Diablo 3 and Reaper of Souls Critique 

"No bro those hell gates meant nothing to me - I swear - fuck you" This video is a masterpiece.

"I mean his wife is dead shouldn't he at least be a little happy?" I burst out laughing for a solid minute there, I did not see that coming.

Harley Quinn cosplay? Disney villain? Saturday morning cartoons? I have to vehemently disagree, the story is the finest fanmade Power Rangers episode I've seen!

When Mr. Anderson meets a bad story, you're in for a good ride

"Throwing around the n-word like a lil' Wayne song" thanks, now my laptop is covered in dr. pepper

"I think a lot about Blizzard games and because of Hearthstone, I dread the changes that may soon take hold of the company," he said this in 2015 and Blizzard just announced Diablo Immortal. Such foresight!

Man the story analysis section is so funny - "Then, in the second biggest twist in all of gaming..."

"The sales numbers are above 30 million. To put that in perspective: if they sold 29 million, it would still be one more million than that." Oh, Joseph. I come for the incredible analysis, but stay for your humor. (And the incredible analysis.) Late congrats on 200k subs, from a longtime fan.

I know this is almost 5 years late, but the Barbarian was originally intended to be more than just a blank, boring canvas. Originally the Barbarian was supposed to be the Barbarian you could play as in Diablo II who, after the destruction of Mt. Arreat, wondered the wastes killing demons and what not for the next 20 years until he notices a meteor streaking across the sky towards Tristram, at which point he felt his destiny renewed and set out to face his old foes. He even had unique dialogue between returning characters such as Cain and that they talked like they already knew each other, and spoke to each other like old friends.

15:49 "He destroys a bridge leading to his throne and inflicts the great, punishing inconvenience of all of 10 seconds on the player." i mean that's the most evil thing i can think of

"Why is he attacking his own city? No, why is he attacking his own city?" had me in stitches XD

1:07:10 "I wonder sometimes if a game might come along one day that cuts out the combat completely, where you watch your character fight[...]" Man I cant believe Joe predicted Vampire Survivors in 2015.

I really enjoyed your analysis of Diablo 3. Playing through with friends, the plot was a frequent target of mockery. We noticed as well that, from Act III on, the plot was "Ahh, so you beat my thing. But you won't beat this -other- thing! Muahaha!" I would totally play your vision of how the player character is integrated into the plot. Your idea reminds me of the first Resident Evil and how the two characters' experiences (kind of) intertwined.

It's an old video, but watching it now, and remembering when I played Diablo 3 on Console, the Rifts was what got me to the realisation of "Why do I keep on playing?" I played through the story as Crusader, with my brother, and we incremented the difficulty as we got better gear, playing through it twice or so. Eventually I got some gear that boosted my shield charge, so I started using more gear to boost my damage and shield charge. It got to the point where I did 42 billion damage per shield charge. Nedless to say, it got ridiculous. Doing rifts, I remember the only boss was the Stone Golem Parendi, and it was named Rift Guardian back then. I could solo Rifts by just shield charging through then 1-3 shotting the rift guardian. And it was fun, and I got a little better gear, until I hit that wall, where I couldn't really get better gear, just better versions, and the trash mobs could tank more than one, two hits of my 18 billion damage AoE shield charge, so I couldn't progress. It kind of had a hamster wheel feeling, that no matter how far I go, I will never amount any progress, so I stopped playing. I mean, yes, no game really gives you any "concrete" progress, apart from perhaps improving skills related to the game, or finish the game itself, but it dawned on me that I was really just holding down right trigger, and farming, for hours upon end, and that realisation is what games should avoid, not use to prolong the experience ad nauseum. And that kind of ruined all other ARPGs for me, because I just instantly get that hamster wheel feeling, and I can't shake it off.

4 years later, nothing really changed hahaha

“I dread the changes that may soon take hold over the company” - welp.

"Funnily enough that sums up the campaign of Diablo 3; me being a dick." Fucking subscribed.

