So just what was Belial's plan there?

[ViralSpiral]

I mean, I don't get it. I'm sure shitty writing is ultimately the answer, but hey.

First, you're a demon lord of Hell. You don't really need more power. Secondly, power in the mortal realm can't be that big a deal.

The plan? To disguise/possess the ten year old child-emperor of the biggest city on the eastern continent. Which could possibly work except that he uses a fairly large vocabulary, discusses big political concepts, and astrally projects himself to the player to communicate. His excuse for this is he stole an amulet from a wizard he'd seen using it. I'm sure it came with operating instructions on the back, too, written for a ten year old who probably had no talent or training for magic. Herp a derp.

Then he offers to discover Belial's identity (and when he "finds" it, gives the player an evasive answer WHICH IS NOT AT ALL SUSPICIOUS) while acting like it's a big secret. Bro, you took over the town and started ordering hundreds of executions and demons started tormenting the local citizenry. There's no mystery here at all. We know it's you. Nevermind that your disguise/possession of the ten year old kid turned his skin greenish. I mean he's running this city into the ground so hard that the entire reason the hero is there is because rumours of how hard the city was being run into the ground reached the western continent.

This isn't the Lord of Lies vibe I'm getting here. This is more like "really bad Batman villain." I'd think if I were a demon lord of deception, I'd choose to be someone inconsequential and sow discord subtly, not "become major public figure and act in a manner utterly contradictory to that figure's interests." This is real zero-effort territory here, Blizzard.

This guy's plan is basically walking into the Microsoft board of directors meeting and acting like he belongs there while talking like a political science professor. YOU'RE NOT FOOLING ANYONE. YOU'RE NOT EVEN TRYING. Seriously, Disney villains put up more believable facades.

[FoxBat]

I mean, I don't get it. I'm sure shitty writing is ultimately the answer, but hey.

You did just answer your own question.

If you haven't gotten far enough yet, you'll see Azmodan is nearly as bad. Maybe this is why these guys are the "lesser" evils.

[ViralSpiral]

I don't think Azmodan is attempting to deceive or fool anyone. He seems pretty straightforward with his intentions. He's the Lord of Sin. I'm not expecting subtlety. I expect more out of my Lords of Deception than bad Disney villain material, though, especially from a being OLDER THAN THE MORTAL WORLD. I mean FFS come on.

[Mavfin]

The Diablo story has never been great literature. I mean, the original D1, kill stuff, go deeper, kill more stuff, a book on Heaven vs Hell, oh, look at this staff on level 15, oh, that means it's Diablo, kill him! Oh, I killed Diablo, so I'm going to take this soulstone that made Albrecht into Diablo, and stick it in MY head!

D2, it's the Wanderer, but, it's not hard to tell that he's bad news and/or put two and two together and realize he's the guy from D1 with Diablo's soulstone. Oh, he's going to get his brothers, but it looks like he knows where they are, even if we don't. Demons follow in his wake. Kill the big demons helping him. Kill his brother Mephisto. Kill him. Kill his other brother Baal.

Now, we're in D3, and the story, imo, has at least more twists in it, even if Belial is telegraphed as easily as the stuff in D2 was. I mean, w/o spoilers, did you really expect the falling star to be what it was? Also, the lore books that drop help flesh out what story there is.

The story's just a framework for the fighting, and that's all it has ever been. Just enough for the fighting and quests to flow, that's it. Still not sure what you were expecting, having played D1 and D2. There was *nothing* in either of those games that wasn't easy to figure out as far as story. This isn't Skyrim or NWN, after all.

Edit: Sad as it is, this story is still better than its forebears.

[Jester]

The story's just a framework for the fighting, and that's all it has ever been. Just enough for the fighting and quests to flow, that's it. Still not sure what you were expecting, having played D1 and D2. There was *nothing* in either of those games that wasn't easy to figure out as far as story.

There's a difference between "simple" and "bad."

