So just what was Belial's plan there?

[Roland]

At that point, Tyrael's not the Aspect of Justice anymore. He's not even an angel anymore. He's a human with a powerful sword. But he probably doesn't have the power to destroy such an artifact with a swing.

Nope, he's still the Aspect of Justice. That's why the dead rose around New Tristram - their anguish at dying without justice raised them when Tyrael hit the ground. Also, he clearly still has his power with his sword as he uses it to clear a path in Act III and Act IV.

The story is absolute shit. There's really no denying it. It's terrible, terrible writing. All the same, I enjoyed the hell out of it my first time through. The only twist I missed was the Fallen Star was an angel (once I knew that I knew it was Tyrael, and every other "twist" I knew right away). Hell, half of us knew Leah was going to be Diablo months before the game even came out! If you choose not to get so hung up on the story it's a fun little ride. If you nitpick it to death you're only hurting yourself.

I already have a 50/50 shot on what the story's going to be for the expansion (one of two ideas, or perhaps both ). Doesn't mean I won't buy it for the story. Not all stories have to be great to be enjoyable.

[Archon_Wing]

Hmm, for some reason I loved the story. Sure it was stupid and cheesy, but Tyreal's awesomeness and that ending just made me feel like more than a decade of things just came together. It's also nice that they didn't go for the "herp derp, EVIL STILL LIVES, YOURE STILL FUCKED LOLZ". Well, it was nice for the previous 2 games, but for the last one to take a more upbeat tone was fine for me.

But I have a thing for hammy, cheesy things that make no sense for the name of cool. Diablo 3's script could have totally came out of 80s comedy-horror fantasy thing. :p And the fact that when it first came out that I was watching this with pubbies (maybe they just didn't know how to skip) that I was like a kid again at an amusement park watching actors perform some silly routines the please to easily amused. So, yea the story is crap, but I loved it anyways. :0

They really needed to put more effort into Leah though.

If act 4 had been longer and normal mode a bit harder, I think Diablo 3 would have been the best casual video game experience for around as far as I can remember recently. .As is, it was a bit disappointing, but I was happy regardless. The second best part of d3 was the story mode (best was AH)

[ViralSpiral]

You know one thing that would have redeemed the story was if Diablo claimed to manipulate Belial and Asmodan into dying with the intent of absorbing their power. (So far as expansions go, Kulle would have been a good option if he teleported off after his stunt, but as is I'm guessing it will involve the OTHER person to return from D1.)

[Elric of Grans]

Yet Tyrael can open the demon gate that you (a Nephalim) could not with merely a swing of said sword. It seems his sword has lost none of its angelic powers and Tyrael is still entirely capable of using it to its full potential. He is now mortal, but that seems to be the only difference.

[ViralSpiral]

Yeah, finished plot and Tyrael opens stuff with El'druin TWICE, so he's plainly capable of doing at least 90% of the stuff he could as an Angel. Sorry, but no part of this plot looks like 11 years of effort at all. Hell, most of it reeks of ten minutes of effort. I'm severely disappointed. The Belial/Diablo fights are full of cheese too. I'll say what others have said; this entire game is about the AH/RMAH and that's it.

[Athenau]

I still laugh every time she-ablo says "Terror"

"Terrooooor".

Lol.

[NuurAbSaal]

she-ablo

I can't believe that never came to my mind before. That's just beyond brilliant, or I am very easily amused. Or both.

Thumbs up, Athenau!

take care
Tarabulus

[MongoJerry]

Yeah, see, Maghda was...awful all around. And D1's backstory in the manual at least was actually good - if you don't remember, that's basically what all the books in A1 of D3 recount. The only part I didn't see mentioned was Leoric's paranoid war with Westmarch when he was going insane. Which should have been mentioned since Westmarch gets mentioned in A3.

It is mentioned a couple times in the lore books in the cathedral. The journal of the character who killed Leoric describes his men being sent off to die in a foolhardy war against Westmarch.

Yeah, I don't know what Azmodan is doing at Harrogath Arreat either, I'm guessing his job is to be a distraction for whatever Diablo is plotting.

You need to stop escaping through the cinematics. That one is explained directly. Azmodan heard about Belial's defeat and the black soulstone. His plan is to have the hordes of hell pour out into Sanctuary to search for it. Once he has it, his intention is to become the Prime Evil with himself at the head. He pours out of Arreat, because after the explosion of the Worldstone, the barriers separating hell from Sanctuary were weakest there. However, the only reason why our heros know for certain to go there is that Leah has a vision that Azmodan is going to make his move at Mount Arreat. Bastion's Keep is the main choke point separating the hordes of hell from the rest of Sanctuary. Basically, if it falls, the hordes of hell will be able to run rampant throughout the countryside of Sanctuary in their search for the black soulstone.

