Is this wise Oma? You're better than this.

I mean... you have to atleast get the ball rolling with a bit of inane lore...

So hey, first question:

What did you guys think of the Order novel?

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It got into the characters better than the game did. Was great!

Have yet to read it. Waiting for paperback.

Same

Second question, to be answered concurrently with the first:

What do you, as a lore fan, think could've been improved about DIII's story and already-published supplemental materials, and the setting going forward. If you've got any niggling lore problems or maybe a problem with the pacing or presentation of the story, now's the time to air it.

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The Lords of Hell were much more intimidating when they weren't thrown in our face on a constant basis. Maghda, Azmodan, and Diablo were all guilty of this in D3. It comes across as very "Saturday morning cartoonish" when the villain gives you numerous updates throughout the story about how you might of destroyed this but they still have this thing over here only for you to proceed to destroy that as well.

On a side note, please explore more about the followers' like maybe seeing the Thieves Guild as a possible antagonist or discovering the origin of the Prophet who trained Eirena. What exactly is Covetous Shen looking for and who could he actually be?

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“Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette - the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude your embrace.” - John Tyler

To add onto Kas' statement, use messengers, missives, and other mini-events to create the atmosphere. Act 2 was fantastic story wise because you didn't feel like you were being told off by some demented douche with his ass in a molten hot tub. You felt like you were picking apart the story while going on your quest, even if it was a fairly easy puzzle to understand. I can get that Asmodan was showing off all the disparate parts of sin, but it just felt lazy when a giant head suddenly pulls another Arthas on us.

Diablo in Act 4 is similar, with all the sub-lieutenants just feeling like mini-mouthpieces for some egotistical wannabe boss. He's evil, show us him being evil and force us to survey the remains of his work instead of hearing him exult in a farcical victory.

And get someone professional on the dialogue for christ's sake. If I wanted D&D quips I'd be sitting in front of cardboard tiles, not a computer. They can have cheesy moments, but when 90% of the plot is driven by stuff you only hear in gaming shops you know you're missing the beat.

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Rationalizing the irrational since 2005.

I haven't even finished D3 and haven't played D1 or D2, nor have I read any expanding universe stuff, I've basically gotten all my info secondhanded from Wikis.

But it kinda feels odd to me that there are so few females amongst the forces of Heaven and Hell. At least that's my impression of it.

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Another thing to add: If you have any plans to demonstrate future conflicts with the Archangels or High Heavens in general with Sanctuary, please don't make them corrupted by demons or wanting to destroy the world for no purpose whatsoever. Imperius is a good start and Maltheal has potential as well but more angels that are law-based and have a negative attitude toward humanity would be great.

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“Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette - the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude your embrace.” - John Tyler

Well, since D3 is what got me more interested in Diablo lore, I can't really say at the moment if there's problems I have outside the main game.

Azmodan going on about how you were not going to win kind of felt a bit silly. I think that the orders you find are fine, but him specifically talking to you felt silly in hindsight.

I'm about 1/3 of the way into The Order but Cain has an air of Gandalf trying stop events well beyond his control but Cain is never nearly as fulfilling as Gandalf. Leah is both Hobbit and One Ring(I admit this is from the prospective of a reader who knows how the Game ends). The relationship has no weight they are two people who's lives are out of control and they know it.

The pacing is slow the dreams/flashbacks draw me out of the narrative. I'm currently stopped at a horrible tarot card reading scene which is everything bad about every tarot card reading scene you have ever seen. Heavy handed foreshadowing, DOOOOM, and the cards which all plot points. Then again I think the best fortune teller I have seen on TV is the one with coin slot in Futurama.

Having read Moon of the Spider before The Order I'm honestly disappointed so far Cain's dialog is far and away the best part of the book. I can hear his voice in ever line of text he says. So the book might get better I can send you a PM when my review is posted.

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The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance-it is the illusion of knowledge

Please! Sometimes negative reviews can be much more informative than glowing ones.


I'm just starting on reading the novel myself.

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Holy crap, you're starting to sound like a CM. What did they do to you Omacron? Is there an indoctrination process? Do they ritually carve your face into a perpetual smile like I've long suspected? Tell us, tell us if you can!

