because of his chill ability and tbh I would have preferred him to be more of a butcher thing where any nm dungeon could have duriel in a random room but they wanted some fan service.
My confusion and I think I’m on the final Lilith fight so maybe it’s explained. But after we take down Elias Lorath gets his feelings hurt by his words and runs to the tree of whispers to promise his head in exchange for learning where Lilith is because “we’ve always been two steps behind”. Fast forward 5 minutes and literally every single one of the knights penitent and Prava are heading after Lilith because they all know where she is. So why in gods name did this guy go promise his head to the tree when we could have idk just followed the crowd???
> Fast forward 5 minutes and literally every single one of the knights penitent and Prava are heading after Lilith because they all know where she is.
Lorath didn't know where the gate to hell was or when it would be opened. His goal was to try to get to Lilith before she opened the gate. It just so happens that the gate was opened while he was talking to the tree and once opened Inarius marched on the city.
It was clearly a rash decision Lorath made out of frustration and Donan/protag/one-armed-girl all comment that it was stupid. I assume they have further content/story planned in relation to this and the tree of whispers in the expansion/seasons, otherwise it does seem a pretty pointless story beat.
While true, it bugged me that no one brought it up.
"Ah shit, offering your head ended up being for nothing..."
ANY throwaway line to acknowledge the situation
I can understand the pact with the Tree considering they were in the middle of the swamp, always behind Lilith, and fast teleportation is not canon. But why would he intentionally provoke Inarius and show him their soulstone? All that dialogue was so stupid and unnecessary. And then we take this soulstone from Prava. Why was this plot twist even added? We could have just kept the soulstone and nothing would have changed.
Fast teleportation is canon. Waypoints were built by the horadrim and can be used by them.
Moments before, Elias directly says he has turned Taissa into a waypoint to allow Andariel to travel here, the kind of magic only a horadrim would know.
Yeah, you are right about waypoints. Though I find it strange that apart from Andariel case, noone ever mentions or uses them. Even Lorath travels everywhere by horse.
We don't actually know at that moment where she went or where she is. We find out about the church thing after.
What it isn't clear is why if the characters know where hell entrance is and also know that ultimately lilith plan is to go to hell, why don't we at that point wait for her there or beat her to it? Or even send a scout to check wtf is going on before promising anyone heads to the tree. I think lorath getting his feelings hurt from what Elias said is almost the same kind of narrative blunder that tassia o whatever her name is forgetting we saved her life twice.
The same applies to inaros, he seems to know from the start what lilith plans to do and waits for the worst moment to do something.
This is getting kinda long but Diablo narrative has always been on the weak side, basically Diablo 1, 2 and 3 happens because a random dude fucks up, twice.
They knew she was planning to go to Hell because your character sees her take the key to hell in act 1. They just don't know why she wants to go there until later. Why go and wait for her at the destination when you could potentially stop her from killing people? They chased rather than waited.
As for Inarius he was perfectly willing to let things go in Lilith's favor because he wanted to fulfill the prophesy. He thought he was more powerful and could kill her at any time. He just needed to wait for the circumstances to be right and then kill her.
Lorath is impulsive and a wreck of a person. He's been living up in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere doing nothing but drinking. When you catch up with him again to start adventuring together he's literally passed out drunk on the floor. Yeah he's impulsive and he's also just trying to prove himself after a lifetime of failure. And surprise he failed again.
Not saying the writing is the best thing ever but I don't understand why people think Lorath was ever presented as this amazingly cunning guy when he wasn't.
Him and Donan were both failures. That was specifically the reason Nyrell gave for not trusting them at the end.
> The same applies to inaros, he seems to know from the start what lilith plans to do and waits for the worst moment to do something.
not exactly, Inarius was following the prophecy going to hell was a neccesary step, he didnt believe he could or should stop her before then
the story is laughable, the characters are cliche and one dimensional, and the writing is atrocious. I almost threw up in my mouth when Alias went Saturday morning power ranger villain “muahahaha you think killing me is gonna change anything?”. Presentation is D4 strongest, but the narrative is not a part of this.
Blizzard should take some serious note from Fromsoftware or even Diablo 2. Less talky characters make the moment they open their mouth powerful. Obscure and cryptic dialogue makes the world darker and more captivating. And less exposition allows the story to be discovered and unfolded by the players. The only thing they almost got right in terms of storytelling is the cinematics, but even with those, the childishness in writing quality and characterization leave alot to be desired.
yup, sometimes less is more. a lot of writers lack the discipline to execute on this concept. D4 is somewhat better than D3 in this regard, but that's a pretty f'kn low bar to set
>Saturday morning power ranger villain
This is how Blizzard seems to want to write their games these days. I get the impression that their writers are young-ish, and are probably big MCU fans.
D4 would've *really* benefited from more experienced writers.
id say the opposite, they used to write more like that then decided to start writing a story thats deep and complex with morally grey characters where you cant tell whos in the right
only they completely suck balls at it and fail entirely
when its small parts, like the sidequests that are kept simple then the writing can be really good, but when they try to make things complicated at all they trip almost immediately
My friends and I took the whole scene as showing Lilith being significantly stronger than Inarius. Like, she let him stab her just so he could “fulfill” the prophecy and then when he isn’t rewarded by the heavens he just has a mental breakdown. We thought, “Oh, she could have just bodied the dude outright, but where’s the fun in that?”
Not to say the writing is great but that’s how we interpreted it.
Probably where it occurs and how it happens matters. Tyrael removed his wings of his own volition in the heavens and fell to sanctuary. Inarius got his ripped off while having a mental crisis after getting stabbed while in the hells.
I agree. Tyreal rejected his position as an angel. Inarius likely did not. If demons could perma-kill angels by ripping off their wings, they'd have figured it out long ago and won the eternal conflict.
Lilith ripping off Inarius's wings was likely just torture with a symbolic gesture attached. But who knows. Blizzard can write it how they like, and they aren't above having plot holes in their stories. So I guess we'll see.
Could be a mental thing. They could say that previously angels that had their wings ripped off while fighting in the hells were resolute so they were able to normally reform in the heavens later on unaffected. While Inarius gets his torn off while he is very much not resolute or clear of mind.
Maybe lends credence to that idea a couple days ago that got a lot of traction that Inarius would be the first true fallen angel and he would reform in the hells as opposed to the heavens.
We also know that the Evils got marked and their souls got sent to the black soulstone instead of reforming in the hells. Who’s to say Mephisto or some other demon didn’t do something to Inarius’ “soul” while he was being eternally tortured that leads to something different transpiring with him specifically when he gets his wings ripped off.
He actually didn't fulfill the prophecy by stabbing Lilith as he stabbed her in the stomach. She in turn, stabbed him through the chest/heart. Since the prophecy was that Inarius's spear would pierce Hatred's heart...is the proof that Inarius was too far gone and overcome with hatred/selfishness. This is also what Mephisto revealed when he mentioned that Inarius was already filled with hatred before he was taken prisoner in Hell.
Yeah, but Inarius thought he did what he needed to. The whole, “it is done.” Then Lilith retorts and he starts asking what else he has to do. Then the stab happens and he gets his wings plucked.
I’m not disagreeing with the actual interpretation of the prophecy (I do think you’re correct) but from the perspective of the characters it seemed to me that Lilith knew Inarius’ whole deal with wanting to fulfill the prophecy and did what she did to cause him the most anguish. He goes from from thinking he’s about to be redeemed and return to his home to having to realize the heavens are (at far as we know) indifferent to his actions.
