Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Darkmere]

I don't think the core of D3's story (aside from some stupid as hell changes like Cain's death, leoric being a cartoon, how Kulle is treated...) is that terrible if you only look at the facts. But... the presentation is profoundly stupid and makes it completely impossible to take the story for what it's worth. They could have replaced 90% of maghda's, azmodan's, and diablo's sneering dialog with blank space and it would be much less of an issue even without changing any major plot points.

For what it's worth, I think they realized what a colossal mistake it was putting Metzen at the plot helm (and I refuse to believe every employee truly enjoyed the mire that the plot was. I imagine management holding a pink slip to their backs and making them blow off criticism). The lead writer for the expansion is someone I've never heard of... so it can't get much worse, in all likelihood. I do wish they'd promoted the worldbuilder guy who wrote the follower stuff, at least that was decent.

Still, it wouldn't matter to me if the story where a literary masterpiece that became required reading at university-level studies for the next 100 years.... I'd still skip every cutscene after the first playthrough, like I did with the other two games.

[Neonivek]

I understand that Cain's death was POSSIBLY necessary because the character was getting too old or the voice actor was. Yet the way they killed him off was so disappointing to basically the character who MADE the first diablo. What did it amount to? A Cheap shock death for a character who contributes SQUAT to the overall story by a villain who was ridiculous (and there are ways to pull off "silly looking but scary characters")

There was nothing I enjoyed more in the first game then talking to Cain about all the stuff that popped up in the first game. In fact the commentary of the entire town was actually what made the game so strong.

I don't think the core of D3's story (aside from some stupid as hell changes like Cain's death, leoric being a cartoon, how Kulle is treated...) is that terrible if you only look at the facts.

It still has huge problems. Though I guess indeed they could be framed better.

The Black Soulstone and the "Minor League Demons" are the nooses that kill the story. Yet I guess they could explain the black soulstone better so it didn't need to be the largest plothole in the entire series. As well the Minor demons could have also been framed better to make them seem like a more considerable threat.

But in the same respect ANYTHING can be pulled off if done right.

I do kind of love how much Diablo 3 seems to just loathe Diablo 1 (I still don't like how Diablo 2 treated it... but I at least understood why it happened thematically). Cain? Killed embarrassingly. Leoric? Cartoon villain and passé boss. The Witch? Don't get me started.

[Lord Snow]

After simply reading the last page of this thread, i have succesfully quenched my urge to give D3 another try. Thanks.
My god just remembering Leoric and the Witch and all the pointless marching around without shortcuts makes me cringe.

Maybe i'll just re-install D2 and start a new Zy-El character.

[nenjin]

They killed Deckard Cain because they wanted to own the storyline. And there's no better way to sever any links between the old and new content than by killing characters who a) had been through it all and b) players like. DC was an inconvenient personality for the world they wanted to run. It barely fucking makes sense that his niece talks about "stories" while the man who lived through all that shit is standing right there in front of her. He should have clocked Leah in the mouth with his walking staff the minute she started referring to him as a delusional old man.

So yeah. The character who reads a lot of the found journals was/is intended to be Cain's replacement in some form. From long-winded old white man to a younger and slightly preening Middle Eastern scholar.

Tyrael fits that description too, except he wasn't as well fleshed out as Cain and got his own, preposterously out of place story. On the one hand, while it's good that players do most things in the story, the story ultimately isn't about us. D3's story is really a story about its NPCs. Tyrael "rediscovering" him, Leah finding out she's a demon bebeh, Adria turning out to be a secret bitch, Haedrig, the Followers, Zultan Khule.....Act 3 is the only act where it's about the players, getting shit done, instead of waiting for NPCs to open doors, hit buttons or discover themselves.

D2 felt like a player marching into ancient evils to discover and destroy it. There's rightly a sense of "Who the fuck are you guy--ARGH" from the bad guys, because you were really just adventurers.

D3, it practically feels like fucking prophecy due to how much exposition there is, and how many "Gee whiz!" moments are written into the story. The players just happen to be Nephalem coming back into their powers, and you get called out by everyone. King Leoric happened to come back because Tyrael fell from Heaven smack dab in the middle of the Cathedral, and another Butcher demon happened to show up? Zultan Khule was teh uber Nephalim people considered as bad as Diablo, and he just so happens to have possession of the Black Soulstone? Adria has been playing the long game since D1 Act 1?

