Diablo IV

[Mazisky]

I don't know why people expect good writing from USA gaming companies.

Average writer in US gaming companies is a pink haired teenager with no experience.

 

[Zeriel]

In any case, a fat dude, no matter how strong fat he appears, doesn't exactly scream "I live in nature" to me, unless he's about to go into hibernation instead of gearing up to smash some demonic hoe. A druid should be whipcord and rawhide, not jello over triple marbled steak.

Not sure why someone living in nature wouldn't have some fat on him?

Druid design was great. I'm tired of the sterotypical lean, buff dude. While some men do indeed look like that, a ton of men carry fat on them and it's not due to a lack of discipline, it's due to body composition. In general, having some fat on you aids in your overall performance.

What? Someone living in nature would be more likely to be lean. Have you seen people who subsist entirely on hunting & wilding? Not exactly portly types. Hell, even just people who work nonstop all day without gorging themselves or having a modern diet (especially alcohol) tend to be rangy.

If you wanna lose weight, best way is to work a job or live a life where you are constantly doing something. Just so long as you don't bust your back and joints in the process, heh.

 

[Lyric Suite]

To be fair, this was a series where writing was always bottom of the barrel mediocrity.

D1 had decent writing, especially the tomes in dungeons voiced by the narrator.

Yeah D1 was more than acceptable. D2 was really lame though. Cinematics were decent, but the in game writing was just reddit levels of inanity. I get it's an action game and the writing doesn't matter, but some of the NPC dialogue was just bland beyond belief.

 

[Yosharian]

In any case, a fat dude, no matter how strong fat he appears, doesn't exactly scream "I live in nature" to me, unless he's about to go into hibernation instead of gearing up to smash some demonic hoe. A druid should be whipcord and rawhide, not jello over triple marbled steak.

Not sure why someone living in nature wouldn't have some fat on him?

Druid design was great. I'm tired of the sterotypical lean, buff dude. While some men do indeed look like that, a ton of men carry fat on them and it's not due to a lack of discipline, it's due to body composition. In general, having some fat on you aids in your overall performance.

What? Someone living in nature would be more likely to be lean. Have you seen people who subsist entirely on hunting & wilding? Not exactly portly types. Hell, even just people who work nonstop all day without gorging themselves or having a modern diet (especially alcohol) tend to be rangy.

If you wanna lose weight, best way is to work a job or live a life where you are constantly doing something. Just so long as you don't bust your back and joints in the process, heh.

I think sometimes people forget how difficult it is to put on tons of fat when you don't have access to shitloads of junk food at your local supermarket

The only fat cunts in old times were rich people who got others to feed them all the fucking time

 

[Storyfag]

Exactly. Somehow everyone remembers DI and II, but just about no one can name a single memorable line/moment from DIII off the top of their head. Curious.

The sole memorable DIII moment is their introduction of the Butcher. Hells, how I wish I could forget that horrendous cringe.

 

[Zeriel]

In any case, a fat dude, no matter how strong fat he appears, doesn't exactly scream "I live in nature" to me, unless he's about to go into hibernation instead of gearing up to smash some demonic hoe. A druid should be whipcord and rawhide, not jello over triple marbled steak.

Not sure why someone living in nature wouldn't have some fat on him?

Druid design was great. I'm tired of the sterotypical lean, buff dude. While some men do indeed look like that, a ton of men carry fat on them and it's not due to a lack of discipline, it's due to body composition. In general, having some fat on you aids in your overall performance.

What? Someone living in nature would be more likely to be lean. Have you seen people who subsist entirely on hunting & wilding? Not exactly portly types. Hell, even just people who work nonstop all day without gorging themselves or having a modern diet (especially alcohol) tend to be rangy.

If you wanna lose weight, best way is to work a job or live a life where you are constantly doing something. Just so long as you don't bust your back and joints in the process, heh.

I think sometimes people forget how difficult it is to put on tons of fat when you don't have access to shitloads of junk food at your local supermarket

The only fat cunts in old times were rich people who got others to feed them all the fucking time

In my personal opinion it's the empty calories. Like alcohol is a BIG one. Just having a few drinks after work is equivelant to having multiple extra meals if you look at the calorie intake. It's easy for a person to know that eating a bunch of extra candy/snacks after meals will put on the weight, but we don't think of all the drinks the same way, and it's a lot easier to knock down some soda or beer & shots with a full stomach.