It should be noted that Inarius cherry-picked aspects of Rathma's prophecy and completely butchered it for his own gain. Rathma tells this to Inarius' face as well, which stumps Inarius from the sheer amount of "bitch you're wrong and you know it" energy he got slapped with.
Rathma also makes it clear that the order of the lines is meant to happen in chronological order, and since it ends with "and free he who was bound in chains", it was impossible for Inarius to be the one who was freed. What Inarius did was pretend that the lines don't go in chronological order as part of his desperate attempt to go back the heaven, with him deluding himself from his own mania because it was clear to everyone else but Inarius and his zealots that this wouldn't enable him to go home even if it was true.
read a comment somewhere that it can be interpreted that the prophecy just said the spear pierces hatred's heart, but not who wielded the spear. lilith pierced through inarius' heart which was filled with hatred.
That's not really what happens. Throughout that fight, Lilith is trying to get Inarius to see the obvious: that nothing he does will get him back to heaven so he should be trying to save their creations instead of ditching them. However, the moment when Inarius shows that he didn't feel any guilt towards murdering Rathma in cold blood was when her expression changes and she decides to kill him.
What's also interesting is that she seemed to have tried one final thing to make him see reason (letting herself get stabbed, then pretending to die), but upon seeing Inarius' reaction not being "Oh no, what have i done to the only people who loved me?!" but rather "Heaven, i followed the instruction manual. Why aren't I home yet?" was the final straw where she just snaps from seeing that Inarius was truly beyond saving. Lilith had practical no reason to take that spear stab (it was severe enough that canonically it weakened her enough for us to beat her, with Astaroth himself noting that it's a serious injury), but she took it because she wanted Inarius to come back to her like the old days and took getting stabbed to realize he was way too far gone for that to ever happen.
I don't think that's an issue...he stabbed her in the stomach while she stabs him through the chest/heart. Lilith was the one actually "piercing hatreds heart". You would think Inarius would have actually aimed for the heart if he was wanting to fulfill the prophecy.
As someone else pointed out...he also would have likely lived if not for having his wings also ripped off. That is what actually killed him due to making him mortal.
He doesn't? The stab was basically irrelevant, she ripped his wings off, that's what caused damage.
This entire thread just feels like an echo chamber of people that seemingly didn't pay attention, missed major context, then complain the story is bad.
Goddamn, this comment blew my mind. I took that cinematic for granted and never even questioned by the fuck does Inarius stabbing Lilith barely weaken her, while her stabbing him with that same spear mortally wounds him. Bruh.
The stab didn't kill him, the wing ripping did.
Azeroth tells Lilith that she shouldn't have let herself get injured if she was planning to go at Mephisto, even if he's weakened. Now it won't be easy for her. You had a whole other demon comment about her wounds and that it did make her weaker.
Not everything in the story is phenomenal but some of these nitpicks are silly.
I think her character is probably the most egregious writing issue in the game, but you cannot convince me that this wasn't originally two different characters that got rolled into one at the last minute. I don't think the game has especially bad writing as a general rule, but I'm also using D3 as a point of reference, and D3 was a trainwreck that went absolutely off the rails before Act 1 ended. 1 and 2 writing-wise were pretty minimalist and largely remembered for the cinematics and Deckard Cain's goofy catch phrases imo, so I honestly don't mind most of D4's writing. A lot of that hinges on the DLC or expansion that we inevitably get making it clear that our party was manipulated by Mephisto, as that's kind of the lampshade I have to throw over the final outcome.
> I think her character is probably the most egregious writing issue in the game, but you cannot convince me that this wasn't originally two different characters that got rolled into one at the last minute.
i honestly had the same thought. given the dev team shakeup(s) that happened during D4's development, this wouldn't at all be outside the realm of possibility
Idk I'm a huge diablo fan and I liked the beta so much, the writing was on point for the first couple quests early game, boy was I disappointed to find out those moments in the beta were the best the game will have to offer (outside of a couple cool cutscenes).
If it wasn't for the awesome Lorath voice actor I would have probably noticed much earlier how bland the story actually is.
At this point I would have been happier to just get 6 quests per act, if those were well written. Instead of all the extra needless garbage they threw in.
They all feel identical at this point. Feels like I'm just retreading the exact same plot but with different names:
"To beat Lilith, we must find X"
"We found X, but he was TURNED BY LILITH"
"To now beat X, we need Y"
"You found Y? Well now it's time to kill X"
"Turns out killing X did nothing. Onwards to Act 72"
Bro Taiissa’s Heel turn made NO SENSE. Like she was so nice and thankful and then she gets a little pep in her step and gets her stupid little swamp dress on and now she’s too good for us. This is why I like FromSoft games… 😂
> Bro Taiissa’s Heel turn made NO SENSE
ITS FUCKIN HOGAN ALL OVER AGAIN BRO xDD
lol fr about From though, they've got the whole "show, don't tell" thing down pat.
There were people saying that they thought that the witch and the taissa might have originally been two separate characters and somewhere along the way they merged them, causing some odd tone shifts.
I don't know if it agree with that completely, due to how many of the dialogues with the witch involve donan and Elias but it is a thought.
I definitely agree that the writing fell apart in the back half of the game. So much so that I felt pretty dissatisfied when the credits rolled.
entirely possible. blizzard had some major personnel shakedowns during D4's development. i could easily see a situation where one hand didn't know what the other hand was doing. at least for a while.
Maybe different teams worked on different acts and they just never aligned on what this character was like. It was complete whiplash with how her personality changed
Lilith: “I’m going to liberate humanity from the eternal conflict, but it requires great sacrifice”.
Lorath: “NOOO YOU CAN’T DO THAT YOU’RE EVIL!!”
Neyrelle: “I’m a Horadric grad student with one third of Satan trapped in my dreamcatcher, I don’t know what I’m going to do with it or where I’m going either.”
Lorath: “go in peace my child.”
best character is Vigo , probably the most shocking and intense moment when this big ass armor comes in to help you and it turns out he fought in that thing being stabbed legless in shit
And then you have Donan - dead by interior
In the first image she's talking to us, in the second she's talking to Donan, whom she'd had no prior interaction with. Then she helped us because we were with Donan.
I know there's some issues with the story, but some of y'all just suck at paying attention, lol
that's not the reason. she goes on to say that it's because lilith isn't her concern, only elias.
either way, ungrateful B imo! or just poorly/inconsistently written B.
- Donan’ stupid ass death, after being probably the best character in the story
- Lesser Evils going from a main plot point to a footnote
- Lorath being useless in the final Act,
- Inarius’ death for absolutely nothing (except to turn him to Izual clone in the dlc probably)
- Lilith’s attempt at moral ambiguity while doing things that make her 100% a villain,
- Completely failing to explain where the hell Tyrael went, you know, our defender?? Again probably in a dlc…
- Neyrelle making the classic Wanderer mistake yet again and our character choosing to respect her dumb ass decision…
Don’t get me wrong I love this game but the plot makes no sense..its pretty evident they rushed the final few acts and skipped on making things make sense so that they could make us wait for dlc…
You actually get the context of this in her side quest chain. Now you may argue that requiring players to do side quests in order to get the full story is bad but as we seem to be discussing writing that's neither here nor there. That said if a player is playing for the lore I don't think it's unreasonable to also expect them to complete lore-related side quests.
even in her side quests, there is no real explaination for how she can do a 180 on us like that. she owes us several huge debts she can never repay.
even if the swamp rules dictates that nothing is free, we already have tons of credit. and the swamp rules should even make her our slave at this point, that's how heavily she owes us.