Azmodan also managed to surpise and overwhelm the defenders at Bastion's Keep. There are several mentions of this. For example, conversations between the character and the templar include mentions that "they could have defended this bridge" but that Azmodan's army struck so quickly, an adequate defence wasn't able to be mounted. Plus there are comments and journals describing about how the keep was considered a less dangerous assignment. The keep had been built as a defense against the Barbarians. With them effectively gone, the keep had not been adequately maintained or manned. (A conversation in town between two npc's I just caught included comments about how they wished they hadn't skipped out on wall repair duties all this time). The armies of hell came so quickly that they didn't even have time to raise the catapults or light the signal fires -- hence the quests to clear off the walls and help raise the catapults.

But, yeah, having Azmodan tell us that his armies have breached the walls below the keep was pretty stupid.

[Kevin]

she-ablo

I can't believe that never came to my mind before. That's just beyond brilliant, or I am very easily amused. Or both.

Thumbs up, Athenau!

take care
Tarabulus

I still prefer my Leablo (or Le-ablo if you prefer) that I've been using ever since I confirmed she became Diablo (I think http://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/thread-13868.html (in the defined end point section) was the first time I used it here). Yes I'm glory hounding, I admit it.

[MongoJerry]

I already have a 50/50 shot on what the story's going to be for the expansion (one of two ideas, or perhaps both ). Doesn't mean I won't buy it for the story. Not all stories have to be great to be enjoyable.

Adria's still out there, and characters and NPC's wonder at times what happened to Leah.

I still think Tyrael's playing the long con. He says regarding Zoltan Kuhl, (paraphrased) "Let that be a warning. You cannot fight the corruption of hell for too long without being corrupted yourself." He later says that he has been fighting hell for a long time. No way that he should be the aspect of Wisdom, though, considering how many times he gets fooled. That is, unless he was faking his surprise this whole time and what happened was his plan all along so that he can eventually take over -- hopefully with an army of nephalem at his side.

[NuurAbSaal]

Yes I'm glory hounding, I admit it.

Fine, you've earned yourself a:

Thumbs up, Gnollguy!



take care
Tarabulus

[NuurAbSaal]

But, yeah, having Azmodan tell us that his armies have breached the walls below the keep was pretty stupid.

I finally made the connection. Resident Evil 5. Bear with me.

A large number of the bosses and mini bosses in Diablo 3 constantly blabber on about how nothing you do is of any consequence, to clear evidence of the contrary. This is especially bad for Azmodan and Diablo. They have plans, you thwart them easily, they say LOL NO MATTER! and then you thwart their other plans or schemes. This was the single most painful fact about D3 for me, the childish (somebody mentioned this already) reactions and clear inability to comprehend their peril by the so called prime evils (and then THE prime evil). They are dumb as bread.

Now, the dialogue between Chris/Sheva and Wesker in RE5 was very similar in a way. Only in that game the "heroes" had apparently no idea Wesker could and would kick the shit out of them with ease (though the horrible writing forbade him from just outright killing the only threat to his plan), and merrily confronted him with yells of "It's over, Wesker!" over and over again. Followed by a beating, some mini boss battle and anther level of 'Where in World is Albert Wesker'. Dumb. As. Bread. This was hilarious at times in RE5 (especially with the unlocked custom costumes, gogo Disco Chris!), but, as stated, it annoyed the hell out of me in D3.

Thank god Buzzard put a ton of (imo) very well done Lore into the game to distract me from the main story. Shen (as has been mentioned) is brilliant, there are lots of references to interesting events and I especially enjoyed the Bestiary entries. So, there was definitely a lot of talent available for the game. It just didn't have anything to do with the main story. Meh.

take care
Tarabulus

[MongoJerry]

Shen (as has been mentioned) is brilliant, there are lots of references to interesting events and I especially enjoyed the Bestiary entries.

It's funny. When I first saw the achievement for listening to all of Shen's converstation pieces, I groaned, "Do I really have to listen to this guy?" He seemed so annoying at first. But after listening to everything, he's become one of my favorite side characters.

[NuurAbSaal]

Shen (as has been mentioned) is brilliant, there are lots of references to interesting events and I especially enjoyed the Bestiary entries.

It's funny. When I first saw the achievement for listening to all of Shen's converstation pieces, I groaned, "Do I really have to listen to this guy?" He seemed so annoying at first. But after listening to everything, he's become one of my favorite side characters.

Yeah, kind of makes you hope that he and Dirgest get an expansion all to themselves .

take care
Tarabulus

[Lissa]

Remember, you're dealing with the guy who's wrote all the storys for Blizzard for a long time and came up with the, now meme, "<insert whatever here> was merely a set back!"