So yeah, there's the old, OLD stereotype of fat drunks because... well, drinking alcohol does make you fat.

 

[luj1]

But for me nothing can top "Ah, fresh MEAT!".

This is iconic across different games even such as Wc3 and Dota

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

I think sometimes people forget how difficult it is to put on tons of fat when you don't have access to shitloads of junk food at your local supermarket

The only fat cunts in old times were rich people who got others to feed them all the fucking time

Well, the Barbs are equally "unrealistic" in that regard, the difference being that the Barb physique actually fulfils some people's fantasies and fits right into the pop culture image of the class established by Frazetta and Arnie, among others.

The Druid fulfils the fantasy of a meaningless portion of the general audience and doesn't have any pop cultural grounding.

 

[ArchAngel]

I do not know what you people are talking about, Druid has just big bones

Spoiler

 

[Zeriel]

I think sometimes people forget how difficult it is to put on tons of fat when you don't have access to shitloads of junk food at your local supermarket

The only fat cunts in old times were rich people who got others to feed them all the fucking time

Well, the Barbs are equally "unrealistic" in that regard, the difference being that the Barb physique actually fulfils some people's fantasies and fits right into the pop culture image of the class established by Frazetta and Arnie, among others.

The Druid fulfils the fantasy of a meaningless portion of the general audience and doesn't have any pop cultural grounding.

I think the issue may be it conflicting with the druid archetype. There IS a thing where "shifters" as a general rule are big and musculey. But druids also have as the package deal a paganistic "wise man" aspect to them, which has more of a lean-bodied aesthetic. If they wanted to go this route they probably should have just made it purely a shifter rather than both.

Although I think the old D2 style fits more, since another thing you often see with shifters in fiction is their normal form being way less impressive compared to the shifting, it's a form of contrast. If you're already a big bear of a man without shifting, is it really that special, etc?

 

[Grunker]

I enjoyed Diablo 2's story more than it probably deserves, and Marius was the main reason. It might be an old tool to ground your earthshattering fantasy events by shackling them all to a ragged old man, but by God the contrast between that and D3's marvel superhero universe is stark.

You gotta have Marius, because nothing of what happens in the game is horrific if he's not there to be horrified by it.

That's why D4's direction seems promising. The drunken partying with slightly off-key violin into you getting slooooooooooooowly (very slowly - surprising patience in the cinematic direction for a modern aRPG) hauled off to your doom on an old rusty cart by the very people you just saved and had merriment with stands out as a key memory, and anyone praising D1 and D2 writing over that scene is clearly playing favourites. Had that scene been in those games, we would all have been praising its atmospheric horror to the high heavens in this thread.

All D4's quest generally involves this theme; that the questgiver is lying to you about his motives and is actually a greedy bastard exploiting the other NPCs involved in the quest, and sometimes they actually make that fact cheekily apparant from the start. The one quest about the dude who gets flayed alive by a succubus and loves it is pretty cool, and there were lots of moments I actually remember despite only playing the beta once.

In contrast, I literally couldn't remember basic details like main character names after playing D3. It's funny that apparantly the old dude with the cool D4 intro, Lorath, is a character from Diablo 3 - I had no fucking clue despite playing Reaper of Souls recently.

HOWEVER, it's not all sunshine and roses. Chiefly, the characters kind of blend together despite them wanting Lorath to be that memorable main character besides the hero - the new Deckard Cain if you will - I doubt that will succeed despite the voice actor trying very hard. He's just a grumpy old man so far. While Vigo's story was tragic, he's certainly not a character I found myself forming a connection too. And the most concerning is, of course, Neyrelle, who is a better version of Leah, yes, but she's still Leah. A cheeky scholar-type go-getter has nothing to do in the Diablo universe. It reeks of Marvel and Whedon, and her character undermines the horror they try to instill with her mother's fall.

In a more "we'll have to see"-perspective, Lilith and Inarius' dynamic could both play out well or be exactly the type of modern Blizz Hollywood tripe we know them for. There are signs pointing in both directions currently.

So yeah, whereas I am extremely underwhelmed by the gameplay thus far, I am cautiously optimistic about world and story. I think they did a fantastic job with the aesthetic presentation, and atmosphere seems promising as well, even if there are concerns.