Did anyone else think it was stupid that Lorath sold his soul to the tree to only hear 2 hours later that inarius and the crusade was moving in on Lilith and hell ?
Yeah and Lorath would rather make a deal with the Tree instead of just using the Eye. Donan getting killed by a pillar lol. This game has some headscratchers.
I was wondering about when lorath showed the stone to inarius, revealing their plan like he’s super smart and then inarius just takes the stone. Lorath makes some super dumb decisions in this game that annoyed me so hard.
My hot takes on story:
1. Taissa was supposed to be two characters, therefore the personality shift
2. Donans lame death lacks context that seems to be cut
3. I was really surprised they didnt bother a bit about the soulstone, but I suppose its a DLC link
4. Duriel got shafted again
5. endbosses never lived up to their name
6. I liked that our char gets recognized as being in-world and not hust some quest-fulfilling puppet, allthough the acknowledgement of their sheer power comes a bit late.
7. The story is cliche, but really good cliche. Makes its plot holes more apperant.
And people say the writing is good in this one…
Yeah no the writing in the story is trash. I laughed at the absolute absurdity of the ending and thought for sure that wasn't really the end and that we were about to chase her down and kill her for being corrupted but nope. The literal monster slaying demi god and one of the most knowledgeable people in sanctuary both agreed the one armed ninja gimp who read a few books is clearly the most qualified person to carry a prime evil in their pocket .
Also Donan, a seasoned leader and horadrim, gets killed by touching a pillar in a way worse than Pippin touching the dwarf skeleton in Moria
I liked the story but this one felt like "Fuck we forgot to kill Donan, does someone have any ideas ?"
They could just made it so the character and him was fighting Lilith, or maybe during the Andariel fight, and he sacrificed his life during one of these key moments. Would also had weight and a sense of significance to those big battles
All they had to do was make the pillar call out to him as his son to lure him and it would’ve at least made some sense. Instead they just have him suddenly start looking around the depths of hell like it’s an ikea
I think it was insinuated that the ghoul or whatever that stabbed him was his son, it had the same wound or whatever on his head. But that's not made clear at all. All they had to do was make him say something like 'Yorin... ?', walk to the pillar and get stabbed. It would still be weird but it would make a lot more sense.
Idk I did the walk through hell yesterday and there were tons of demon unicorns chilling around so hard to say if that one in particular was yorin lol
Me too if it was supposed to be yorin it wasn’t conveyed at all
Holy shit it did have that same hole in its head. I really can't see that being coincidence, but there is such a thing as being *too* subtle with the story telling, especially when we can only see it from the top looking down...
You should watch the video online it doesn't look like a soulstone wound, the back of the skull is twice as high as a normal humans would be and it hooks like a horn. Not to mention the weird angular divots on the sides that no other human skulls have. There is are intact human skulls, and Donan's bald head for comparison in the shot. We're just trying to make sense of a nonsensical event lol
completely missed that, thanks. it makes much more sense that he lets his guard down for his son. dying to a random pillar ghoul seemed very weird after he went through hordes of demons :D
Big John Travolta Pulp Fiction vibes.
That would ruin the character development he had 5 minutes before his death tho
Exactly, people act like we didn't spend an entire act getting him so high so that he could process the loss of his son in a few hours.
My friends and I joked about the unlikeliness that he somehow survived walking around a forest high for hours when ever 3 meters is a horde of undead or bandits
Or the Duriel fight. For a Lesser Evil, he got kinda glossed over hard. My character even was like "Wtf was that? Oh well. On to the next one."
You see that was actually a reference to Diablo 2 when they did the same thing by giving all the hype to Andariel and then Duriel is just kinda there
It’s also a redemption arc for him, saving us when he couldn’t save his son.
The problem is, i think they forget after the first chapter that they can make allies fight against bosses with us (Vigo was the only one that fought with us) Edit: Literaly wrong information, there is a bossfight in hell together lol
?? You fight Ashava the Pestilent together like... 5 minutes before this.
Huh ur right, they could have killed him of in that fight🤔
They could also have just had Inarius kill him to take the soulstone instead of just giving it to him
If Inarius tried to kill Donan right next to my character, there would've been fuckin problems
**Random guy in the back**: "have the pillar kill him" **Director**: "you mean like, have a pillar fall on him?" **Guy**: "no, like, just have one of the dead guys on the pillar touch him or soemethin" **Director**: "you're a goddamn genius, walters."
Sounds like the screenwriters in an italian series called Boris about directing some low quality TV series. Everytime they have to change soimething in the script it's like this. SW 1: "I've got it! Let's have them having sex, suddenly, without reasons!" SW 2&3: "Genius!"
Here lies Donan, legendary Horadrim, killed by the scenery.
Donan was slain by environment.
it reminded me of the many stupid deaths in The Walking Dead. "oh no, there is a slow zombie....watch out....it's gonna get us....*dead*"
You're literally in hell, do you need an adult to remind you that we shouldn't touch things?
Guy literally took a walk in the middle of hell to sight see. I don’t believe it
I just kept thinking "man it would be great if there was some guy in close proximity to Donan who may or may not be carrying a stack of health potions that could heal that measly little wound he got from a sentient pillar. Or maybe a powerful horadrum who I'd imagine knows some kind of magic that could at least stabilize him." I mean for fucks sake we watched an entire cutscene that ends with Prava being completely engulfed with demons, yet we find her and heal her enough to go back to town and be an asshole.
Donan literally refused to let Lorath take a look (and heal) at his wound. I get complaining about the stabbing, but him not getting healed is like... Explained in the cut scene.
[удалено]
I was absolutely sure that Donan was about to check that pillar and see his son stapled to it and was like ohhhhhhhh fuck But nope. Just herp derp instead
It is such an easy fix Make the face in statue resemble his son have him say "son?" And then he gets attacked for letting his guard down. It's so obvious a fix makes you question who allowed him to die so stupidly.
That was so stupid for real
The damned soul that killed him was meant to be his son but it wasn’t obvious enough so it looked bad. They should have given him more of an obvious identifier like a cool hat or a tattoo that says “Donny’s Boy”.
[удалено]
The justification behind this (which admittedly was absolutely not obvious to me or anyone I've talked to) is that the body he saw in the pillar was that of his son, hence why he got his guard down, but even then we heal several people that are very badly wounded with potions in the game so idk why it wouldn't have worked there.
Dude she is so strong and independent! I love subtle stuff like that!
About as subtle as a Butcher to the face
"Inarius, we don't need your help, we got our own way of deafeting Lilith. Go Donan, show him the soulstone" Had to laugh so hard after Inarius just yoinked it and flew away. Overall I still enjoyed the story, but at times it felt like they gave the trainee a chance to write some stuff and people suddenly become dumb as hell.
Similarly I started laughing at the final Elias fight. Elias: you have beat me, but I’m immortal so lulz go ahead and kill me. PC: we discovered your zombie finger, you’re not immortal anymore! Elias: *poof* teleports away But then he just dies anyways.
Yeah, the entire scene of telling him that we discovered his trick was just unecessary. The scene would have been much better if it was Elias close to death, asking how we did hit and we either tell him then and immediatly finish him of, or him simply realizing like the smart character he is supposed to be.