[Archon_Wing]

Why did Azmodan tell us?

Possibilities:
1.) The part of Diablo in Leah
2.) He's an asshole
3.) Being the lord of sin, it has pride, which causes no.2 to make sense. :p
4.) His assault would have been perfect on paper, had it not been for those meddling kids nephalem as per main character powers.

[ViralSpiral]

Yeah, honestly I found the minion conversations and Shen much more interesting than the main plot. Haedrig also seems to be one of the few emotionally stable people anywhere. He has realistic reactions to everything and he's just some guy trying to do his job.

(More on Bad Writing Theatre: Having the souls of people you "wronged" show up to yell at you. This would be fine if the gameplay did not FORCE you to wrong them. If there were, for example, more than one way to resolve the quest with Haedrig's wife, then it'd be fine if she showed up later and chided you for picking the violent option. As is, all I thought was "guilt trips only work if I had a choice in the matter.")

I'm starting to feel like I'm writing that post Spiderdrake did for D2 about how Greiz was the only sane person in the game. Except this time it's Haedrig. Shen's kind of a nutbag. Cool, but a nutbag. Leah stupids her way through everything (and then blames the player herp a derp), none of the mercs are stable people, every angel is a moron except Auriel. Heck, I was depressed when someone else killed Imperius. I wanted to fry the bastard myself. I mean I seriously question how half these people made it to adulthood. Tyrael, as mentioned, is the most gullible git ever. Although he at least gets up and does something this game instead of constantly being too late/useless. I wonder if they go through a course to learn how to write the stupidest possible people so that they can make these plots work.

Also: Shen only starts as annoying because when you first find him, his talk dialogue triggers like EVERY TEN SECONDS, as opposed to the ten or fifteen minutes for your mercs. But I guess they wanted to make sure you heard all his conversations before you got him to town. Which makes me think Dirgest will indeed be part of an expansion (I expect two expansions, for the record - one to raise level cap to 80 and another for 99.)

[MongoJerry]

Thank god Buzzard put a ton of (imo) very well done Lore into the game to distract me from the main story. Shen (as has been mentioned) is brilliant, there are lots of references to interesting events and I especially enjoyed the Bestiary entries. So, there was definitely a lot of talent available for the game. It just didn't have anything to do with the main story. Meh.

Thinking about this some more, I think that this is key. It's obvious that they wanted to make the main story simple and linear so that everyone coming to the game could follow it and know exactly what to do at each stage. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that the writers wrote a more complicated main story and at each stage were told to simplify it so that even the most obtuse players could know what to do at each stage. (Go to the Keep Depths, dummy!).

However, it does seem like a lot of the side bits of lore are more interesting. We already talked about Shen, Haedrig, the mercenaries and the lore books and journals in Act 1 that gave a good view of the history of Tristram and the surrounding countryside. I also just started paying more attention to Mayor Holis, the guy you first see trying to run away in Act I. He shows up again in Act III as a merchant and again he asks for help with his attempts to run away. However, if you go to him after each quest completes, the conversation changes from attempts to run away with the main character needling him for being a coward to Holis saying that he's starting to be inspired by the main character's bravery to at the end showing him dead with a guard saying, "He had a chance to escape. I don't know why he stayed around."

I also liked the mythology of the creation of Sanctuary, the creation of the nephalem, the tuning of the worldstone to weaken the nephalem, and the vote by the angels on whether to destroy humanity or not. I don't know how much of that was already established in Diablo books and such, but since I only knew about the snippets of mythology that D2 showed (which wasn't much), this information was all new to me.

[ViralSpiral]

Well the creation of Sanctuary was established in slightly less detail in the D1 manual. Nephalem, and insight about how ANYTHING regarding how angels work is all new stuff. (Side note: I wonder what ever happened to Hadriel, that useless floaty angel guy from D2 who told you to go back and break the soulstone if you tried entering the Chaos Sanctuary without having done so for some bizarre reason. I don't recall anyone mentioning him in D3. Then again, they probably forgot he existed too.)

[MongoJerry]

Well the creation of Sanctuary was established in slightly less detail in the D1 manual. Nephalem, and insight about how ANYTHING regarding how angels work is all new stuff. (Side note: I wonder what ever happened to Hadriel, that useless floaty angel guy from D2 who told you to go back and break the soulstone if you tried entering the Chaos Sanctuary without having done so for some bizarre reason. I don't recall anyone mentioning him in D3. Then again, they probably forgot he existed too.)

Has anything ever explained where the gods are in all of this? Everything seems to be left to angels and demons and yet npc's keep talking about gods like Akarat. I assume it's one of those "the gods don't want to bother with the trivial matters of angels, demons, and humans" things, but I don't know for certain.