D1's story was simple. Laz is corrupted by Diablo. He in turn corrupts Leoric, and kidnaps Albrecht to incarnate Diablo. Your job is to grind your way down and clean out the lot of them. When it's done, well, you didn't really expect a final victory against a lord of hell, did you?

Clean, easy. Not exactly James Joyce, but there's nothing nonsensical. You don't have to suspend your disbelief too much, once you've bought into the gothic setting. Everyone's actions are understandable, even the bit at the end - mortals to not win against Lovecraftian horrors.

D3's story is not simple, and worse, it's not self-contained. For act 1 to make any sense, you have to know and care who Deckard Cain is already. For the Tyrael reveal to have any impact at all, you have to know who he is too - one shiny cutscene does not make a character. Gabe and Tycho were right about Leah - her "skepticism" makes no sense in this world, at all.

Your journey makes no more sense than the characters. You are clearly *hunting* the prime evils, out of some weird sense of destiny. (Perhaps this is a bias from having played a wizard?) That makes the whole plot a gigantic MacGuffin - you do it because it is your "thing." Belial, as argued above, has no obvious motivation. I guess he just likes making mischief? Today Caldeum, tomorrow the world? Azmodan at least has a plan involving Arreat Summit, somehow? That was interesting only for the worldstone - a stale MacGuffin left over from LoD. (You never see, or in any way interact, with the worldstone in this game. So why Arreat? Other than "it was in the last game"?)

All of this is bad writing, in part because it isn't simple. There is no clear arc, no obvious quest to keep us invested in the twists and turns. The micro-writing is fine - characters sound right, they make sense in immediate context - but the big picture isn't very strong.

-Jester

[Mavfin]

D3's story is not simple, and worse, it's not self-contained. For act 1 to make any sense, you have to know and care who Deckard Cain is already. For the Tyrael reveal to have any impact at all, you have to know who he is too - one shiny cutscene does not make a character. Gabe and Tycho were right about Leah - her "skepticism" makes no sense in this world, at all.

-Jester

I'm not going to say anything about Leah, but, as far as Deckard Cain and Tyrael, that's why the Book of Cain was put up on the D3 site before release, so those who might actually be interested could see the backstory.

[Jester]

I'm not going to say anything about Leah, but, as far as Deckard Cain and Tyrael, that's why the Book of Cain was put up on the D3 site before release, so those who might actually be interested could see the backstory.

Backstory should be just that - backstory. Maybe it justifies the action, or sets it up, but it shouldn't be necessary. The basic arc should be strong from within the game, not needing to be propped up by the better writing of earlier eras.

To give an example, you might not know anything about Luke, Leia and Han at the beginning of Empire Strikes Back, but the movie gives you everything you need to have a satisfying experience without having seen A New Hope. Each character is interesting and comprehensible for what they say and do in the movie itself.

-Jester

[Lissa]

All of this is bad writing, in part because it isn't simple. There is no clear arc, no obvious quest to keep us invested in the twists and turns. The micro-writing is fine - characters sound right, they make sense in immediate context - but the big picture isn't very strong.

-Jester

And this is why I've been saying for a long time that Blizzard needs to pull Metzen off doing any stories. He might have been alright (not good, just meh) back in the days of SC 1, WC 2/3, but he's gotten worse and worse. As I've noted in another post, Act 1 was alright (again, not good, just meh), but the overall story dies a horrible death as you go further and further into the game.

[FoxBat]

I don't think Azmodan is attempting to deceive or fool anyone. He seems pretty straightforward with his intentions. He's the Lord of Sin. I'm not expecting subtlety.

When someone mounts a sneak attack, I do expect a bit more subtlety than him bragging about it. The internets is full of people belaboring how the master tactician of hell broadcasts each and every one of his plans to you in advance, so you know exactly what to do to thwart it.