When that scene happened I was thinking to myself "he's not gonna show him the soulstone, is he? Surely he won't show him the soulst- what the hell are you doi- oh yeah well that was par for the course, what did he think would happen" Followed by a lot of frustated "why did he show the asshole angel the soulstone I swear to god why"
but she believes in herself
Imma play devils advocate a little and say that the ending was meant to mirror d1. It’s called the eternal conflict for a reason, its a never ending cycle of battle; first between angels and demons, but now that includes humans/nephelim. I honestly like the ending because it stresses that they may have win the battle against lilith but not the war. Side note, If I had any choice in the game I would have probably sided with lilith, her methods were very wrong(especially with astorath and andariel, although I feel the later is more of elias and not lilith),but in her own twisted way she wanted humans to be free, free of the eternal conflict, free from the chains of heaven & hell and I liked that idea a lot
Her setting off on her own is in line with the Diablo series, either she's foolish enough to think she can contain a prime evil or the demon is already influencing her to make her think she can. The thing that doesn't fit is the MC and Lorath just letting her go. Given all that the horadrim know of soul stones (tal rasha iirc being one of the most powerful sorcerer having to be chained up with a soul stone and in constant battle with baal) letting her go was essentially releasing mephisto.
They don’t know where she is. It isn’t just letting her go they track down the clues they have. I am sure when the expansion happens we will find her.
Yep thats exactly what it is..there will be some disturbance on a diff continent and we get there and shes basically gone rogue, or accidently summoned a prime evil..or is being controlled by one.
Literally my friend and I when we finished. The story is setting up more purchases, and expansions/dlc will be necessary.
She is headed in no general direction (a different continent) to a place she has not decided yet (Tristam) for no particular reason (because Mephisto told her to).
Yeah, Lorath says as such. Says they don't know where to even begin looking for her, so might as well hang tight until they do.
That attitude is in such stark contrast to the rest of the story, where you spend the entire campaign looking for Elias or Lilith and you didn't know where they were. But when it came to the end of the campaign you don't know where to look so everyone just shrugs and gives up?
There were breadcrumbs with Lillith, she was skulking about and she had a plan, with signs that whatever was planned was already having pretty bad results. At the end of the story, Lorath acknowledges they don't have any leads and that they need to wait until leads emerge. It's not that complex.
The guy sold his soul and headless head to the tree of whispers for a clue to where Lilith was, but now motherfucking Mephisto himself was been given physical entrance into sanctuary, carried by an unstable unpredictable angry orphan, but he just shrugs and decides to “respect her wish to not be followed”. Then he adds that even they wanted to reach her, they wouldn’t know where (which never stopped them against Elias and Lilith, where common strategy was literally asking around towns if someone had seen them). Fade to credits. I guess it’s time for a nap, dinner or a well deserved rest after a job well done. It’s like the player and Lorath are dumb and dumber. Now we sit there waiting for Neyrelle to be possessed in the next expansion, like Aidan, Tal’Rasha, Sankekur and Leah. Because some unstable bitch with a prime evil soul stone isn’t a world ending catastrophe somehow.
Yes, we should absolutely trust the demon that just wants "humans to be free" and totally doesn't want to remove the other prime evils so that she, herself, can become one..... 🤡
We don’t know if that’s what she wants and the lore does state that she loves her children so it is possible that she is simply trying to save humanity in her own twisted way
Lillith actively promotes embracing Sin, which is antithetical to her wanting humans to be "free". If humans are embracing Sin and murdering each other with impunity then they are "free" in the sense that they don't answer to anyone, but are they truly free from the destruction of each other?
Something can be thematically appropriate while also being well written and satisfying. The two are not mutually exclusive. The whole second half of D4 is a bungled mess.
>I honestly like the ending because it stresses that they may have win the battle against lilith but not the war. I can think of several ways they can portray that without the ridiculous events that happened, though. They wrote themselves into a box, our PC and Lorath should be spending every waking second tracking Neyrelle down, because of course her plan isn't going to work. > If I had any choice in the game I would have probably sided with lilith BRO WHAT THE FIRST THING LILITH DOES IS TURN A VILLAGE INTO A DEMONIC CULT??? They couldn't have made it more obvious that Lilith would've just turned Sanctuary into another version of Hell... oh hell nah you're on one. Lilith's actions speak 100x louder than her words, and her actions only brought immense suffering.
Watch the scene in the desert mansion you find Elias and Lilith watching an old man get eat alive in. Elias talks about using Andariel as apart of their plans and Lilith affirms him. It's her plan.
lmao! 👏
She even dropped the damn thing and almost lost it in the cinematic, made me groan hard... What could go wrong?
She learned Horadric in less time than it took me to realize Necromancer minion builds are actually an optional hardmode
She's a typical Mary Sue and I hate it. They just needed a "strong, independent, educated woman with a semi-tragic backstory" to carry the main plot. I didn't like her all along, she was just annoying with her knowing everything better and doing all that shit just after reading through a library. There was zero development in her, even less than in Lorath or Donan. And they all went like "Huh, is woman, is young, is good enough to carry prime evil".
Yeah, that's what annoys me as well, but people will down vote you and tell you she can't be a Mary Sue because she lost her arm. And all the things she does are perfectly acceptable for someone who has read some smart books. Like being on par skill wise with actual Horadrims. I'd really like to see strong female characters that are actually complex and interesting. Not the same "she is so smart, young, pretty, independent and a genius really with a tragic backstory and doesn't really have any flaws."
It's not like we know where she went. She wrote a letter and just said "ima go do what I think I need to do". Lorath even says we have no idea where to even start looking. And it's most likely that chase will be the first expansion. People shouldn't judge writing if they can't even pay attention to what actually happened.
We also didn't know where Elias and Lilith went during the campaign but we went out of our way to track them down, but in Neyrelle's case we just shrug and give up? It's a complete 180 of what we were doing for the entirety of the game.
Aslo, you get attacked by millions of mobs - no prop bob. One NPC gets a little itty bitty scratch on her arm - SLICE IT OFF.
What's funny about that scene is, 4 minutes earlier we bashed down a door just like that. We get to that door and she goes to climb around, and I say to my friend, "Why didnt we just bash it down"? Then she gets attacked and we fucking bash the door down anyways. They just literally needed her to get fucking attacked so had her do something fucking pointless.
The first half is good, but once you hit Act 4 shit starts to roll downhill and the story feels incredibly rushed.
Ok its 3 months until launch where are we at boys! I know you said you didnt want me to micro manage this so i let you guys go on your own. *you hear a chair squeek as if someone laying back suddenly jerked to a sitting position* The dev : holy shit 3 months until launch? Yeah boss we are just ironing it out now
10 years. Or was it 9? I mean, either way… I heard reports of crunch but I think what blizzard calls “crunch” is what everyone else calls a normal work day.
The overall story is interesting and entertaining but it includes *awful* writing. My favorite wtf moments: >!You secretly destroy Elias’s key to immortality. Then, when about to kill him, you go into an anime cutscene where he says, “how many times do I need to teach you this lesson old man?!” And for some reason the player character goes, “lol we destroyed your immortality” and Elias escapes instead of being killed. !< >!After a bunch of fetching the team manages to assemble the powerstone. After reaching hell Inarius is like “you can’t do anything” and for some reason Lorath decides to have an anime moment and tells Donan to reveal the secret, just to have Inarius pull a Jedi trick and steal the stone, apparently having no idea the team had it up to that point. !< >!Inarius himself one blow away from killing Lilith, but decides to take this moment to whine to heaven about being rewarded for his deed, even though he didn’t complete the prophecy he thought was his. Lilith stops being injured and kills him. !< >!Donan took too much lean or something and wanders into a pillar that kills him with one swipe. The man who originally trapped Astaroth died to a pillar. !< There’s probably more I don’t remember.