It's all written like an overblown movie, which is why characters talk so fucking much. A story that was completely driven by our characters, without a small hamlet worth of NPCs and flunkies trailing us, would have made it feel less like we're being led by the nose by the story.

I wonder if there is a curse of three when it comes to long running series. Matrix 3. Doom 3. Diablo 3. Quest For Glory 3. Battlefield 3. Max Payne 3. I could probably sit here for an hour and rattle off titles that really weren't all that great compared to their predecessors, because the designs fundamentally altered the formula in some ways that made it less enjoyable. Maybe the curse of three is when any series reaches high enough levels of success that it starts to impact a thing in many ways: stories get more "epic" and self-serving and gameplay mechanics get upended in the name of The Vision for breaking with the past.

There was a time when I excused a lot of the changes to stuff because every developer has a prerogative to tweak, refine and improve a game. But after taking in the complete package, and Jay Wilson running his mouth, it really seems like D3's intent was to be everything D2 wasn't. Where it was muted, D3 colorizes. Where it was open-ended enough to allow someone to cripple a build, D3 steers the whole course of your development to 60 for you. Where the story was relatively hands off, D3 demands you sit through yet bit of plot development, and half of the game is running back and forth to satisfy it. Adventure Mode will be a god send, because it will finally strip the story out of it so you can actually feel like what you're doing is what you want to be doing, not what some NPC told you needs done.

[Neonivek]

The players just happen to be Nephalem coming back into their powers, and you get called out by everyone.

I HATE HATE this plot twist soo much! since ALL humans are nephalem. Nephalem is just an outdated term for human long forgotten. Not to mention that "regaining your powers" means so little in the grand scheme of thing because not only do most of the characters NOT DRAW UPON the Nephalem power source, but the villains are weaker then ever. It is why I never picked up upon this "regaining the Nephelam power" plot, because it is never demonstrated in the game.

Also what I dislike the most about Adria is that it goes against everything her character was meant to represent in the first game. She was an outsider who everyone scorned and disliked (her Accent wasn't just there to sound funny) but in reality she was actually not only harmless but beneficial and one of the greatest allies you had.

I guess I should say what I do like...

While I do think they somewhat messed up on Leoric. One character they expanded upon who I thought was an excellent idea was Lazarus.

Heck why didn't they just make HIM the focus of Chapter 1 instead of Leoric? Unlike Leoric, Lazarus isn't meant to be sympathetic at all and was pretty much the true villain of Diablo 1.

[Darkmere]

I think Nenjin's onto something. The new crew was so focused on NOT being the old crew that they went too far afield with some decisions, plot being the foremost. Some of the changes are stellar; I despised having lists of characters with identical stats and the same class who just put points into the pre-ordained synergized kill skills and chased the same runewords. I got zero enjoyment out of grinding out a new barc/sorc/whatever just to put in all the points I'd mapped out before I rolled the character until I got to 60-something and could use the gear I had saved up. I hated the tiny stash. I hated being forced to fill my inventory with charms to compete. I hated baal runs/pindle runs/chaos sanct runs/pick a run.

I'm also not terribly enamored with D1 or D2's "plots", which were mostly nonexistent. The benefits of them being sparse and absolutely minimal is that players could fill in as they liked, which seemed to work for their benefit, so I guess that was better than the exposition blather that vanilla D3 has. I reserve judgement on Reaper of Souls til I've played it, but the general feedback from beta that I've heard puts it in a better place than vanilla. I guess I'll wait and see.

Still, in my opinion the most important part is the gameplay, and the new team lead has pushed the game into what it should have been, so I'm happy with that. There's far more build variability than D2 ever had (ESPECIALLY post 1.09 synergies), so it'll keep me occupied for quite some time.

Speaking of D2 mods, I'll plug my favorite. If you like the crafting/rebalance setups, Eastern Sun was phenomenal at having tons of viable builds and letting you customize every piece of gear to do whatever you wanted, provided you put some effort into it. I played that mod twice as much as plain D2 and LoD, hands down.

[Lord Snow]

After simply reading the last page of this thread, i have succesfully quenched my urge to give D3 another try. Thanks.
My god just remembering Leoric and the Witch and all the pointless marching around without shortcuts makes me cringe.

