“Were there souls at all? Was there really a naked, invisible little version of himself hiding under his skin, so valuable to Heaven and Hell that each would send emissaries down to fight for it?” - Between Two Fires
Why preserve Sanctuary? Or care at all about the souls that inhabit it? The question plagues Diablo IV's two demigods/demons, Inarius and Lilith, while your goody two-shoes player-character gets caught up in their bullshit. The place is a dump: goatmen descend on anybody who strays more than 20 feet from a village; everyone has to choose between two or three cults; missing family members abound.
Inarius, in full divorced dad mode, wants to scrap his creation and jet off to Heaven to start over. Lilith has better and more interesting ideas for renovating the place. I found myself wishing for her to succeed (or, just once, to squash me like a little bug? Isn't that what the perverts at Blizzard designed her to do?)
By design, Lilith and my rogue had to be at odds: Diablo never provides much player agency outside of clicking enemies and adding numbers together. At least the clicking and adding is fun and re-playable, and the world design (not to mention cutscenes, voice acting, music) is high-budget maximalism: this is the first Diablo game where I failed to bounce off to more productive pursuits. I kept clicking. Or, eventually, kept enjoying a pretty nifty controller layout that sometimes tricked me into thinking I was playing an action game.
But do you actually have a soul when you play this game? Does Blizzard care what happens to your soul when you spend $100 on horse armor? Of course they don't. Your soul isn't what's valuable; it's your time. The live service stench of it all, like a bloated corpse just off screen, is best ignored...pinch your nose and enjoy and finish the campaign just before it, and you, explode into rotten gas.
Why preserve Sanctuary? Or care at all about the souls that inhabit it? The question plagues Diablo IV's two demigods/demons, Inarius and Lilith, while your goody two-shoes player-character gets caught up in their bullshit. The place is a dump: goatmen descend on anybody who strays more than 20 feet from a village; everyone has to choose between two or three cults; missing family members abound.
Inarius, in full divorced dad mode, wants to scrap his creation and jet off to Heaven to start over. Lilith has better and more interesting ideas for renovating the place. I found myself wishing for her to succeed (or, just once, to squash me like a little bug? Isn't that what the perverts at Blizzard designed her to do?)
By design, Lilith and my rogue had to be at odds: Diablo never provides much player agency outside of clicking enemies and adding numbers together. At least the clicking and adding is fun and re-playable, and the world design (not to mention cutscenes, voice acting, music) is high-budget maximalism: this is the first Diablo game where I failed to bounce off to more productive pursuits. I kept clicking. Or, eventually, kept enjoying a pretty nifty controller layout that sometimes tricked me into thinking I was playing an action game.
But do you actually have a soul when you play this game? Does Blizzard care what happens to your soul when you spend $100 on horse armor? Of course they don't. Your soul isn't what's valuable; it's your time. The live service stench of it all, like a bloated corpse just off screen, is best ignored...pinch your nose and enjoy and finish the campaign just before it, and you, explode into rotten gas.