I think they should delve more into the conversations or reactions between characters in the main plot. (They did great jobs with the minor characters, but why they couldn't do it the same way for the main characters and main storyline?)

For example, They should explain more about how we unmask Belial the Lord of Lies's disguise. And how he ended up possessing the emperor.

Also, during the event of Adria's betrayal, Leah should try to resist or question her mother for deceiving her, or even ask or beg for Adria not to infuse the black soulstone into her body.

And in the last act, they should show more us why Imperius has such enmity against mankind, rather than facing Diablo.

They have a slushie machine in the cafeteria

I can't stay mad at them when I'm in the heavenly embrace of blue raspberry ice.

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Well, if there's something that kind of irked me, it's that the two big plot twists - Deckard Cain's death and the whole Adria revelation - were so heavily dependent upon the player just plain not being in the room at the time, despite the lead--ins suggesting the opposite.

Despite the fact they're triggered by entering the room, lacking any Flashback "tag" and creating the logical assumption that the player is showing up to witness them.

After each scene my immediate thought was "I...just walked into the room, and saw this occurring. The context of my arrival is built right into the lead-in for this scene. Why didn't I just walk in and incinerate Adria in the middle of her betrayal? I'm about to murder her Prime Evil boss single-handedly, so I should have been able to drop her in a split second, but instead I'm apparently admiring the floor tiles from within the doorway while all Hell breaks loose eight feet away.

It was a very jarring way to portray such events, particularly because the story flow used to initiate each event was my character walking onto the scene having rushed there explicitly, only to have her not actually be there to arrive on the scene when she appeared to do so.

In WoW with the Wrathgate, helplessness in the face of a tragedy was successfully portrayed because we had the excuse of being shown standing atop Bolvar's fortifications at the end, too far away to have actually intervened. D3 didn't really give an explicit explanation for why the player couldn't prevent the two most tragic occurrences in its story while at the same time piling on implied reasons for why we should have been able to prevent them, then and there, in the midst of their occurring.

Maybe we're supposed to have shown up later, but that's never actually represented very clearly. A clear "you arrived right after it was all over"-type statement from Leah/Tyreal would have cleared it up, but as presented, the implication seems to be that we walked onto the scene, the events took place, and for some inexplicable reason we did nothing whatsoever to prevent the horror from unfolding. It created a false feeling of helplessness because I was never actually shown or told why I was actually helpless to to do anything.

It also really didn't help that to a great degree, Leah ceased to exist as even a character, or even a proper dead character after her possession. Through Leah herself we get to share in her mourning for Deckard Cain, as the player's character is informed by Leah's experiences coupled with the player' own memories of him throughout the Diablo series. Even the blacksmith's wife gets multiple post-mortem references and recollections as one talks to him throughout the Acts. Yet the scant mentions of Leah post-corruption are summarily capped off as "Any hope? Nope. Moving along, then. Plot device used, discarded and promptly forgotten. On to the last boss and nary even a mention of her sad fate once Diablo's a smoldering corpse."

It's almost as if Adria describing her as Diablo's child actually stuck in the minds of the characters in-game, and we're supposed to figure they all took Diablo's plot to heart and wrote Leah off as damaged demon-spawned goods better off gone and rarely spoken of. Or like they're all somehow privy to a decision to simply extract her legacy in death beyond giving the new Prime Evil child-bearing hips.

Plus without further explanation, her fate threatened to violate the theme of the game for me. Despite being human, her fate had little to do with her choices, because Diablo's plot blindsides the narrative with a summary "none of it mattered, so suck it" before she or anyone else in-game (besides Adria, obviously) could have even comprehended the true nature of her involvement. She never had a chance because of who her progenitors were, and frankly that's the direct opposite of what it's supposed to mean to be human in the Diablo universe. She's human; humans are the ones without prescribed fates built into their origins. And yet in the span of a single scene she's essentially told she's not really human, as for the purposes of this particular twist she's a demon with no choice as to how her nature defines her fate.