Joseph, since you mentioned the dissonance thing on Mass Effect 3: There is even a DLC for the game where you throw a giant ass party with all your companions at an apartment before the big fight. All while thousands die by the second :P

I disagree on Magda being the most successful villain - that would be Adria. Adria *actually* manages to ressurect Diablo as the Prime Evil, like she had planned for *decades*. She also managed to get Magda killed (which you find out later was her "side-plan" for the Nephalim from the start to "tie up lose ends").

"he's a skeleton and a ghost... a ghost-skeleton..." me: He's also a king!

Also, Diablo III reminds me so much of Destiny. In a bad way. It looks like there is a huge drive in the industry right now to create games that suck the players in and keep them playing, while offering no comparable amounts of fun and entertainment in return. They rely on cheap psychological tricks to keep the player playing. Not on depth, not on fun. They create addiction, a bad kind of addiction, just like F2P mobile games. Activision-Blizzard seems to be on the forefront of it. I can argue that games should be about good addiction. Like when you play something like basketball or soccer in real live. You keep coming back because you want to get better, to learn more about the game, nail the mechanical skill, understand the game and become a skilled player. This is what a good addictive game should be all about. In return, you never feel like you wasted your time, you always feel good about yourself.

My biggest issue with Diablo 3 (aside from not just being a graphical upgrade of Diablo 2) was that in making the game appeal to a wider audience, they lost pretty much all of what appealed to the hardcore playerbase of Diablo 2 (which is still there by the way). You are given every skill in the game, which also have runes which change the way the skill works slightly, and you come up with a combination of them with some gear to make a "build". BUT *every* offensive skill in the game is tied to your weapon's damage (which is tied to a primary stat) which is a critical failure to recognise what made Diablo 1 and 2 work so very well. This means that basically every level you are forced to upgrade your weapon or be unable to continue even if the weapon has a really cool modifier to a certain skill that you liked - this wasn't in issue in previous games. Gear came with +Skill modifiers, there was no "primary" stat which decided your damage, and gear also had stat requirements as well as level requirements which made planning out how your character was going to work crucial to the success of your build. If you weapon's damage or armour's defense stat became terrible, it didn't really matter if you were benefiting from the +skills the weapon/armour piece gave you. This was very easy to see in the Sorceress, Necromancer, and Druid classes, but it was still applicable to Assassins, Amazons, Barbarians, and Paladins too due to how crucial certain skills were to certain builds. A level 62 Harlequin Crest was still viable on a level 99 character because the modifiers on the piece of gear were incredibly important. Blizzard wanted to take Diablo 3 in a different direction (understandably), but in the process of that and appealing to a wider audience, they lost what made DIablo 1 and 2 great. And they're never going to recapture that until they either rehaul Diablo 3 completely (again) or release DIablo 4 with what made it's predecessors revolutionary and genre defining. You mentioned you hadn't played Diablo 1 and 2, I would recommend that you do, simply to experience them and to understand how crucial they were in the evolution of the dungeon crawler, and a burgeoning online multiplayer industry. But bear in mind, I'm some bumblefuck on the internet you'll likely never meet so take my recommendation with the usual grain of salt.

It is actually too bad that you haven't played D1 and D2. The games had a much darker tone that disappeared in D3 (that was created by other people). D3 is much more Disney/World of Warcrafty.

So happy to see you tear apart the writing, as it was some of the worst I've seen in a video game in a really, really long time.

i like your informalness in this video. the swearing is right where it needs to be and is not overused.

This Channel is really awesome, loong good reviews/critiques, keep it up

I always figured Azmodan was so inept because of his nature. He's Pride - especially *excessive* pride. He's written like he simply cannot compute any potential failings on his part, like that's impossible for him to even vaguely consider. So he gloats like Snidely Whiplash and refuses to recognize his plans are falling apart all because of his deeper nature. The problem is, if this does make sense, it doesn't excuse it. It's still horrible characterization I'd expect out of a Saturday morning cartoon, not a game that's trying its best to display some sort of epic Dark Fantasy conflict as it unfolds.