Maybe i'll just re-install D2 and start a new Zy-El character.

Last time I tried Zy-El, it was a whole lot of leveling at a snail's pace against quintupled enemy spawns. Is it any better now, or did I miss the good bits?

You only level at a snails pace to begin with. It's extremely tough to get through the first say 15 levels with your first character. From there on you'll have the option to make and use various equipment that your further characters can equip from lvl1 or 2.
I can understand if you never made it past the den of evil (if you even got past the GOD DAMN FUCKING BIRD THINGS in the 2nd area )

What i like about it: endless lvling, endless crafting, metagaming around rollovers, HUGE amounts of stuff to find and collect.
There's no great point about it, new plot twists or anything. It's taking hack and slash to the extreme for people who like to never run out of tougher enemies and better items to find or craft. There's 10k lvls for your character, skills go up to 100 (30x100, so you're stuck with skillpoints from lvl2995 or something around that), several dungeons transformed into insanity dungeons whose normal versions you may want to leave alone until you're well into nightmare etc.

[Neonivek]

I'm also not terribly enamored with D1 or D2's "plots", which were mostly nonexistent.

Uhhh... No. There was a lot of plot.

Mind you, you had to actually dive into the game to learn what that plot is (since the vast majority of it is optional). And while there was some aspects of the story open for you to fill in, it was all just minor details or your non-entity of a hero (you were pretty much just someone trying to help).

For example learning that Leoric is a tragic villain? Entirely optional. It is only when you get that mission and talk to the people around town (mostly Griswald, but a few people around town flesh it out a bit too) that you learn about it (and the manual). Otherwise you only know Leoric is a traitor and killed the search party.

[Lord Snow]

Jeeeeez. That sounds whackadoodle enough to be fun, and I've milked most of the enjoyment I could out of MedianXL. Will probably download it tonight then and give it a spin- I just might have to do so when my roommate's not in, because last I remember, every page in the manual or splash screen or what have you from the mod had vaguely pornographic fantasy people pictures.

Can it do multiplayer, by chance? I might try to rope my brother in and do a thing with Hamachi or somesuch if it's fun.

Yep, can do multiplayer over LAN or LAN-sims like Hamachi.

Ghouls for fools, kill the quills.
Hint that you may consider cheating: clear the moor but don't open chests. Crank players up to 127, then open the chests. Repeat to get your hands on good cube scrolls and/or a full minor celebrity poster (those drop as 1/3 pieces, get 3 matching pieces and cube them together for a poster. Cube 3 random pieces for a new random piece)

[Darkmere]

I'm also not terribly enamored with D1 or D2's "plots", which were mostly nonexistent.

Uhhh... No. There was a lot of plot.

Thing is, backstory isn't a plot. There was some optional setups, but the game's plot was "there's a demonlord in the church basement, he took over the king's son. Go get loot and kill it." At the time, that was all that was needed.

D2 came in with the whole Wanderer thing and had a lot MORE plot, with the wanderer being overtaken by diablo and tal rasha's tomb is opened and mephisto and blah blah, but the core of it was still "there's demons out there rampaging and Generic McHero needs to loot and slay!" There's bare hints at things like the angels and stuff, but aside from Tyrael they don't do much. There's no twists or character development, just a path of lootsacks to punch.

D3 came after the cash-in lore fiasco where Blizzard realized turning out garbage pulp novels would somehow turn a profit, so instead of the basic "bad stuff needs killing. Also loot" formula that's scant on many in-game details, we have set pieces and blathering demons and butterfly magicksz. The odd consequence here is the guy they hired to be the worldbuilder (whose name escapes me at the moment) actually did a pretty good job with all the anciliary stuff (that backstory, which I agree with you was pretty decent), but it was completely overrun with Chris Metzen's fanfic boner and the core components of plot-bloat that got shoved in just turned people off completely.

[Neonivek]

The backstory is part of the plot. Since it is given to you through exposition and even referenced in the dialog.

What you have there is the basic set up. Also you don't know there is a demonlord in the church basement at the start of the game unless you read the manual or blurb (I think).

Though this is starting to seem like a semantic fight.

IMO the things the characters in the game tell you is part of the plot.

[Darkmere]

Though this is starting to seem like a semantic fight.

