Currently downloading the game to my phone. I have never played this particular Diablo, but I have played the first 3 very much. I’m going into this with open eyes and an optimistic mind.
Now I have no intention of purchasing anything. My goal is to see how far I can get into this game before it either stuck behind a pay wall or it becomes an insurmountable grind.
Those that have played it, how far into it did you get before you put it down?
I still haven’t touched it. Diablo III was my last Diablo game. I played it on release and was shocked when the game just… stopped. There wasn’t an end, but a “to be continued,” hinting at future DLC to continue the story. It was suggested I continue playing from the start again to level my character further. But… why? I didn’t play for a repetitive grind; I played for an interesting story. Which was incomplete and unsatisfying.
I never went back to Diablo III to see if the story was ever resolved. I’m avoiding Diablo IV for fear it’s not going to be a complete game either. And Diablo Immortal can just fuck off. Do keep us informed how far you get before you hit a paywall, @OP.
I can’t tell you how much I played the original Diablo in my childhood, over dial-up Internet with my friends. And I still remember how revolutionary Diablo II was with its in-game weather. No other game had that at the time! It’s sad to see how far a franchise can fall in the wrong hands.
To be fair, Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 both kind of ended on that ‘To Be Continued’ note, too.
Diablo 1’s story was centralized around “Kid gets Diablo’s soulstone jammed in his forehead, becomes corrupted by it, turns into manifestation of Diablo”, and the hero ends the game by jamming Diablo’s soulstone into his forehead, with an ominous “I can feel him trying to claw his way up from the dark recesses of my soul” line.
Diablo 2 ended with the revelation that Marius had just given Baal his own soulstone, thinking he was Tyrael. Baal then kills Marius and walks away with it.
Not that Diablo games haven’t gone down the shitter, I agree with you there, but calling out D3 for ending on a cliffhanger without acknowledging that they’ve been doing that since the series’ inception isn’t quite fair.
I always saw Diablo as just having a downer ending. I didn’t see it as a “to be continued…” ending, but more of a “someone needs to control this soulstone, might as well be me.” And now that I think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever finished Diablo II. But your description sounds like it actually ended, even if it had a dark ending.
Regardless, Diablo III didn’t even have an ending back when I first played it. I got to a final room and there was just a character there saying something like they were preparing for a confrontation or something… but then I couldn’t advance or anything. I looked it up online and found out the next part of the story would be released in DLC sometime later. So I didn’t even get to finish the game. It wasn’t so much a cliffhanger as an incomplete game. And that’s where my frustration comes from.
I can see your point with regards to Diablo 1, even if it was pretty laughable at the time - it was clear I think to everyone who played the game that Diablo had just gotten a stronger host.
Diablo II’s ending was a direct lead-in to the expansion, which featured the player going after Baal. It didn’t literally say “To Be Continued…” at the end, but it was obviously communicating that the story wasn’t over. In fact, it was a very obvious analogue to the game’s intro cinematic, which ended with basically the same visuals - a cloaked figure, whom the viewer knew to be a Prime Evil, walking out of a burning building. Diablo 2 Act IV Ending
In fact, I’d say Diablo 2’s ending was much more of a To Be Continued than Diablo 3’s, which concluded with Tyrael being accepted back into Heaven and offering a hopeful speech. Diablo 3’s was, in my opinion, the closest to an actual conclusion of any of the 3 games. What about it did you not find conclusive? Diablo 3 Ending Cinematic
I didn’t play Diablo 3 on release, but rather a year or so later, after they removed the RMT shop, so it’s possible that this ending wasn’t in the game at the time, but this wasn’t DLC - this was the actual ending of the game, the DLC (Reaper of Souls expansion) came after this entirely.
Edit: This made me really curious so I went and dug a little bit; I can’t find any mention of the final boss / ending not being in the game on launch. The 1.04 patch notes include a mention of re-tuning things related to the Diablo fight, which was the final encounter of the game, so it was definitely in the game by that point, and none of the preceding patch notes mention adding it. Are you sure you weren’t playing during an early access / pre-launch stress test or something?
I’ve never seen that Diablo III ending cinematic before. It’s been a very long time since I played it, but I remember getting to an area that might’ve been heaven (or a gateway to it?). But besides interacting with a couple people there, I couldn’t go any further. I did not have a fight with Diablo in my playthrough.
Maybe my game glitched out, then. I read online about upcoming content and just assumed the rest of the story would come in later DLCs. I wasn’t part of the beta testing, so it wasn’t that. I guess I might need to play through it again and see what happens in the later story.
That’s cool - Diablo 3 ended (in my opinion) on a pretty high note, gameplay-wise, so if you enjoy the series in general, it’d be a shame to miss it. The expansion was a bit weaker (again in my opinion), but still worth playing.