06-24-2012, 11:11 PM
This is not a direct reply to any of the above posters, but will contain some comments directed at some of the points some raised. I do strongly agree that the story telling in this was poor, but this is really just a big extension of the old 'Hack' game of going into a dungeon and slaughtering monsters till you get to the big bad one somewhere down below. Not really much to start with for making a story and for many players a story just got in the way of their wanting to go wail on the monsters.
Leah operating in denial of strange events and the presence of the angel/demons: could this be the influence of Diablo to keep her unsuspecting of what she truly harbors within herself? Still lame, but it can in part explain some of the situations and comments sprinkled around if Diablo is trying to keep his presence under wraps lest there be some way of having his contingency plan foiled before it could come to its desired point of conclusion.
Some of the in game lore that ViralSpiral has not gotten to is the nature and power of the Nephalem. While there was brief quest arc in act 1 that finished with Alaric pointing out that the player characters are in fact nephalem and not truly human as the bulk of the population of Sanctuary currently are. Zoltun Kulle in his dialogs states that he and the player are both nephalem and as such much better than the normal run of humans. the back story on the nephalem presented in act 4 points out that in fact the nephalem have the potential to be more powerful than their angel and demon progenitors. The worldstone had been altered to cause this nephalem ability to be suppressed but it apparently was not a total eradication of the ability as it seemed to re-emerge from time to time (player characters and Kulle for example). Tyraels' destroying of the worldstone is implied to have stopped that suppression of the nephalem and brought in an immanent re-emergence of the nephalem in force. As such I can see both Belial and Azmodan wanting to get them under their respective controls before the nephalem can learn to resist that influence.
For Belial the Lord of Lies having such a bad job fooling the player, I view that his power has primarily being able to tell bold faced lies and get away with it. Things like this:
Belial: "You Sir, look up at that green sky with pink stripes. Is it not impressive?"
Commoner: "Why yes my Lord, it is a very striking shade of green."
Nephalem player standing next to this thinking, "What kind of Narlant weed are these two smoking?"
Basically that Belial is used to being able to get away with almost any falsehood he wants as being accepted by those of weak minds. Such as "These are not the droids you are looking for."
What little I have seen presented as Angel and Demon battles did not impress me as much better than two sets of mobs heading at each other in head on beat downs. Any sort of rudimentary tactics could come off as genius if this is the standard of angelic-demonic warfare. As such the warfare developed by nephalem descendants could potentially be mush better since the lore implies that the nephalem were a cut above the demons and angels. And keep in mind that in act 3, the regular defenders were pretty much helpless against the forces that Azmodan was thorwing at them until the 'nephalem' player shows up and starts winning the day. Knowing are not knowing his plans were pretty much moot until that point.
So there are some possible explanations for some of the stuff in the story such as it is. But it is still pretty lame as a story goes.
Leah operating in denial of strange events and the presence of the angel/demons: could this be the influence of Diablo to keep her unsuspecting of what she truly harbors within herself? Still lame, but it can in part explain some of the situations and comments sprinkled around if Diablo is trying to keep his presence under wraps lest there be some way of having his contingency plan foiled before it could come to its desired point of conclusion.
Some of the in game lore that ViralSpiral has not gotten to is the nature and power of the Nephalem. While there was brief quest arc in act 1 that finished with Alaric pointing out that the player characters are in fact nephalem and not truly human as the bulk of the population of Sanctuary currently are. Zoltun Kulle in his dialogs states that he and the player are both nephalem and as such much better than the normal run of humans. the back story on the nephalem presented in act 4 points out that in fact the nephalem have the potential to be more powerful than their angel and demon progenitors. The worldstone had been altered to cause this nephalem ability to be suppressed but it apparently was not a total eradication of the ability as it seemed to re-emerge from time to time (player characters and Kulle for example). Tyraels' destroying of the worldstone is implied to have stopped that suppression of the nephalem and brought in an immanent re-emergence of the nephalem in force. As such I can see both Belial and Azmodan wanting to get them under their respective controls before the nephalem can learn to resist that influence.
For Belial the Lord of Lies having such a bad job fooling the player, I view that his power has primarily being able to tell bold faced lies and get away with it. Things like this:
Belial: "You Sir, look up at that green sky with pink stripes. Is it not impressive?"
Commoner: "Why yes my Lord, it is a very striking shade of green."
Nephalem player standing next to this thinking, "What kind of Narlant weed are these two smoking?"
Basically that Belial is used to being able to get away with almost any falsehood he wants as being accepted by those of weak minds. Such as "These are not the droids you are looking for."
What little I have seen presented as Angel and Demon battles did not impress me as much better than two sets of mobs heading at each other in head on beat downs. Any sort of rudimentary tactics could come off as genius if this is the standard of angelic-demonic warfare. As such the warfare developed by nephalem descendants could potentially be mush better since the lore implies that the nephalem were a cut above the demons and angels. And keep in mind that in act 3, the regular defenders were pretty much helpless against the forces that Azmodan was thorwing at them until the 'nephalem' player shows up and starts winning the day. Knowing are not knowing his plans were pretty much moot until that point.
So there are some possible explanations for some of the stuff in the story such as it is. But it is still pretty lame as a story goes.