53:10 To compare Reaper of Souls to similar expansions in other ARPGs: Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction: 1 new act, 2 new classes Dungeon Siege 2 Broken Worlds: 1 new act, about 50% larger than previous acts, with 2 new classes Titan Quest Immortal Throne: 1 new act, about 50% larger than previous acts, with 1 new class Path of Exile Awakening: 1 new act (free) Path of Exile Fall of Oriath: 6 new acts (free) Grim Dawn Ashes of Malmouth: 2 new acts, 2 new classes ($18) Titan Quest Ragnarok: 1 new act, about twice the size of previous acts, with 1 new class ($20) Nearly all of these add significantly more content than RoS, nearly all of them are much cheaper, and all of them are one or the other.

Binge watching your videos again after your latest release. "Shouldn't he be at least a little happy?" got me so much. Glad you're back

Monk: "I am a monk" lmao bro I was dying

I care as well. It sounds silly, but I find the story of Diablo really interesting. Well, not the story, but the world, the lore. I played this game for the story, not for the gameplay. I could care less about the loot. So your idea of having each class have their own scenario, to me, sounds amazing and a far better experience then the one I got when I played Diablo 3 the first time.

Second time watching this, love your videos man :) Just a thought on the town portal dissonance. In games 1 and 2 you had to either specifically know that one spell or you had to have a scroll of town portal and it used it up. In the first game you had to do this inventory management thing of carrying some town portals if you didnt know it but also making sure you had room for other things like stacks of money which took up physical sections of your inventory and had caps to the stack amount. In the second you could carry around a ome that hold 50 town portal scrolls for you so it was less of a hassle (and money didnt occupy space anymore) but the idea still stood that you had to have the physical thing to get back to town. This doesnt affect the problems in Diablo 3 but just something you might be interested to know if you didnt by now

Those quotes at 23:00 had me rolling "To hell with you witch." "I will stop at nothing to kill them, all of them, until their corpses are piled higher than the tallest towers."

Thank you for being one of the VERY FEW video makers on RU-vid that made a FULL in-depth review on Diablo 3. I'm doing research on a paper and I really needed this. So, thanks again for making my life easier!

Recently stumbled upon your videos, Joe - I love your insight! If someone dumps hours and hours and days and weeks into getting up to Torment # difficulty, and they finish their builds, and the Paragon system is now the entirety of their end game, then at what point is it acceptable for there to be no more content for the player to discover and nothing more for them to do?

Your suggestions for the different classes working within the plot reminds me a lot of how Divinity: Original Sin 2 works with its option for your OC or playing as a named character.

You deserve kudos for how thoroughly you documented Diablo 3 and its evolution if nothing else. I tend to agree with all of your criticism but none of your solutions. While interesting, your idea of having each character play from a different point of the act wouldn't work for friends playing through the campaign together. Your solution to the very real problems the end game still have are interesting, but infinitely scaling gems or introducing super ancients is only a band aid solution. Your suggestions were very well meaning, though, and one can hardly expect someone with a youtube channel (your words) to solve the problems of a video game that still managed to make a billion + dollars. It should be noted that I have become very cynical about this game and there are very few solutions for it I've ever seen that I've thought would be good. I think your best insights are about how Blizzard has lost sight of their previously held value of, well, giving us tons of value and content for our money. As someone who has poured thousands of hours into this franchise I love and appreciate their efforts to patch this game post the disaster that was Classic, but as you pointed even things as great as rifts and bounties are just recycled content. This goes counter to a lot of what you were saying, but as someone who loves to grind the end game (flawed as it is) I would actually like to see the next expansion be almost devoid of story. Give us a couple of small maps chalk full of fun and engaging set pieces, a new class, and a sweet final fight with Diablo, and then spend 90% of the development time on end game. I have no idea how to drastically improve the end game, but certainly if Blizzard gave it everything the have they should be able to come up with something and get back to delivering us valuable content. And as a final note I will never get tired of bashing how god awful the twitter updates from Azmodan and Diablo were in acts 3/4. Even if the rest of your video hadn't been as insightful and thorough as it was, I would have updated and commented on it for that alone.