I think so, too, though I wasn't trying to be confrontational. I just view "plot" as on-screen actiony stuff, and filler details/setting as "backstory." In those specific terms, I think D1 & 2's backstories were okay, but plots were minimal, while I think D3's backstory and setting were alright, but the plot was abysmal. I could totally see Tristram being a run-down tourist trap, for example.

[sambojin]

It's a pity that the more work Blizzard put into actual backstory and plot, the more it was revealed to be b-grade mush. It's that fine line that they not only crossed, but leapt over and tried to run with. It's far easier to evoke an atmosphere with a little bit of music and sprite design than it is to say "this enemy is evil. He just told you so. Muhahahahaha!".

D1+2 weren't great plotwise, but it wasn't rammed down your throat continuously. A little segue of "this is what it is" in each town's start (1 town for D1), a bit of expansion on that as you finished off sections/quests/enemies, then back to the click-killing and slightly tedious exploration. Strangely enough, D3 is very similar to this (perhaps too similar to D2 in some facets of pacing), but feels like it misses the mark due to regular exposition, ingame muhahas and forced-tie-ins to previous character elements and the prequels. Where some well thought out music, effects and character design would have been fine, they actually managed to detract from that with ingame narrative and events. It's actually not terrible in terms of atmosphere if you ignore all voice acting, events and sound in general. But once you've seen it or heard it, you can't unsee unhear it. The false-parchment interludes were quite good though.

Blizzard wasted so much money on production in the game. It actually removes from the overall enjoyment of it. Try playing without speakers, event skips on and blinker your eyes to any ingame event or plot section and you'll find the general aesthetic isn't terrible. It's just that all the things they layered over the top of it made it worse and more laughable/ignorable.

I wasn't a huge fan of the levelling system either. I actually would have liked them to have wasted time on the nephilim story-line, giving character exposition on the upgraded abilities and a hand-wavy "nephilim-power-up!" explanation so I could form some bond to my toons, rather than the stuff we did get. It wouldn't have been hard.

Paired to cookie-cutter characters was a completely uninspired loot system. It's arguably now only as good as D2 (on release). Basically they fixed a broken system (AHs, only a few stats matter), gave a different grind reason, and pretended it was wonderful. D2LoD's system wasn't great, was grindy as hell, and got broken by OP'd runewords and the tiny stash system, but spending 30mins doing townscroll teleports at each levelup/entry to area will show the massive variety of loot that was available to even an early level character. D3 is still a step backwards in terms of variety, but with a slightly better backing system (stash size, reforges, etc). Why not have both?

So many screwed up parts of D3, even with the expansion. Most of them are fundamental to the game experience. Glad I sold it.

[Zangi]

So... I just popped in the game last night, with my level 60 wizard and level 54 monk.  Try 'expert' (3rd tier difficulty), got arse handed to me as monk.  Went in as wizard, nigh unkillable.  But then, I did make her tanky as hell way back when...
I also tried normal difficulty(1st tier) with new character for all of 10 minutes.  Things die and I don't even have to try.

Anyways, trawled into a pub game, in Act I, beat the butcher.  Got some orange weapon that I can actually use.   Holy heck, I think it is the first orange item I got too, not counting the cow level thing.

And yea...  the game could stop everyone from talking and I'd be cool with that.

[Toaster]

Jeeeeez. That sounds whackadoodle enough to be fun, and I've milked most of the enjoyment I could out of MedianXL. Will probably download it tonight then and give it a spin- I just might have to do so when my roommate's not in, because last I remember, every page in the manual or splash screen or what have you from the mod had vaguely pornographic fantasy people pictures.

Can it do multiplayer, by chance? I might try to rope my brother in and do a thing with Hamachi or somesuch if it's fun.

Yep, can do multiplayer over LAN or LAN-sims like Hamachi.

Ghouls for fools, kill the quills.
Hint that you may consider cheating: clear the moor but don't open chests. Crank players up to 127, then open the chests. Repeat to get your hands on good cube scrolls and/or a full minor celebrity poster (those drop as 1/3 pieces, get 3 matching pieces and cube them together for a poster. Cube 3 random pieces for a new random piece)

Heh, I gave this mod a shot last night.  It's quite the shock to have to kite the hell out of everything in the Blood Moor, but I'm the kind of stubborn jerk who can put up with that.


Now I just need to pick a class and stick with it- right now leaning Bowazon, but we'll see.