Additionally, Adria wasn't exactly a subtle traitor, yet the other character behaved as if she were. Her characterization overall was not only unlikeable (not a storytelling sin, but rather a relevant telltale), but pretty came across as borderline evil from start-to-finish with her seeming lack of any empathy whatsoever, or particular attachment to the world she was supposedly trying to save. It seems to me that when you're trying to fight the ultimate evil, someone in your midst who doesn't seem to actually care about anything that qualifies as good is basically waving a red flag and declaring themselves a mole for the other side. Especially when she even says that once the deed is done and the Great Evils destroyed, she still figures only misery and an unpleasant life continuing from the one she had before are all there is to look forward too. She even says Leah's probably doomed to the same miserable existence. Her words increasingly bear the hallmark of a person working from a completely different angle than anyone else present, and it never once seems to set off any alarms among the characters that she sounds an awful lot like someone anticipating the outcome of their failure rather than their success. Even the fact that Maghda seems to know Adria on a first-name basis never raises any eyebrows until after it all goes down and the Templar raises the possibility that Adria might have been the "other witch" who helped reinvigorate the Coven.

Which brings me to the return of Diablo himself. It's so sudden, so late in the game and so quickly resolved compared to the rest of the Acts that rather than feeling like the culmination of an identifiable build-up, it felt like just an obligatory tribute to the fact his name's on the box. Which is strange, really; even in Diablo 1 & 2, as soon as Diablo is himself again, the subtlety ends and he functionally waits around to be killed. And he is killed. Every time. No tricks, no labyrinthine plots for Diablo himself to continue pursuing. Just fireballs and lightning bolts, followed by a more recent allusion by another character (lacking any details to back it up) that he'd planned out his every defeat.

I hate to sound embittered on this point, but after WotLK, it really doesn't endear me to a villain when he's slapped with the deliberate failure motivation. "I was losing on purpose every time! Every imbecilic oversight was a brilliant ploy to let you win so I could come back and win later! Except I still lost later when I came back...but that, too, was deliberate and all part of the plan! Yes, that's it! I am the Prime Evil, Lord of Elaborate Excuses for Whenever Things Go Wrong!"

In fact, I feel the above stated issues his return could have been largely remedied if Diablo 3 had ended with the betrayal atop Bastion's Keep amidst the celebration of Azzmodan's fall. If we'd finished the game knowing we'd won the day, but only that day, and that Diablo was back, he had gone to Hell to rally his newly combined forces, and that his unified armies of Hell would be coming soon to invade Heaven and Sanctuary. We'd have the bittersweet victory of having momentarily imprisoned the remaining Evils, saved our friends and allies, and routed Azmodan's invasion, only to lose Leah and the imprisoned Evils in the knowledge that what's coming next (in the expansion, naturally) will be much, much worse than what came before.

In short, I felt Act 3's ending was used as a climax, yet would have better served as a cliffhanger leading into a continuation on par with what came before in scope and length. The anticipation of something even worse than the lengthy search for Belial and the grinding siege of Azmodan looming on the horizon would have, in my opinion, carried more impact and sense of forboding than what amounted to a boss stage in which we're told at one point by Tyreal that Diablo's army dwarfs that of Azmodan due to it comprising Hell entirely, yet it never feels that way because we mop up Hell's mightiest in far smaller numbers than we did at Arreat and confront the Prime Evil in a fraction of the time it took to reach the Lord of Sin.


Not sure if the above qualifies as niggling, but they were among the things that stood out as most "off" for me. Which was a shame, because the things that had kept me playing Diablo 2 over and over again - the gameplay, atmosphere and feeling of constantly growing in power - were, I felt, very well-retained and even improved upon.

Something that stood out which i did especially like in Act IV, however, was the use of demons with names tied to the legacies of the individual Great Evils, as well as the idea of things like the Hammer Lords; demons of Hell who were never originally bound to a singular Evil, yet were caused to join Diablo's invasion under the reign of a united Prime Evil. The idea that even the Great Evils in tandem never completely ruled their realm creates room for Hell to become something more than just seven places with seven strict natures; after all, if one thought hard enough one could probably think of some Evils that would stand on their own apart from those of the Seven. Unfortunately, that too was the sort of thing that could have provided story fodder for an entire segment of a protracted war against the Prime Evil instead of being a handful of monsters described momentarily via the voice-over exposition of the late Deckard Cain.