I actually read the book of Reaper of Souls and it anoyed me that such a cool piece of lore ( the assault on Heaven by a group of nephalem and Malthiel treason) wasnt shown. I would love playing as one of the nephalem on the heist

This is my favourite videos of yours and I still come back to it

The campaing part is basically cinema-sins for video games. I always wanted something like this. You are awesome man!

Damn son this was super funny and amazing points were made. More please!

27:53 Skipp the Kripp guys!

"Throwing the n-word around like a Little Wayne song." Dude, your writing is fucking genius. I can't wait to check out your books!

Excellent man this is the first I've seen of you, right up my alley.

Your videos have been spot on. This one and your video on hearthstone voice what I could not manage to put in words. A little harsh, but hey I guess that is the point of a critique. My biggest problem with blizzard games recently is that it never feels like anything can really be your own and successful. There is always one dude that figures out the meta build, and that build is so good that it is the only option to be played until blizzard finally gets around to nerfing it. Whenever they do nerf it, whether it is warcraft, hs, or diablo, they always just shoot it to hell so bad that all your time seems wasted. I have a few question for you if you don't mind? What kind of software do you use to record video? Will you be getting overwatch? What are your prethoughts on it and do you think you will continue the trend and do a review on it? Are you planning on making a starcraft video?( especially since a new expansion just came out). hah anyways thanks for making some really high quality docs!

30 million? 30? 30?!

Amazing video! I love your honesty and all the little details. Thank You.

I don't how you kept me entertain for more than 1 hour but I like it and want more

Great , thorough analysis. My biggest problem with Diablo 3 was that I simply didn't enjoy monster combat. Your review touched on this (that the "action" in "action RPG" was superficial). IMHO, combat in D3 is too crowded, chaotic, and fast. My favorite memories of Diablo 1 are dodging the slow-moving fireballs. Look how frightening and intimidating this moment is: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-JJ0FcbyVvss.htmlm10s Watch the warrior back off, dodge the fireballs, and plan the engagement. Those were amazing moments in Diablo 1. Diablo 2 was faster-paced than the plodding Diablo 1, but I still remember having intense battles, positioning myself carefully, waiting around corners, my heart pounding with tension. In Diablo 3, I never felt that same excitement; I felt like I was mowing down crowded hallways of noisy punching bags while numbers and explosions sparkle everywhere. I never felt like I had to precisely aim or time my abilities. Everything is about pumping out offense without any real focus on defense. Click, kite, click, kite. It's really hard to capture the lightning in a bottle of a fun combat system. I think Diablo 3 missed the mark, even though I can't put my finger on why. Since I kept getting bored going on the vapid quests and slogging through monotonous battles, I only beat Diablo 3 and Reaper of Souls once. So I can't relate to the issues with the grinding endgame. I mean, if you have all the best gear, it's time to accept that you've "beaten the game," at least with that character!

I still remember the "big brain" moments I had when I realised Wizard's Teleport and Monk's Dash (which describes itself as teleporting) can move you through walls, and later when I realised the Jailer trapping ability is functionally creating walls around you and can be teleported out of. Unfortunately they can't teleport out of frozen, but the Witch Doctor can Spirit Walk away from it, which is cool.

Ive played an ungodly (see what i did there) amount of hours on this game because for a while, it was the only game I owned on xbox 360. I started off thinking the game was just passable. But as I kept playing and got more powerful... oh god... I never played a game even remotely like Diablo previously, but this game taught me how to min/max and I am a different gamer because of it. Diablo 3 was one of my favorite games but like joe said, "Why am I still playing this game?" was a thought that crept into my mind after I got what I felt was my perfect build. I'm thankful I got out when I did and I'm thankful you made this vid joe! I hope you make a vid about D4 someday!

I only played a brief part of Diablo 3's opening sections and have zero plans to ever revisit the game, but best believe i am thoroughly enthralled by yet another of your infamous, gloriously pedantic & infinitely amusing story teardowns. God i wish u uploaded more... Or do i? If it would waterdown the quality of your upolads then definitely not... Your content is worth the wait.

I am a bit in shock...i played and loved Diablo 1 and then somehow never came back, but i remember it to be a great RPG experience. Looking at D3 is like eyecancer. It seems like flashy colours and random numbers all over the screen with no depth to it at all.

