Cheesy? Trite and cliche - sure. Juvenile - in the sense - aimed at male teenage audience? Certainly. But cheesy - exhibiting bad design and poor quality (with or without the purpose - like Quentin Tarantion movies making a valid, interesting statement through dissonances in the story)? Where? Conversations were fine, character presentation was ok, backstory was sufficient, the themes were consistent, and the simple plot supported all the events in believeable fashion. I call it good quality and excelent design for a story in a hack'n' slash rogue-like game.
D3 lacks all of the abovesaid elements and strikes as very cheesy. I mean, if you facepalm each time the characters opens his mouth, there certainly must be something bad about it.
Again, I thnk that conversations were just as bad in diablo 1.
I beg to disagree. They were simple but made sense and added a sense of weight to your quest. Now they are far worse. To put it bluntly - they are stupid. Everyon's a moron now.
If anything conversations should get better, not mind-boggingly worse.
As for backstory, I guess they were sufficient, because there barely was any?
Actually there was quite a lot of backstory. Didn't read the manual?
They were mostly mercharnts conveniently standing atop the dungeon of hell(tm) making phat l00t by selling stuff to you.
Legacy of roguelikes. Still, what they said added info and fleshed out this minimalistic world you were in, enhancing the atmosphere.
I think 99% of the problem with diablo 3, lies in its need for exposition. Were diablo 1 equally exposition-heavy, I think its flaws would be just as apparrent.
Perhaps, which doesn't change the fact that because there was little exposition, there were no flaws. The game got the balance exactly right. Simple story, told using simple devices to accomplish simple effect -sublime depiction of horror-gothic theme.
As for consistent themes, might I remind you of a certain silly demon standing close to one of the stairs down wanting tristram's tavern's banner? Sure, it was a little bit funny, but remarkably inconsistent with the dark and serious horror-like theme set by the game.
Point scored. Indeed there was a quest like that. But even then, the quest-giver was a goddamn goblin acting in-character. It didn't strike as something stupid or contrived - merely funny, characteristic to the fantasy-roguelike genre. In Diablo 1 and 2, none of the main characters act or say something completely retarded, as opposed to entire cast of D3 - including demons - which destroys whatever themes or stories it wanted to tell.
To be clear - I am not holding D1 as a model of how to write a story. But on its minimalistic level it worked very well. It wasn't stupid. You didn't feel you were losing IQ listening to a conversation. It would have worked as well in D3 even on a larger scak, had they had someone who can actually write dialogues, characters and stuck to the general tone of the predecessors, instead of Power Rangers. I bet this show was the main inspiration for the devs.
Now if you want MAJOR decline in story telling over the years, look at the games Chris Avellone has been involved in
Why?
Well, just to name one example. The story and the parter banter in NWN2: OC. And looking at his games it is by no means a laundry list of outstanding games story-wise after PS:T (or before that, for that matter).
Well, there's Icewind Dale 2, NWN2
otB and Soz, Kotor 2, Alpha Protocol. Gameplay was uneven in those buy they are all good storyfaggy games. Sure there are worse than PS:T but it sometimes happens that you manage to create standard you will strive to repeat your whole life.