Oh, and the followers - especially the Templar and Enchantress - had great background stories going on, especially since they tie into the larger mythos and history, and thereby present possibilities of what may arise beyond the ending of Diablo 3. In a way they felt like the larger world of Sanctuary still bumping around at the periphery of a story that's rather localized despite having universal implications. The Templar's in particular raised the question in my mind of whether humanity will all be on board with Tyreal's final optimistic proclamation of Angel and mortal facing the future together, or if memories of a demonic invasion that wasn't wiped from everyone's minds might give rise to other, less amicable reactions to the now-proven existence of immortal armies capable of ravaging the whole of Sanctuary.

I guess that last bit wasn't exactly in keeping with the question, but I kind of felt I should offset some of the griping with the good, and there's indeed a lot of good in Diablo 3's story in spite of my personal peeves with the handling of certain parts. It just seemed like the lion's share of the good took place in Tristram, Caldeum and Bastion's Keep, only to end up feeling detached from the tangential and overly accelerated finality of the fourth Act.

(Incidentally, sorry if I kind of ran off at the mouth. Again. Gotten to be kind of a reflex at this point.)

Here`s one question thats been buzzing in my head:

What exactly did tyreal do to make himself mortal? all we see if him removing his shoulderplates, wich just happen to be where his wings come from, so what does it mean if an angel can just rip off a piece of armour and become mortal, it just seems like a plothole

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I actually enjoyed the pacing for the most part up to Act 3, but there it became not only a slog game wise, but also storywise. Yes, we're facing off against the innumerable armies of hell, but the grandeur of defeating all those hellions is lost the minute Azmodan pipes up. At that point you realize that it's just a matter of pushing forwards down enough levels to find our pinata, not kill the great evil. If we had more moments like Kulle or Cydaea, where the taunting nature actually included parts of the world we were exploring right then and there ("Meet my daughters") it would've felt more alive. Take the ballista area. Instead of just saying "my armies will still destroy you," have the ballista crews be the actors, calling out coordinates between each other. Runners between them that talk about what part of Bastion they're supposed to destroy (and why). The crews worrying over your meddling, asking to shore up defenses, or notifying you (accidentally) where a weak point is. Azmodan himself should be overseen by accident, the talking head that notices you mid-statement and realizes he needs to go to plan B. Suddenly he realizes you're not going to fall like the other ones, so he needs to send you into hell where he's strongest and where his lieutenants have the advantage. Basically we don't see a dynamic world, and that lack of action, reaction, and remorse weighs everything down.

To echo ARM above, Act 4 has (so far) been paced so quickly I get the feeling this is the reward, the quick and dirty ending to wrap things up. It's contingent on the game play, the necessity of players to farm, which means it's mostly pretty scenery (by the way, congrats to the Art department on the Sin Heart and Heaven areas, they really did expand the concepts far better than D2) and a few mini-bosses over a really cohesive fight to save heaven.

The in-game events and mini-dungeons are very emblematic of this problem, because I had no idea why I was entering these places even after I left them. Act 1 & 2 had character, a feeling as if these were important in some capacity, but Acts 3 & 4 had just a feeling of "go in, kill, leave." Why did I enter the barracks? The store rooms? Was I saving trapped recruits or the last untainted stores after Ghom devoured the Keeps? Why am I dancing around a pad of light in Heaven to get to a treasure chest? Why am I not trying to mitigate the damage done to priceless artifacts and save angels in the midst of their corruption?

In terms of the actual plot lines themselves, the Adria revelations weren't really all that shocking. Not because the idea isn't interesting, but because they portrayed her as too wicked, too demonic throughout her evolution. I could see her feeling old, world weary, angered at what she gave up and elated there was a light at the end...but that wasn't what was translated. Instead she was ornery, uncaring, fanatical, completely at odds with every iota of motherhood. Leah's automatic trust in her just felt off, and the fact it coincided with Belial's obvious ruse as the emperor made it all the more stark that there was something amiss. Going forwards, any remotely similar betrayal or revelation will be immediately called out, which means CDev needs to work on a more nuanced transition into things.