Belial : lord of lies : turns into a dinosaur and tries to eat you. Well when you say it like that ! Also it made me laughe way too much !

Discovered your channel with your Anno 2205 review, really nice stuff man thanks!

Just found your channel dude, subbed. Really enjoy your reviews and they are all of games I play myself. Super.

RNG: A way to artificially force longer play times in order to hide the lack of actual content. In case anyone is wondering, Path of Exile is exactly the same in this respect.

I love how you summed it all up in the end with Blizzard's original intentions of "Make great games, and make good money" brought to light with games such as Vanilla Wow and Diabo 2. Now their focus is now geared towards "Make good money by making 'great' games" examples being in WoW Legion, Diablo 3 and Hearthstone.

watching a lot of your videos today. Oh man are they great. Love the humor aswell

Great video :) watched several of your works dude you deserve a lot more subs.

Ah yes, my favorite diablo location The Sands of five-minute-walk-away

33:15 God damn it Joe! Now I have to play through Deus Ex again!

I had to write up one quote from one character's dialogue: "I conquered my terror long ago. Now I only see what I must do next". This really hit me and awakened me to the fact that the protagonist truly is more than human or at least a complete one, which you'd think someone fighting Diablo needs to be, Fearless.

I watched this whole video from beginning to end, this was really well made, informative and funny.

It's incredible how many of the ideas that are pitched around 1:11:00 that they actually implemented.

Granted your character never appeared in Diablo 2's CGI cut scene's either, but that was mainly because you were dealing with the aftermath of what happened between the character's seen in the scene's.

"His wife is dead shouldn't he be at least a little happy" lol those deadpan jokes you throw in without any differentiation in vocal tone or inflection. I watch your videos multiple times and still catch new things each watch. Great job :)

Wow. First Id just like to say I've discovered Joseph Anderson after reading a comment from a witcher video done by TheSaltFactory, and here I am... so once I heard how you described mass effect, It is how I felt exactly and I knew I had to subscribe. Good work 👏

holy shit. decard dies of sadness or some shit. phaha. i'm crying of laughter. Jesus man, ur vids are great! been binge watching u for few hours now.

I want a character like Zoltan Kulle who acts sinister and cackles like a maniac, but who in reality genuinly wants to help you instead of trying to betray you.

I loved your idea for the story being smaller and different for each character. To expand on it there could also be a way or setting or difficulty where you play all the characters, switching back and forth between them and showing all their different parts of the story, so it unfolds like a novel that has multiple POV's. That would have redeemed the game for me, and possibly kept me playing for more then a few months. It would have also pushed players like myself to play more the just one character. I played only witch doctor, i had a friend who i played with through the entire game at launch who only played barbarian, and one more who only played demon hunter. Imagine what i would have missed out on if i only stuck with one character, much like the different origins in dragon age origins. There is a game that actually gave you a reason to replay as a different race and class multiple times, because it not only changed how the game started, but it changed how the world, other characters, and the story as a whole interacted with YOU.

watched 3 of your reviews. You spot on every time. Subscribed :)

"Diablo is free" pc: pff yeah and? I defeated him in like 10 minutes when he was meant to be "The most demon in existence etc"

"yea she fucking dies, I told you there would be spoilers.." I died xD

Ok, I'v been watching this critique for 17 minutes and IT IS ENOUGH! I have to make a mug of coffee to further enjoy this masterpiece of a video.

Your character summarization was bar none the funniest thing I experienced in a while. Never change Joseph. Never change

A very nice summation and collection of ideas. Shame you’ll never try Diablo 1+2. The way they solved the story problems was by working with the limitations these kind of games pose to a dynamic story rather than around them. What you ended up with was a story simple in execution but grandiose in impact and well enhanced by the game itself.

I've played through this game more times than I can count, AND I've seen this video before, and I STILL remember none of this story.