As obvious as Belial was, he's at least cunning enough to not waste time taunting you every step of the way as Azmodan, Diablo, and Magda are. (Seriously, WHY did she show up telling me how she had captured cain, before she was done with him???)

[ViralSpiral]

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. (Coincidentally, the mention - that Westmarch would not send real soldiers to fight imaginary demon lords - makes NO GODDAMNED SENSE since Westmarch is practically in shouting distance of Tristram, and should know damned well that demon lords exist.) I mean...there's just so much terrible writing here. Leah's poorly written, I'm having my doubts about Adria, the characters pronounce Azmodan at least three different ways, Kulle was...ugh. No spoilers but he does nothing that is not predictable. 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.

No, I can't say I predicted what the falling star would be, but then that's probably because D2 dropped about five hints that indicated that particular character was going to turn evil or be corrupted or was an illusion or something, so it's hard to predict something that blatantly contradicts its own source material. That's the nature of my complaint...it's not that the plot or writing is simplistic - I expect that, it's an excuse plot after all - but it's just awful at every turn. Covetous Shen and his possible identity is more interesting and better written than every other part of the game I've seen so far. I'm also not quite sure how this MacGuffin happened. The original ones were angelic creations made specifically for their intended purpose, but then this random Horadrim guy went and made a better one all by himself. Which...I dunno. Maybe it's because I've watched Ghostbusters, but I don't see this thing working out very well at all.

I'd bitch about bringing back Cain just to kill him off, but the guy had to be over 100 or so anyhow. I guess it's better than a random offscreen death by old age. They could have at least let him live another half act or so though. I just...ugh. The master of lies who doesn't try lying hardly at all and the master tactician of broadcasting his every plan? How's Diablo going to top these two? Maybe he'll help me kill him slightly more directly?

Seriously, Blizzard, if you need a new writer, just let me know. I can do much better than this tripe.

[swirly]

As obvious as Belial was, he's at least cunning enough to not waste time taunting you every step of the way as Azmodan, Diablo, and Magda are. (Seriously, WHY did she show up telling me how she had captured cain, before she was done with him???)

Leah was with you in Wortham. Magda needed Cain to remake the sword for her. Luring his loved one into the trap as well seems like a reasonable way to add motivation for him to do as is wanted. Obviously it goes sideways with Leah's power, but taunting us about the capture so we would run in and be captured too seems reasonable to me. It all adds pressure on Cain to do as he is told.

[Jester]

Seriously, Blizzard, if you need a new writer, just let me know. I can do much better than this tripe.

In fairness to them, it's not an easy job. There isn't usually time in the development process to do the necessary work: write a plot, evaluate it, scrap it, modify it, scrap that, write it again, etc... since almost every worker and resource on the game has to know at least vaguely what the plot is, in order to develop the dialogue writing, the VA, the graphics, the music, the cinematics, and so on. The overarching plot has to be locked down fast.

Plus, you have to contend with multiple voices - it's rare that one writer just gets to sit down, write the plot, and has enough authority (literally!) to keep it intact. Committees, managers, publishers, everyone wants their say, and it's not always a productive process.

Metzen and D3, though... big name, long development cycle? This shouldn't have been as much of a problem as it is.

-Jester

[MMAgCh]

Prime Evils, and their assorted minions, should be seen, not heard. Even if the previous games did not necessarily have better plots, their plots certainly were presented better because the only time any major antagonist pretty much ever addressed the player character directly (or, outside of FMVs, said much of anything) was through a one-liner immediately prior to a fight. Other than that, all you did was brave the wake of destruction they left behind in a seemingly hopeless attempt to catch up to and stop them, which drove the point home better than any quantity of moustache-twirling blathering about the evildoer's latest nefarious scheme ever can. Less really is more sometimes.

D3, on the other hand, has its numerous villains talk at you incessantly, especially Fat Kitty and Big D, and it's simply tiresome. (Cydaea gets a pass because Claudia Black. ) That what they do have to say is peculiarly insipid merely adds insult to injury.