As to our own characters...we're way too wise, intelligent, and etc. for our own good. It worked with followers, but when you're speaking to angels and witches we shouldn't be the ones consoling people, we should be the ones learning and (in turn) reciprocating who we are. The witch doctor just feels bland 90% of the time, the magically sage youth. The Wizard just an annoyingly correct student who will obviously find the answer she seeks. They need to show growth within the character, especially in regards to the horrors and temptations of hell. Without any real conflict we're just going through the motions we already know for a fact we'll survive and succeed. When your character is telling you "Don't worry, be happy," in the middle of Hellraiser, you don't feel the tension you need for the fights you encounter.

They need to add some lore to the characters themselves to bounce off our followers. The short stories were introductions, but we need to see the characters speak to others as if they're living beings with past, present, and future. For the Demon Hunter, showing her react to places her fellows talked about or maybe even visit part of her past would have done wonders. The Witch Doctor should see the Khazra and feel revulsion, sadness, and confusion at how his people could be so corrupted. The wizard should react to cultists, taunting them that she's beyond their power and didn't fall to the same petty desires that they did.

Finally, Cain and Abd al Hazir both need to be fleshed out post-mortem. Seeing Cains work is one thing, but I want to see evidence of the man's life and attempts to keep the Horadrim alive. A similar thing goes to our intrepidly naive scholar Hazir, whose actual home we visit and yet who is apparently only known from random lore books. I'm not saying we should meet him ourselves (though dragging him around with us would be a useful plot to prove the myths of hell), but seeing evidence of these people's lives in the world should be part of its exploration.

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Rationalizing the irrational since 2005.

Not that I'm a super huge lore fan of the Diablo series (had a hard time getting into Diablo 2, but I do enjoy Diablo 3) but I just want to throw in my 2 cents.

I understand the story/series is essentially about fighting off the Burning Hells/evil, but don't ignore Sanctuary itself. If there is one thing I love about fantasy, it's about exploring all of the different people and cultures and how they interact.

I love how the Monk character is an amalgamation of real world cultures, and it would be awesome to have had an Act take place in Ivgorod. Or have an Act take place in the Torajan jungles; I'm really enjoying the Witchdoctor and thought it was pretty interesting when reading the Witchdoctor short story that their ritualized warfare brought to mind the Aztec's Flower Wars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_war

I just wish Diablo 3 had taken place in various other areas rather than just essentially retreading old ground (although seeing the High Heavens was neat). I suppose they had to do so to wrap up the story, but still, Sanctuary has so many interesting locations and cultures, it'd be a shame to ignore them. I know that the Diablo series is "just" an Action RPG, but can't we slaughter hordes of demons in other interesting areas of the world map?

Dialogue: The in-game writers need professional help to work on providing compelling dialogue for the characters. Within a week, the poor character dialogue has already become a recurring joke and point of mockery and derision for the game. It's that scathingly bad. Mustache-twirling villains who tell you their plans and how to defeat them belong in '80s Saturday morning kid shows but not in Sanctuary. The protagonists were just as bad in their offenses. (E.g. "You can't judge me. I am justice itself!" ) This aspects goes a long way in developing immersion in the story. Bad dialogue, coupled with poor characterization, takes you out of that immersion.

Protagonists: Some of the more atrocious aspects of characterization has been covered in the previous dialogue section. As others have mentioned, it's a bit puzzling that by the end of the game, I know more about the lives and histories of my traveling companions than I know of my own character's life and history. That seems somewhat backwards somehow. Deckard Cain's death to a cheap villain in a poorly-rendered in-game cutscene felt like a slap in the face. It was poorly executed. Furthermore, there's supposed to be no hope with him gone, yet we're traveling with a more knowledgeable and stronger mortal Tyrael? The disjunction in tone there is jarring. The same is true with Leah's demise. Both come out of nowhere with poor pacing and delivery. (See ARM's criticisms.)