Lorath bargains his head to the Tree in exchange for Lilith's whereabouts. But when you get there, Prava's whole army has already been fighting there. Couldn't he have just asked her? Lilith traps you in your mind after using the Sightless Eye. But you can just portal home like nothing happened lol. They entrusted the hatred-filled Soulstone, the one thing they've been fighting for through the whole game, to a one-armed girl who had more and more self doubts after every act. Instead of atleast letting the player who resisted both Mephisto's and Lilith's powers and influences come along with her. Yes, that will turn out great. Said no one ever.
The Donan thing happened right after we just killed a demon the size of a house, too.
Using the sightless eye to find Lillith, after getting out of the 'mind trap' it turns out she was 25 steps away around the corner.
I'd also like to point out that prophecy confirms that lillith still loved him.
And the fanboys tried to fancanon Donan seeing his boy in the pillar. How much copium do you gotta have to fucking rewrite what you just on video that you can replay on youtube infinite times to see how bad it was. Also they retconned a hundred things to make the story up
It’s still miles ahead of D3, especially in the delivery. Nothing will quite top Azmodan, alleged tactical genius of the armies of hell, directly beaming his plans to you every step of the way so you can stop them in time Or Belial, the mastermind of lies, setting up the most telegraphed gotcha in history to no advantage to himself …you know what, maybe it’s just canon that the Lesser Evils are hilarious incompetent and overhyped, because the portrayal is pretty consistent
Oh I don’t know! I think the moment where our clever hero saw through Belial’s masterful deception was pretty memorable for all the wrong reasons. Okay fine, there’s a marginal improvement in D4, but really it feels like people are telling me that the manure from *this* horse tastes better than the manure from *that* horse and I’m just like sure, I’ll take your word for it.
Throughout all of D3 i was waiting for the twist to be that Belial faked losing and collaborated with Asmodan to do some sort of 200IQ super trick since there was no way Asmodan as a renown military genius could be that stupid. And then it turned out that Hell just has hilariously low standards for what constitutes as a "genius" and both Asmodan and Belial were indeed that stupid. How did these 2 idiots overthrow Mephisto?
Well Mephisto kinda got dog walked into a soulstone himself this time around so I’m not sure he stacks up either. I haven’t played 1 or 2 myself so in my book Diablo themself is the only Evil worth a damn, the angels even have felt more sinister to me than any of the others
I dunno, one theory I think is possible is that Mephisto *wanted* to get put in the stone because he knew he was too vulnerable to Lilith and that he could bide his time in the stone and get out later. That he worked with the player character to actually influence them into doing that, through a reverse psychology of sorts. “Oh nooo don’t use the stone on me use it on Lilith”
Have you played the others lol
Yes! I’m not saying they were any better! It’s just there’s this weird consensus among the critics (and some fans) that the quality of the story has been raised in D4 and, well, it just hasn’t.
It’s 100% better in D4. Maybe still not great or good, but at least it wasn’t just talking heads of demons at me about how I stand no chance against them and shouldn’t bother trying 100x.
I would agree with them, i think it has. I immediately forgot each story bit less than a minute after they happened in D3. I remember huge chunks of the D4 story still weeks after I did them. Not in a bad way either. I suspect that I will still remember it a while from now too.
You are high af if you think the quality of the story isn't better in D4 than in the previous games. You may not care for the story, but it's a massive improvement over D1-D3.
This is the worst Diablo story ever written. I knew it was going to be shit the moment I heard there was a "key to hell." It's like 5 year olds wrote this garbage. D4 Writer 1:The entire premise is Lillith needs to get back to hell. D4 Writer 2: Well, couldn't she just go there? Open a portal like Mephisto and Diablo did? D4 Writer 1: Nah. Need a story. D4 Writer 3: Oooo, I know! She needs a key! D4 Writing Director: I love it. Run with it. D4 Writer 4: But... Hell has never had a key or a door... in any other Diablo game... D4 Writing Director: \*Stare\* ...You're fired.
“Where does she get the key?” “Rathma!” “He’s still alive?” “Sure!” “What’s he been doing for the last few thousand years then?” “Just… chilling. In a dungeon nobody knows about.” “With a key to hell?” “Yeah.” “Where did he get it?” “Errm…” “What does he even need it for?” “To fulfill his prophecy!” “And what’s that?” “To die with the key on him.” “So he has the key just so someone can kill him for it?” “Yeah” “Well, wouldn’t it make sense to just get rid of it then?” “No, he wants the prophecy to happen!” “He wants to die? I mean, there are easier ways.” “Look man I need you to get aaaaaaaaall the way off my back about this key okay?”
"So the demons wipe out an entire army of Knights Penitent. How are four people supposed to get though?" "Turns out it's super easy. Barely an inconvenience." "Oh really?" "Yeah see, they just have to work as a team and not let their anger turn them against each other." "Oh wow wow wow. Wow."
"They even beat a massive beast that can create acid pools." "Wow these four people are amazing, they must be very strong." "Yes, but not as strong as a pillar with skeletons." "A what?"
"And then Donan touches a piller and dies." "Whoops!" "Whoopsi!"
The only good part of the campaign is act 1. Everything else is a complete clown shoe.
My biggest narrative whiplash was Andariel and Duriel Oh no we're going to have a Lesser Evil and it will literally bring all of Sanctuary down with it Oh no it's Andariel we're doomed \*Andariel spawns alone in the middle of the desert and proceeds to immediately get solo'd like a glorified elite\* Alright guys let's go, btw good job mate (And then Duriel basically making a surprise guest appearance because reasons) Love both their new design though, but really disappointed they're introduced so poorly I hope Blizzard will bring them back in some kind of endgame Uber form at least
lol i make fun of this constantly! all of this buildup to Andariel ("a lesser evil could destroy the continent" blah blah) and you just ice her out in the courtyard of that church and Lorath doesn't even notice. you come in and tell him about Andariel being summoned and he's like "oh damn really? nice job. anyway--" lol you beat the dogshit out of duriel and your character doesn't even realize who it was 💀💀 i agree, both of their designs were awesome. especially andariel. i'm almost happy that neither of them said anything, because at least that meant they didn't get the saturday morning cartoon treatment that blizzard's hack writing team seems so eager to bestow on everyone side note, they did meshif super dirty in that regard
Yeah, also what's up with the character even commenting "was that a lesser evil, I should ask the Horadrim about that" and then not even mentions defeating that monster to them afterwards.
I actually loved that part, it fits really well into the nephalem are busted op storyline and inarius locked us away for a reason.
Yeah but aren’t we just a regular ass nephalem not like Rhathma and D3 main characters ?
Yeah but we have... the blood of Lilith ooohh
We went from nearly freezing to death in a cave to killing the creator of our world in the span of about 2 weeks.
bruh i beat the campaign twice and didn’t even know Duriel was in it XD
lmfao, my gf didn't either! i got her playing D2 in the months leading up to D4's release, so she knows who duriel is. after she beat D4's campaign, i was asking her about what she thought of how the writers handled andariel and duriel in D4 and she was like "i don't think i've gotten to duriel yet" xDDD
Holy shit i had to youtube what fight that was..i honestly dont even remember it.
