Time Capsule from PoE Closed Beta -- a classic PoE vs D3 thread circa 2012

Terminator 3 was a chick too.

X-Men 3? Dark Phoenix, the first chick nemesis of that series.

Alien 3? BALD SIGOURNEY! (Okay, that was a bit off-base.)

Coincidence? I THINK NOT.

...They gave Diablo a great feminine figure? Oh Lord...

So here's how I explain dual crossbows/stiletto heel backflipping: "It's magical."

Here's how I'd explain Lizardmen: "They came from Hell."

I think we can move past the lizardmen, can't we?

Pandas in WoW, lizardmen in Diablo...which sounds less credible, really? Of course a good writer can squeeze almost anything into their world. It just takes sufficient explanation. And our WSOD (Willing suspension of disbelief, not White Screen of Death) when it comes to rpgs and fantasy is all the more flexible.

As Avireyn said, it's when the suspended disbelief is confronted with real-life things like crossbows and...rockets that we start to call shenanigans.

I'm feeling a bit snarky, so this is my explanation for a female Diablo (with a Chaos Symbol in the background):

Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades got split in a freak accident. One clone played out the vents of StarCraft II.
The other was ripped into a new dimension, where she conquered the Chaos legions. In an attempt to get back to her universe, she accidentally uses the wrong ingredient (five gallons of orphan blood instead of five gallons of toddler tears - easy to make that mistake, let me tell you!) and lands in the world of Sanctuary.
Bam, instant Diablo!
With tits AND tail. Heh, the innuendos we could do... Heh. Inyour... erm, yes, enough with them silly allusions.

Anyhow, it's late here (almost 2 a.m), so I'll say thanks for the compliments, Charan, and read you later! I do try to be true to the Roman principle of "delectare and prodesse" ;-).

Personally, I'm not too offended by lizardmen being in the game. Diablo 1/2 had viper-type enemies so it is not entirely straying.

Though they don't hold a candle to my beloved goatmen.

...My word, that's funny. And strangely doable.

To educate and entertain? The French and the Germans also dug that one.

Hmm. here's mine...

Ars est celare artem.

:)

You guys are taking a rather poorly drawn piece of concept art way out of context here.
Diablo doesn't look bulky in D3, but he's nothing like that concept art.

Now who's missing the piss-taking? :P

But alright, back on track...

Let's discuss the music for a bit. Do we think the shift from an atmospheric, almost experimental score (D1) to something more grandiose but still setting-specific (D2) to what really does strike me as WoW-esque symphonic laziness in trope-repetition is a response to the changing tastes of gamers, the game-making climate or of Diablo's changes in and of themselves?

Everyone has their favourite Diablo themes. Tristram, Caves, Harem...they've been mentioned and acknowledged. I was thinking last night how I'll also never, ever forget that four beat drum played upon first entering Tristram's Cathedral. How can a mere four sounds set the tone for what would become years of compuslive, addicted gaming so easily?

I won't lie -- I really like the Diablo III overture. It has a desperate tone to it, a sort of world-threat to the crescendo of horns. As I recall, it also became the menu music, which is less laudible but definitely following a recent-ish trend by Blizzard to waste great music on a screen people won't look at for long. (Check out the main title/menu music for Starcraft II -- it goes for 7+ minutes and absolutely rocks).

But it still doesn't hold a candle to D1's music.

What happened?

I think it can be explained in terms of, "What 1998 Blizzard wanted to do in comparison with 2012 Blizzard."

Diablo III is more of an "epic" game than the others. The musical score goes to emphasize that the fate of mankind rests on your shoulders pretty much. Diablo 1 was not supposed to be an epic tale of adventures throughout lands. It was simply you and that damn Cathedral. The more you went beneath and found out, the more Cain showed knowledge, the more this entire plot began to unravel before you and it became evidently clear to what you were dealing with. What may have began as low-level demons and corrupted animals and undead had you go into the heart of Hell itself to slay the Devil.

The music in D1 pretty much made everything sound mysterious/cryptic. Actually, even how the way you'd move with simply a shield raised and sword poised made it seem that the darkest corners of these labyrinths could hide anything in them. A lot of the music tells a story in itself if you think about it:

Cathedral - Foreboding, ominous, yet strangely inviting. Nothing is clear to you, it is all up in mist and whatever is behind the doorway could be empty or could be your doom. The end of the track has a very rare sense of peace to it, as if deceiving the adventurer that the worst has passed you by.

Catacombs - Completely cryptic and the "screams" from children made it seem there was a lot more sinister work here. You begin to doubt if this is the end? What church could possibly extend beyond catacombs? The entire atmosphere is told in the music: cold, dark, and that each level you descend draws you closer to your demise.

Caves - This is where you realize that this is not a typical dungeon-crawling clean up. Now you're in these hellish caves, you don't have skeletons or zombies any more but facing off against higher ranks of demons. The electric guitar is pretty much a warning to not go any further, the slowed down and deepened voices play on your nerves but you're strangely compelled to go down further.

Hell - The only way to sum this up is: you're marching to an inevitable fate. The very end of this song has this unsettling loop which all but screams, "you're not going to leave here as you came in."

"

CharanJaydemyr wrote:

And don't ANY of you dare accuse me of being nitpicky. You might as well accuse the dirt of being old. I won't even be insulted by it.

I called you nitpicky. I call it like I see it. You fuss so much over minute details that you can't see the forest through the trees.

If you don't want others "piggy backing" on your posts, take it to private messages? If you're going to post a reply in a forum, expect others, even those you aren't directly addressing, to respond. We don't have to earn the ability to pitch in. It's a forum. Sorry, but your response just seemed... entitled.

Honestly, some of you are willing to accept Angels, Demons, humans who can raise the dead, command elements, call forth ancestors & mythical blue hammers of smashing to throwing exploding corpses and summoning giant church bells and frogs. But when someone shoots, in rapid succession, demon infused ammunition with demon infused cross bows, all of a sudden it infringes on "suspension of disbelief"?

Everyone here is aware you can build Demon Hunters with bows, right?