Power Ranger Antagonists: Someone drew an apt comparison between Magdha's presentation in D3 with Rita Repulsa from Power Rangers, which is certainly true for other villains as well. The villains were a joke and a clear sign that the Diablo 3 team did not learn from the criticisms of Arthas's cartoonish portrayal in Wrath of the Lich King. There are better ways to seed villains without having them constantly appear and then threaten you with non-threatening mooks. As such, many of "the big bad" villains did not come off as being threatening at all despite any difficulties in the fight. Diablo's seeding was also atrocious. We get that Leah had Diablo's soul or something in her and that she was Adria and Aidan's child. Everyone with two brain cells to rub together between them got that. The problem is that Diablo himself was not really all that seeded as the big bad of the game, despite the game's title. In Diablo 1, Diablo's presence is felt more and more as we descend the catacombs, dungeons, and Hell itself. In Diablo 2, we are constantly following in the Dark Wanderer's wake. In Diablo 3, he just kind of shows up out of nowhere and becomes the Prime Evil in a contrived plot involving Adria somehow "marking" the other evils and shoving it into Leah. The Black Soulstone was also poorly seeded. (Again, see ARM's criticisms. I also agree with how Act 3 would have made a far better ending for Diablo 3 than Act 4.)

Show and Tell: Diablo 3's story suffered from trying to directly tell us too much about the story and lore while not showing us through the gameplay experience. The hidden in-game books, despite their interesting content, are examples of telling and not showing. Azmodan and Diablo's dialogue is bad telling and not showing. When the Imperial Guards in Act 2 turn into demons: that's showing.

Tone and Mood: The plot and stories of Diablo have never been all that original, as they are fairly straightforward and simple in their narrative: it's all D&D-style hack'n'slash dungeon-delving. (The Temple of Elemental Evil Adventure anyone?) There is nothing inherently wrong with that. It works. The problem then is that the Diablo franchise relies heavily on tone and mood to deliver the story. To its credit, the Diablo series is an exploration of "terror." In the first game, as we delved deeper down through the labyrinths under Tristram Cathedral, the world became more terrifying to us as we inched closer to Diablo. There were unexpected dangers around every turn. Randomized areas contributed to the atmosphere of the lurking unknown. Rose-tinted glasses or not, people will remember the Diablo 1 Butcher, but they will quickly forget the Diablo 3 Butcher. Diablo 1 ends with the Hero succumbing to the subtle temptations of Hell. Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 both suffer in that the heroes never seem to waver or show signs of temptation or that they are having to make tough decisions. It just all, "Screw decisions! Just point me where I need to go! I'll do whatever you say!" (See Cantus's criticisms.)

A Prophet's Call: The word of the Lore came to me, saying: "Prophecies are TERRIBLE plot contrivances that should NEVER be used to carry the narrative. They are cliche, predictable, and trite. Blizzard's audience is smart. The moment they get any inklings of prophecy, they roll their eyes knowing and recognizing it as a crutch to bad storytelling."

Focus and Scope: While I recognize that the world is expanding and that we are going on to fight bigger and badder things, sometimes keeping a smaller scope works better for a nice change of pace. (It's a problem that people have also raised about Warcraft too, so it's something Blizzard should probably keep in mind.) Diablo is about human mortals and their inner struggles. As the Demon Hunter says, corruption is made possible not by demons, but because of the hearts of humanity. Angels and demons are just character manifestations of humanity's own inner moral struggle. Heaven and Hell are breathtakingly magnificent places, but sometimes mortal struggles are far more interesting. The Clan Wars, for example, are an exciting part of history because it's mortals against mortals with demons as puppet masters. Diablo 1 is exciting because we focus on small cast of characters in a fixed setting who provide support in our descent into the madness and terror of the Cathedral. Diablo 1 feels like a mortal struggle. Diablo 2 and 3 feel like cosmological struggles. Cosmological struggles are fine, but you inevitably end up forced to create bigger and badder antagonists for a challenge. The dark fantasy genre of Diablo has always been most compelling amidst mortal struggles and their choices.

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Cantus's post made me think of something that niggled at me. When the Barbarian goes to Bastion Keep, it feels like there's a bit missing. There's almost no reference from the character about the past, how Arreat used to be their home, or any sort of real indication that they were from that area at all. It really feels like there's something missing.

If I were playing a Barb I can see that being quite disappointing. All it would take is one line of random dialogue.

Running around with the enchantress, I remember a conversation where that was mentioned, but that's random conversation that didn't come up until i was well into the act.

I more meant it's not mentioned in the class specific drawn cinematic where I think something like that would have made sense. Or some of the class specific dialog you can have with the quests.