And no, "it's a Diablo game, who cares about the story!" really isn't an excuse as far as I'm concerned. Why should it be, especially when they've done a better job in the past?

[FoxBat]

Leah was with you in Wortham.

Nope, Leah had her "spider sense" tingle and unexplainedly went back to check on Cain. (Albeit that could easily be explained by Diablo's influence.) She says this right after you clear out the cultists and before you enter the chapel cellar. With Leah and Cain together she already had all she needed (although not clear how she knew Leah would head up alone first.) And there was no point in tricking the players into checking out an empty cellar if she wasn't concerned about their power messing up her plans.

[swirly]

Nope, Leah had her "spider sense" tingle and unexplainedly went back to check on Cain.

Ah yeah, I just remembered she was there. Didn't recall her running off on her own. Does make Magda's taunting a bit more silly.

Prime Evils, and their assorted minions, should be seen, not heard. Even if the previous games did not necessarily have better plots, their plots certainly were presented better because the only time any major antagonist pretty much ever addressed the player character directly (or, outside of FMVs, said much of anything) was through a one-liner immediately prior to a fight. Other than that, all you did was brave the wake of destruction they left behind in a seemingly hopeless attempt to catch up to and stop them, which drove the point home better than any quantity of moustache-twirling blathering about the evildoer's latest nefarious scheme ever can. Less really is more sometimes.

D3, on the other hand, has its numerous villains talk at you incessantly, especially Fat Kitty and Big D, and it's simply tiresome. (Cydaea gets a pass because Claudia Black. ) That what they do have to say is peculiarly insipid merely adds insult to injury.

I think this is a good point. In D2 the player wasn't really involved in the story. The story was the traveler's journey and the player was just following along behind. Sure the player had an effect by killing things, but there wasn't really any involvement beyond that.

In D3 they had the design goal to make the player a more interactive part of the story. So they have the bosses talking to and taunting the player more often. They traded story quality for interaction. I suspect the problem isn't actually even in the story itself nor in the desire for interaction. It is in the two not being grafted together well.

Looking over the complaints, I don't really see people complaining about the overarching story points. It's all the little interactive moments that make it bad. Seems to me that they had a decent story and a decent interactive play mechanic and decided to shoehorn the two together whereas what they really needed to do was build the story from the ground up with the interactivity in mind. Doing it separately and then combining ends up with bosses taunting and talking to the player for no real reason other than to make the player feel involved.

All that said, I do also think Leah is badly conceived. Ignoring the interactive stuff which has several things involving her I could complain about... the Diablo world is just too Demon/Angel infested for them to ask us to accept characters thinking they don't exist. I do think that is a core mistake with their story. They base it around a character not believing something that is blatantly obvious to the player and seems like it should be to everyone in that world.

Despite all of that, I'm pretty content with the story. I can accept all the interactive stuff as cheesy shallow fluff and enjoy it. Meanwhile I can enjoy the overarching Demon/Angel warring story separately. Thinking about it, I notice that mentally I have a divide. When I think of the story I really just think of the cinematics. If I try to delve into details I might pull some information from the game, but mostly I just view the cinematics as the story. All the interactive and in game stuff I somehow have mentally separated as play experience or just something not really story even though logically I know it is. So I end up being mostly content with the state of things because of that divide. Though I will also say that I feel like I've not rewatched the cinematics as much as I did the D2 ones which makes me suspect there is something lacking even there. The whole thing just isn't as gripping as I would like it to be. Again though, I would call myself content with it. Not happy with the story. Not sad with it either.

[ViralSpiral]

Now I haven't heard Diablo talking yet (I'm still in A3) but regarding the "less is more" - I think that's something in retrospect I can kind of get. I mean in D2, Diablo says to you directly one thing ever - "Not even death can save you from me." Which is kind of funny since he's probably the second easiest act boss after Mephisto. But admit it, the first time you heard that, you probably thought he was pretty hard core (and I probably would have found him scarier if I hadn't been forewarned about his bone cage ability.) Not to mention all the cinematic dialogue he had was serious and low key - and there wasn't very much of it.