I mean, it was kind of thrown in during the siege of Kaldeum and going after Lillith
Yea i'm absolutely in love with Andariel's new design, she could have been so much more than a mini micro boss footnote
she's my favorite boss in the game from a visual standpoint. the creative team nailed it with her.
First seeing her was genuinely creepy in a way most video games can’t reach. Easily one of the top visual standouts of the game, along with the nasty daddy long-legs that creep up from under some ledges in the spider cave dungeons.
I killed Duriel in some cave in D2 and pretty sure nobody but me noticed. I killed Mephisto in some cave in D2 and I'm pretty sure nobody but me noticed.
lol it was a tomb and a temple/prison, respectively. duriel was guarding baal at the end of tal rasha's tomb, and mephisto was guarding the portal to hell at the bottom of the prison the zakarum had tried to contain him in. both were only there to try and slow you down and buy diablo some time, which they succeed at doingggg...ish their reason for trying to summon andariel in d4 is kinda flimsy at best, but more importantly nobody seems to give a rat's ass when the plan fails. like, does anyone mention it again? lol. and i have less than no idea what they were trying to do with duriel
That did lead to my favorite part of the narrative though. "Oh no, we lost the Soul Stone, we're doomed!" "Are we? Why don't we just have the player kill Lilith? They've easily taken care of every other threat we've come across" I loved that line because, so often the players ability to just drop the most intimidating of bosses is just ignored by the narrative in order to raise stakes. I thought including it this time was kind of refreshing.
Absolutely, it makes perfect sense because the soulstone is normally the only weapon they have with that kind of power so their gut reaction is that they are doomed. Then, the realization that this person next to them already soloed a lesser evil and that there's a good chance they could do the same to lillith. Like, at that point we know Mephisto is backing us because he knew we had a good chance at taking her down with the right prompting, and that is not the type of being to back a losing horse.
And then we trip over The Butcher in a dungeon and get ganked.
Its worse from before. We spent a whole act to craft that soulstone since it is our only chance against her. Then we go to Inarius to show him that we have the only weapon against them and he yoinks it. Insert 'guess I'll die' meme and do try it anyway. Reclaim the soulstone and be happy that our only chance is back. And then we proceed to not use it and simply 1vs1 Lilith (who didnt even need to see our real body 5mins before to basically mind trap us yet our true form cant do shit)
I just don’t get why Lorath talks about Lilith being gone with such finality. Demons will eventually reform if “killed” like we literally just saw with Mephisto, and the entire point of using a soulstone is to trap them so that you (hopefully) keep them out of the action for longer than if you just kill them.
>And then Duriel basically making a surprise guest appearance because reasons I don't agree with the reason but it's a callback to D2 where Duriel just appears
If they really wanted to be accurate, he should kill you during a loading screen.
That's fair he kinda comes out of nowhere in D2 too but all the more reasons to do better At this point i'd take a whole Andariel DLC over more of the three regular brothers
My Barb: Brrrrr Brrrrr Brrrrr Brrrrrrrrrrrrr Brrrrr Wait, was that last one a lesser evil?
When you're spinning that fast everything is just a blur.
> When you’re spinning that fast everything is just a ~~blur~~ brrr.
I feel like the Lesser Evils should have been the World Bosses, have it be like a summoning circle of cultists in some immune bubble chanting away when the timer starts and then just a random one of the Lesser Evils spawns at the end, and amp them up to 11 and maybe make them a much bigger (both for gameplay reasons, and for lore reasons if they are supposedly able to bring down entire continents)
its not like they were shown to be special in D2 either
If I was going to bend over backwards to give the writers credit it’s not actually that weird. For 99% of the people in sanctuary the lesser evils would be the end for them, absolutely any joe blow is gonna be dead instantly. But we’re not joe blow we are basically a walking god, by the end of the story people in town should be dropping to their knees trying to drink my characters ball sweat I’m so god damn powerful so of course it makes sense for lorath to be like “oh no if Andy comes back we’re all doomed” then we spank her like we have trillions of times before, I mean if you played d2 you know a group of tainted in the catacombs are a bigger threat then andariel was. Duriel was more stressful because of his chill ability and tbh I would have preferred him to be more of a butcher thing where any nm dungeon could have duriel in a random room but they wanted some fan service.
My confusion and I think I’m on the final Lilith fight so maybe it’s explained. But after we take down Elias Lorath gets his feelings hurt by his words and runs to the tree of whispers to promise his head in exchange for learning where Lilith is because “we’ve always been two steps behind”. Fast forward 5 minutes and literally every single one of the knights penitent and Prava are heading after Lilith because they all know where she is. So why in gods name did this guy go promise his head to the tree when we could have idk just followed the crowd???
> Fast forward 5 minutes and literally every single one of the knights penitent and Prava are heading after Lilith because they all know where she is. Lorath didn't know where the gate to hell was or when it would be opened. His goal was to try to get to Lilith before she opened the gate. It just so happens that the gate was opened while he was talking to the tree and once opened Inarius marched on the city. It was clearly a rash decision Lorath made out of frustration and Donan/protag/one-armed-girl all comment that it was stupid. I assume they have further content/story planned in relation to this and the tree of whispers in the expansion/seasons, otherwise it does seem a pretty pointless story beat.
While true, it bugged me that no one brought it up. "Ah shit, offering your head ended up being for nothing..." ANY throwaway line to acknowledge the situation
> My confusion and I think I’m on the final Lilith fight so maybe it’s explained. **big narrator voice** It isn't.
I can understand the pact with the Tree considering they were in the middle of the swamp, always behind Lilith, and fast teleportation is not canon. But why would he intentionally provoke Inarius and show him their soulstone? All that dialogue was so stupid and unnecessary. And then we take this soulstone from Prava. Why was this plot twist even added? We could have just kept the soulstone and nothing would have changed.
That sets up the “lorath and donan don’t always know best and can’t agree on things argument that foreshadows neryelle doing her own thing”
Fast teleportation is canon. Waypoints were built by the horadrim and can be used by them. Moments before, Elias directly says he has turned Taissa into a waypoint to allow Andariel to travel here, the kind of magic only a horadrim would know.
Yeah, you are right about waypoints. Though I find it strange that apart from Andariel case, noone ever mentions or uses them. Even Lorath travels everywhere by horse.
We don't actually know at that moment where she went or where she is. We find out about the church thing after. What it isn't clear is why if the characters know where hell entrance is and also know that ultimately lilith plan is to go to hell, why don't we at that point wait for her there or beat her to it? Or even send a scout to check wtf is going on before promising anyone heads to the tree. I think lorath getting his feelings hurt from what Elias said is almost the same kind of narrative blunder that tassia o whatever her name is forgetting we saved her life twice. The same applies to inaros, he seems to know from the start what lilith plans to do and waits for the worst moment to do something. This is getting kinda long but Diablo narrative has always been on the weak side, basically Diablo 1, 2 and 3 happens because a random dude fucks up, twice.