 

[ArchAngel]

I think sometimes people forget how difficult it is to put on tons of fat when you don't have access to shitloads of junk food at your local supermarket

The only fat cunts in old times were rich people who got others to feed them all the fucking time

Well, the Barbs are equally "unrealistic" in that regard, the difference being that the Barb physique actually fulfils some people's fantasies and fits right into the pop culture image of the class established by Frazetta and Arnie, among others.

The Druid fulfils the fantasy of a meaningless portion of the general audience and doesn't have any pop cultural grounding.

I think the issue may be it conflicting with the druid archetype. There IS a thing where "shifters" as a general rule are big and musculey. But druids also have as the package deal a paganistic "wise man" aspect to them, which has more of a lean-bodied aesthetic. If they wanted to go this route they probably should have just made it purely a shifter rather than both.

Although I think the old D2 style fits more, since another thing you often see with shifters in fiction is their normal form being way less impressive compared to the shifting, it's a form of contrast. If you're already a big bear of a man without shifting, is it really that special, etc?

I think it is just a matter of showing players at glance which characters are melee/tanking focused and which ones are not. When you are doing 4 man or 12 man event is helps that you tell fast and at a glance.

 

[ArchAngel]

I enjoyed Diablo 2's story more than it probably deserves, and Marius was the main reason. It might be an old tool to ground your earthshattering fantasy events by shackling them all to a ragged old man, but by God the contrast between that and D3's marvel superhero universe is stark.

You gotta have Marius, because nothing of what happens in the game is horrific if he's not there to be horrified by it.

That's why D4's direction seems promising. The drunken partying with slightly off-key violin into you getting slooooooooooooowly (very slowly - surprising patience in the cinematic direction for a modern aRPG) to your doom by the people you just saved stands out as a key memory, and anyone praising D1 and D2 writing over that scene is clearly playing favourites.

All D4's quest generally involves this theme; that the questgiver is lying to you about his motives and is actually a greedy bastard exploiting the other NPCs involved in the quest, and sometimes they actually make that fact cheekily apparant from the start. The one quest about the dude who gets flayed alive by a succubus and loves it is pretty cool, and there were lots of moments I actually remember despite only playing the beta once.

In contrast, I literally couldn't remember basic details like main character names after playing D3. It's funny that apparantly the old dude with the cool D4 intro, Lorath, is a character from Diablo 3 - I had no fucking clue despite playing Reaper of Souls recently.

HOWEVER, it's not all sunshine and roses. Chiefly, the characters kind of blend together despite them wanting Lorath to be that memorable main character besides the hero - the new Deckard Kain if you will - I doubt that will succeed. He's just a grumpy old man so far. While Vigo's story was tragic, he's certainly not a character I found myself forming a connection too. And the most concerning is, of course, Neyrelle, who is a better version of Leah, yes, but she's still Leah. A cheeky scholar-type go-getter has nothing to do in the Diablo universe. It reeks of Marvel and Whedon, and her characters undermines the horror they try to instill with her mother's fall.

So yeah, whereas I am extremely underwhelmed by the gameplay thus far, I am cautiously optimistic about world and story. I think they did a fantastic job with the aesthetic presentation, and atmosphere seems promising as well, even if there are concerns.

One of the better characters there is a side quest one. A female priest that does exorcisms where faith as a whole has given up and just burns possessed at the stake. Whole thing is told through multiple side quests and I think it is done well as it links with other side characters that gave you completely different quests in different part of the map.

 

[ArchAngel]

Biggest disappointments are Strongholds because once you free them there is nothing going on there, they are just another place to sell loot if you are close by.. and at best they unlock access to another dungeon.

 

[Fedora Master]

There's tons of stuff like that in D3, from the random events to the huge amount of background dialogue.

And none of it is memorable.

 

[Reinhardt]

don't remember any act bosses in d3.

well, i don't remember act 1 boss in d4 either. some random flying thingy, i guess?

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

don't remember any act bosses in d3.

You don't remember when that one girl turned into Diablo because reasons?

 

[Reinhardt]

don't remember any act bosses in d3.

You don't remember when that one girl turned into Diablo because reasons?

she became act boss?

 

[v1c70r14]

For crying out loud, you people are falling for one of the oldest game journalist follys in the book, equating game writing with novel writing.