Baal, on the other hand, opens up the expansion cinematic with a LARGE SIDE OF HAM AND CHEESE. I didn't respect Baal for five seconds after that. Which is a shame, because he came off as damned cool for the closing cinematic of D2. The only respect I could ever give Baal is back when his orange missile did something other than MP damage. Which retroactively made the opening cinema make no sense. Did the barbarian explode into ludicrous gibs because he ran out of mana? C'mon now. He's practically a joke character in my book now. I mean Duriel was a giant goddamned bug and I respect him way more than these two clowns calling themselves demon lords in this game.

Re: Interactivity - I like how walking by townsfolk causes them to comment on your recent doings and the like. That was a good touch. Turning demon lords into Bond villains? Less so.

[Ruvanal]

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.

[Elric of Grans]

As a rebuttal to the suggestion that the Nephalim singularly resists Belial's powers, we also see that your companions (who are human) are also able to see straight through him. He is just transparent, end of story. Belial's initial plans in Khejistan are apparently non-existent and make no sense. What he does after that, however, does make sense. He learns of the Black Soulstone and sends his minions off to destroy it. Failing that, he is also trying to use you to bring it to him so he can do it yourself. Taking a bet each way is pretty smart, really. Unfortunately, nobody is fooled by this because rather than trying for a `ah-ha, fooled you' twist, they made the whole thing obvious from the beginning. Cool concept, poor execution.

Azmodan would be 100% better if he never opened his mouth. The only flaw with him is his Bond villain approach. If you removed that, you would see someone who sent forth an army that would have effortlessly crushed the world had you not intervened. Adria also told you the secret to how to defeat him, furthering her own plans; had she not intervened, you would not have known of the Sin Hearts and would not have weakened Azmodan prior to facing him. This act is brilliant so long as you skip past Azmodan's mocking.

Diablo is also pathetic, purely because of the mocking. Why? He acts like a 10 year old child, not some terrifying being of ancient evil.

In my opinion, the biggest question is why the smallest and weakest enemies are in fact the most powerful. Seriously, what is harder to fight: Diablo, or a pack of Spiderling Champions? The lore even says Spiderlings are weak nuff-nuffs, but hey are *way* harder to fight than the adult spiders! Fast/Illusionist Spiderlings? The other two attributes are already irrelevant!

[ViralSpiral]

Azmodan was also SCADS easier than Belial to kill, which makes no sense for a few reasons. Belial actually pasted me twice. Azmodan...didn't live long enough for me to see more than one of his attacks. I had to have Frag explain to me that he's SUPPOSED to have more attacks when his health goes down, but as he died in about 20-30 seconds, I really didn't get a chance to find out. I guess the difference is the stage; Azmodan you can freely kite, and Belial does his "Rawr I'm Duriel" thing and you're trapped in a tiny little sardine can with him.

Speaking of which, the scene after that baffles me. "Let's destroy the soulstone!" "Wait, we need rituals for that!" Really? The only ritual that was needed to destroy THE FRICKIN' WORLDSTONE was fifteen seconds of prayer and Tyrael hitting it with his sword. And hey, look, Tyrael's standing RIGHT THERE. Oh, and he's got his sword, too. 2 + 2 = ?

*Facepalm.*

[Mirajj]

Speaking of which, the scene after that baffles me. "Let's destroy the soulstone!" "Wait, we need rituals for that!" Really? The only ritual that was needed to destroy THE FRICKIN' WORLDSTONE was fifteen seconds of prayer and Tyrael hitting it with his sword. And hey, look, Tyrael's standing RIGHT THERE. Oh, and he's got his sword, too. 2 + 2 = ?

*Facepalm.*

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.