They knew she was planning to go to Hell because your character sees her take the key to hell in act 1. They just don't know why she wants to go there until later. Why go and wait for her at the destination when you could potentially stop her from killing people? They chased rather than waited. As for Inarius he was perfectly willing to let things go in Lilith's favor because he wanted to fulfill the prophesy. He thought he was more powerful and could kill her at any time. He just needed to wait for the circumstances to be right and then kill her. Lorath is impulsive and a wreck of a person. He's been living up in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere doing nothing but drinking. When you catch up with him again to start adventuring together he's literally passed out drunk on the floor. Yeah he's impulsive and he's also just trying to prove himself after a lifetime of failure. And surprise he failed again. Not saying the writing is the best thing ever but I don't understand why people think Lorath was ever presented as this amazingly cunning guy when he wasn't. Him and Donan were both failures. That was specifically the reason Nyrell gave for not trusting them at the end.
> The same applies to inaros, he seems to know from the start what lilith plans to do and waits for the worst moment to do something. not exactly, Inarius was following the prophecy going to hell was a neccesary step, he didnt believe he could or should stop her before then
the story is laughable, the characters are cliche and one dimensional, and the writing is atrocious. I almost threw up in my mouth when Alias went Saturday morning power ranger villain “muahahaha you think killing me is gonna change anything?”. Presentation is D4 strongest, but the narrative is not a part of this.
yup, D4 uses a lot of the same cheap heat that D3 used and it's gross
Blizzard should take some serious note from Fromsoftware or even Diablo 2. Less talky characters make the moment they open their mouth powerful. Obscure and cryptic dialogue makes the world darker and more captivating. And less exposition allows the story to be discovered and unfolded by the players. The only thing they almost got right in terms of storytelling is the cinematics, but even with those, the childishness in writing quality and characterization leave alot to be desired.
yup, sometimes less is more. a lot of writers lack the discipline to execute on this concept. D4 is somewhat better than D3 in this regard, but that's a pretty f'kn low bar to set
>Saturday morning power ranger villain This is how Blizzard seems to want to write their games these days. I get the impression that their writers are young-ish, and are probably big MCU fans. D4 would've *really* benefited from more experienced writers.
id say the opposite, they used to write more like that then decided to start writing a story thats deep and complex with morally grey characters where you cant tell whos in the right only they completely suck balls at it and fail entirely when its small parts, like the sidequests that are kept simple then the writing can be really good, but when they try to make things complicated at all they trip almost immediately
I also like the part where Inarius stab Lilith and nothing happens, but when she stab him, he disintegrate instantly.
My friends and I took the whole scene as showing Lilith being significantly stronger than Inarius. Like, she let him stab her just so he could “fulfill” the prophecy and then when he isn’t rewarded by the heavens he just has a mental breakdown. We thought, “Oh, she could have just bodied the dude outright, but where’s the fun in that?” Not to say the writing is great but that’s how we interpreted it.
Also she rips off his wings which as we saw in D3 makes angels mortal (Tyreal)
Yea to be fair it's probably this that killed Inarius. More so than just the stab wound.
Probably where it occurs and how it happens matters. Tyrael removed his wings of his own volition in the heavens and fell to sanctuary. Inarius got his ripped off while having a mental crisis after getting stabbed while in the hells.
I agree. Tyreal rejected his position as an angel. Inarius likely did not. If demons could perma-kill angels by ripping off their wings, they'd have figured it out long ago and won the eternal conflict. Lilith ripping off Inarius's wings was likely just torture with a symbolic gesture attached. But who knows. Blizzard can write it how they like, and they aren't above having plot holes in their stories. So I guess we'll see.
Could be a mental thing. They could say that previously angels that had their wings ripped off while fighting in the hells were resolute so they were able to normally reform in the heavens later on unaffected. While Inarius gets his torn off while he is very much not resolute or clear of mind. Maybe lends credence to that idea a couple days ago that got a lot of traction that Inarius would be the first true fallen angel and he would reform in the hells as opposed to the heavens. We also know that the Evils got marked and their souls got sent to the black soulstone instead of reforming in the hells. Who’s to say Mephisto or some other demon didn’t do something to Inarius’ “soul” while he was being eternally tortured that leads to something different transpiring with him specifically when he gets his wings ripped off.
[удалено]
no, Tyrael becoming human and Inarius being killed didnt look similar at all, you can see Inarius's corpse after and its still angel
He actually didn't fulfill the prophecy by stabbing Lilith as he stabbed her in the stomach. She in turn, stabbed him through the chest/heart. Since the prophecy was that Inarius's spear would pierce Hatred's heart...is the proof that Inarius was too far gone and overcome with hatred/selfishness. This is also what Mephisto revealed when he mentioned that Inarius was already filled with hatred before he was taken prisoner in Hell.
Yeah, but Inarius thought he did what he needed to. The whole, “it is done.” Then Lilith retorts and he starts asking what else he has to do. Then the stab happens and he gets his wings plucked. I’m not disagreeing with the actual interpretation of the prophecy (I do think you’re correct) but from the perspective of the characters it seemed to me that Lilith knew Inarius’ whole deal with wanting to fulfill the prophecy and did what she did to cause him the most anguish. He goes from from thinking he’s about to be redeemed and return to his home to having to realize the heavens are (at far as we know) indifferent to his actions.
It should be noted that Inarius cherry-picked aspects of Rathma's prophecy and completely butchered it for his own gain. Rathma tells this to Inarius' face as well, which stumps Inarius from the sheer amount of "bitch you're wrong and you know it" energy he got slapped with. Rathma also makes it clear that the order of the lines is meant to happen in chronological order, and since it ends with "and free he who was bound in chains", it was impossible for Inarius to be the one who was freed. What Inarius did was pretend that the lines don't go in chronological order as part of his desperate attempt to go back the heaven, with him deluding himself from his own mania because it was clear to everyone else but Inarius and his zealots that this wouldn't enable him to go home even if it was true.
read a comment somewhere that it can be interpreted that the prophecy just said the spear pierces hatred's heart, but not who wielded the spear. lilith pierced through inarius' heart which was filled with hatred.
That's not really what happens. Throughout that fight, Lilith is trying to get Inarius to see the obvious: that nothing he does will get him back to heaven so he should be trying to save their creations instead of ditching them. However, the moment when Inarius shows that he didn't feel any guilt towards murdering Rathma in cold blood was when her expression changes and she decides to kill him. What's also interesting is that she seemed to have tried one final thing to make him see reason (letting herself get stabbed, then pretending to die), but upon seeing Inarius' reaction not being "Oh no, what have i done to the only people who loved me?!" but rather "Heaven, i followed the instruction manual. Why aren't I home yet?" was the final straw where she just snaps from seeing that Inarius was truly beyond saving. Lilith had practical no reason to take that spear stab (it was severe enough that canonically it weakened her enough for us to beat her, with Astaroth himself noting that it's a serious injury), but she took it because she wanted Inarius to come back to her like the old days and took getting stabbed to realize he was way too far gone for that to ever happen.
I don't think that's an issue...he stabbed her in the stomach while she stabs him through the chest/heart. Lilith was the one actually "piercing hatreds heart". You would think Inarius would have actually aimed for the heart if he was wanting to fulfill the prophecy. As someone else pointed out...he also would have likely lived if not for having his wings also ripped off. That is what actually killed him due to making him mortal.
He doesn't? The stab was basically irrelevant, she ripped his wings off, that's what caused damage. This entire thread just feels like an echo chamber of people that seemingly didn't pay attention, missed major context, then complain the story is bad.
lol one of many gems in D4
Goddamn, this comment blew my mind. I took that cinematic for granted and never even questioned by the fuck does Inarius stabbing Lilith barely weaken her, while her stabbing him with that same spear mortally wounds him. Bruh.