You're right that the two aren't the same but what you are doing instead is calling the production writing. When people say they remember the Butcher's line it's not because it was stellar writing, but because of the voice acting, the surrounding ambience, the level and graphics design. That he comes rushing out from a room full with corpses, that the line was delivered well enough and all else that surrounded that line. You even say so in your post.

Combining music, visuals, text, and gameplay into one coherent package - that's what video game narrative building is all about

Meaning we are not actually talking about writing anymore. Video game writing is comparable to any other writing when it stands by itself, and better prose can improve a game if the surrounding production facilitates that. Diablo did not have good writing but it would not have been improved much by the developers employing a proper wordsmith anyway.

 

[Zeriel]

Video game writing is comparable to any other writing when it stands by itself, and better prose can improve a game if the surrounding production facilitates that. Diablo did not have good writing but it would not have been improved much by the developers employing a proper wordsmith anyway.

No, no it is not. A writer only has text to work with. A game writer has a plethora of other tools and caveats to consider. Those mentioned above and also the game's pacing and genre. Hell, even the font plays a part (another thing DIV fails at). So for an ARPG like Diablo you have to be as succinct as possible so as not to break up the gameplay loop for too long.

You don't need vivid descriptions when you have visuals. You don't need to build up ephemeral atmosphere when you have a kickass soundtrack getting players in the mood. You need to figure out how to convey your idea in the least amount of words and still have it be impactful.

When instead of all that you try to refine your prose, and you're not one of like 3 people in the industry, you get Pillars of Eternity and we all know how that turned out.

Eh, it all works in synergy. Personally I find even games with "modern" production values and dazzling visuals are better when text is employed in some way. For example if you have an inventory system, an item is FAR more evocative if it has a brief blurb about it than if it is just an image of that item, regardless of how good the image is.

 

[Reinhardt]

Video game writing is comparable to any other writing when it stands by itself, and better prose can improve a game if the surrounding production facilitates that. Diablo did not have good writing but it would not have been improved much by the developers employing a proper wordsmith anyway.

No, no it is not. A writer only has text to work with. A game writer has a plethora of other tools and caveats to consider. Those mentioned above and also the game's pacing and genre. Hell, even the font plays a part (another thing DIV fails at). So for an ARPG like Diablo you have to be as succinct as possible so as not to break up the gameplay loop for too long.

You don't need vivid descriptions when you have visuals. You don't need to build up ephemeral atmosphere when you have a kickass soundtrack getting players in the mood. You need to figure out how to convey your idea in the least amount of words and still have it be impactful.

When instead of all that you try to refine your prose, and you're not one of like 3 people in the industry, you get Pillars of Eternity and we all know how that turned out.

Eh, it all works in synergy. Personally I find even games with "modern" production values and dazzling visuals are better when text is employed in some way. For example if you have an inventory system, an item is FAR more evocative if it has a brief blurb about it than if it is just an image of that item, regardless of how good the image is.

doesn't matter when ring and full plate are same size in your inventory.

 

[Arbiter]

doesn't matter when ring and full plate are same size in your inventory.

Truth be told, this is how it worked in Infinity Engine games too.

 

[ArchAngel]

doesn't matter when ring and full plate are same size in your inventory.

Truth be told, this is how it worked in Infinity Engine games too.

Not the same. It was a technical limitation at that time, they also fixed it by introducing gems bags and such.
Diablo 4 is pure design decision.

 

[Arbiter]

doesn't matter when ring and full plate are same size in your inventory.

Truth be told, this is how it worked in Infinity Engine games too.

Not the same. It was a technical limitation at that time, they also fixed it by introducing gems bags and such.
Diablo 4 is pure design decision.

It wasn't a technical limitation, Diablo 1 with items of different sizes was released 2 years before BG1, the first IE game, and Tetris was released in mid 80s.

 

[Reinhardt]

doesn't matter when ring and full plate are same size in your inventory.

Truth be told, this is how it worked in Infinity Engine games too.

Not the same. It was a technical limitation at that time, they also fixed it by introducing gems bags and such.
Diablo 4 is pure design decision.

It wasn't a technical limitation, Diablo 1 with items of different sizes was released 2 years before BG1, the first IE game, and Tetris was released in mid 80s.

i prefer comparission with m&m, for example. at least it has party and you manage few characters inventories.