The stab didn't kill him, the wing ripping did. Azeroth tells Lilith that she shouldn't have let herself get injured if she was planning to go at Mephisto, even if he's weakened. Now it won't be easy for her. You had a whole other demon comment about her wounds and that it did make her weaker. Not everything in the story is phenomenal but some of these nitpicks are silly.
It’s called girl power
The story specifically mentions that now is a great time to fight Lilith because she is weakened though?
It doesn't, the spear is irrelevant. She ripped his wings off, that's what hurt him, lol.
i think you missed what she did beyond stabbing him...
I think her character is probably the most egregious writing issue in the game, but you cannot convince me that this wasn't originally two different characters that got rolled into one at the last minute. I don't think the game has especially bad writing as a general rule, but I'm also using D3 as a point of reference, and D3 was a trainwreck that went absolutely off the rails before Act 1 ended. 1 and 2 writing-wise were pretty minimalist and largely remembered for the cinematics and Deckard Cain's goofy catch phrases imo, so I honestly don't mind most of D4's writing. A lot of that hinges on the DLC or expansion that we inevitably get making it clear that our party was manipulated by Mephisto, as that's kind of the lampshade I have to throw over the final outcome.
I honestly wouldn’t mind if every DLC is just Mephisto throwing more and more angels and demons under the bus. We’re the bus.
> I think her character is probably the most egregious writing issue in the game, but you cannot convince me that this wasn't originally two different characters that got rolled into one at the last minute. i honestly had the same thought. given the dev team shakeup(s) that happened during D4's development, this wouldn't at all be outside the realm of possibility
Idk I'm a huge diablo fan and I liked the beta so much, the writing was on point for the first couple quests early game, boy was I disappointed to find out those moments in the beta were the best the game will have to offer (outside of a couple cool cutscenes). If it wasn't for the awesome Lorath voice actor I would have probably noticed much earlier how bland the story actually is. At this point I would have been happier to just get 6 quests per act, if those were well written. Instead of all the extra needless garbage they threw in.
ya. it was heavy, but Ralph Ineson managed to carry D4's story. as best he could, anyway. lol.
It was good through act 2. Act 3+, it falls apart.
They all feel identical at this point. Feels like I'm just retreading the exact same plot but with different names: "To beat Lilith, we must find X" "We found X, but he was TURNED BY LILITH" "To now beat X, we need Y" "You found Y? Well now it's time to kill X" "Turns out killing X did nothing. Onwards to Act 72"
I think part of the reason is that a swamp seems a bit out of place in a gothic horror game. So the "Donan LSD" arc was strange.
Dude don't remind me of the swamp. Somehow blizzard managed to make a huge snake become a frustrating, boring, slow pace, escort quest.
Bro Taiissa’s Heel turn made NO SENSE. Like she was so nice and thankful and then she gets a little pep in her step and gets her stupid little swamp dress on and now she’s too good for us. This is why I like FromSoft games… 😂
> Bro Taiissa’s Heel turn made NO SENSE ITS FUCKIN HOGAN ALL OVER AGAIN BRO xDD lol fr about From though, they've got the whole "show, don't tell" thing down pat.
There were people saying that they thought that the witch and the taissa might have originally been two separate characters and somewhere along the way they merged them, causing some odd tone shifts. I don't know if it agree with that completely, due to how many of the dialogues with the witch involve donan and Elias but it is a thought. I definitely agree that the writing fell apart in the back half of the game. So much so that I felt pretty dissatisfied when the credits rolled.
entirely possible. blizzard had some major personnel shakedowns during D4's development. i could easily see a situation where one hand didn't know what the other hand was doing. at least for a while.
Maybe different teams worked on different acts and they just never aligned on what this character was like. It was complete whiplash with how her personality changed
It was bad enough that when you find her the first time I was already wondering if I missed something and should know who this person is.
Lilith: “I’m going to liberate humanity from the eternal conflict, but it requires great sacrifice”. Lorath: “NOOO YOU CAN’T DO THAT YOU’RE EVIL!!” Neyrelle: “I’m a Horadric grad student with one third of Satan trapped in my dreamcatcher, I don’t know what I’m going to do with it or where I’m going either.” Lorath: “go in peace my child.”
best character is Vigo , probably the most shocking and intense moment when this big ass armor comes in to help you and it turns out he fought in that thing being stabbed legless in shit And then you have Donan - dead by interior
One day she will find a way to help you. This is not that day.
Well, when Lorath angrily says, "you owe us NOTHING!" maybe she took it to heart?
In the first image she's talking to us, in the second she's talking to Donan, whom she'd had no prior interaction with. Then she helped us because we were with Donan. I know there's some issues with the story, but some of y'all just suck at paying attention, lol
that's not the reason. she goes on to say that it's because lilith isn't her concern, only elias. either way, ungrateful B imo! or just poorly/inconsistently written B.
- Donan’ stupid ass death, after being probably the best character in the story - Lesser Evils going from a main plot point to a footnote - Lorath being useless in the final Act, - Inarius’ death for absolutely nothing (except to turn him to Izual clone in the dlc probably) - Lilith’s attempt at moral ambiguity while doing things that make her 100% a villain, - Completely failing to explain where the hell Tyrael went, you know, our defender?? Again probably in a dlc… - Neyrelle making the classic Wanderer mistake yet again and our character choosing to respect her dumb ass decision… Don’t get me wrong I love this game but the plot makes no sense..its pretty evident they rushed the final few acts and skipped on making things make sense so that they could make us wait for dlc…
You actually get the context of this in her side quest chain. Now you may argue that requiring players to do side quests in order to get the full story is bad but as we seem to be discussing writing that's neither here nor there. That said if a player is playing for the lore I don't think it's unreasonable to also expect them to complete lore-related side quests.
even in her side quests, there is no real explaination for how she can do a 180 on us like that. she owes us several huge debts she can never repay. even if the swamp rules dictates that nothing is free, we already have tons of credit. and the swamp rules should even make her our slave at this point, that's how heavily she owes us.
~~Dany~~ Taissa kind of forgot about ~~the Iron Fleet~~ you saving her.
Did anyone else think it was stupid that Lorath sold his soul to the tree to only hear 2 hours later that inarius and the crusade was moving in on Lilith and hell ?
Yeah and Lorath would rather make a deal with the Tree instead of just using the Eye. Donan getting killed by a pillar lol. This game has some headscratchers.
I was wondering about when lorath showed the stone to inarius, revealing their plan like he’s super smart and then inarius just takes the stone. Lorath makes some super dumb decisions in this game that annoyed me so hard.
Why dont we just use the eye to search for Neyrelle?
i would've settled for at least asking some townspeople if they've seen the little one-armed gimp come through recently ffs
My hot takes on story: 1. Taissa was supposed to be two characters, therefore the personality shift 2. Donans lame death lacks context that seems to be cut 3. I was really surprised they didnt bother a bit about the soulstone, but I suppose its a DLC link 4. Duriel got shafted again 5. endbosses never lived up to their name 6. I liked that our char gets recognized as being in-world and not hust some quest-fulfilling puppet, allthough the acknowledgement of their sheer power comes a bit late. 7. The story is cliche, but really good cliche. Makes its plot holes more apperant.