There are also various weapon power types (lightening, archane, poison, cold, holy, and physical) that can be mixed and mathced (with various limitations) by combining armor sets (having some parts from one and some parts from another that allow sometimes limited capability improvements from each partial set (sometimes a complete capability if the two sets do not overlap much), as well a non-set special items of armor and weapons that can be mixed and matched at will to "roll your own" armor/weapon build. When you use sets, you are dedicated to that set's bonuses, with only rather minor adjustments being possible to improve it. With roll-your-own piecemeal sets, you have to do a lot of study and experiment to see how they can be used and made effective at higher levels of play. For example, there is a roll-your own pair of "soup-up" rings that give extra hit power to your weapon output when you are using the highest level of any item on your character, weapon, item of clothing/armor, whatever. The more of these highest-level items you have the more powerful your attack becomes. However, since this is not a "standard" pre-built set, it does not have any oi the special bonuses of those various standard sets and you have to figure out what it can and can't do on your own. I took this as a challenge and using a roll-your-own set with those rings, I found an item that I could use with this jury-rigged set that gave lightening a 14,000% boost (!!!) (no matter what weapon or power hit with lightening). This only happened 20% of the time, though, so I had to MAKE EVERYTHING I ATTACKED WITH BY EVERY MEANS SHOOT LIGHTENING ONLY so that the 20% chance would become almost certain with every attack I made. This took a lot of testing of all sorts of lightening-related attack powers and weapons to come up with something that allowed me to kill even the biggest bosses using this souped-up lightening attack fast enough that they could not hit back much -- the wizard in DIABLO 3 is not given a very good defense capability compared to, say, a barbarian in full armor, so you have to "make your offense the best defense" with a wizard. Not easy...

You got my like for the 30 million joke. Caught me off guard and gave me a good chuckle!

Adria was in the first game, and was a trustworthy person in D3 due to that appearance. She was the merchant who sold staves and spells. She was also the reason D1 happened via retcon in d3. You should play the other two or read a brief plot overview, makes some of this plot make a little more sense.

Nice to see you again! :D I remember a long time ago when Diablo 2 came out and I had played like... 20 minutes? Didn't really have time to enjoy it or maybe that small time that I had played, it didn't capture my attention. However, After Reaper of Souls came out, I decided to give the series another go and I rented Diablo 3. It was an amazing 30 hours, I'll tell you that! I never really cared for games like this that are very similar to MOBA's. Fast action, bright colours, and alot of shit flashing on the screen! Toppled on with isometric view, lackluster combat, and little to no character progression, Diablo 3 left me with a sour taste. It was fun in the very beginning like most games are to me; Start off a weak character, grind for hours, get better gear and level up to become stronger, and when you defeat an enemy way above your level, the feeling of victory is so sweet, despite the amount of defeat *you* suffered in that time! With Diablo 3, I didn't even get that feeling. It was very simple, spam buttons and wreck havoc! Low health? Slap a button, Full Health! It made the game too easy and I don't mean to imply that I'm the greatest gamer to ever live. I didn't feel any strategy in it, I ended up running around in Circles and kiting enemies to deal with them and that's a very dull strategic. Despite that, I carried on for a while hoping it would change and it did not. Enemies were not interesting enough and most were fodder or buffed up versions of those fodder, like you had said. Little to no variation in enemies, bland gameplay, no character progression, cringe-worthy voice acting, and no difficulty. So, Diablo had poor gameplay in my eyes. Graphics were alright, surprised the FPS didn't drop drastically when you are spamming every flashy spell you have, and the spells/abilities/actions/whatever are impressive, though some are very stupid looking. I could go on about the problems I have with Diablo, but I feel as if I have rambled enough. Funnily enough, I am huge fan of Grinding; Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen, Runescape, Destiny, Monster Hunter - are all some of my favourite games because of the feeling you get when you notice your character has grown in strength! In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed Sacred 2 Fallen Angel more than enough to platinum it and it's *very* similar to Diablo. Brace yourself, but believe it or not, some people still read the description! I enjoyed this video a bit more; the laid-back tone, the jokes that didn't feel out of place, yet the length of the video was a tad bit long. Probably could've cut out or shorten the part where you discuss the DLC and Price, cause we all know how companies regard DLC. I think I would prefer it be cut into parts, if it's as long as this one. My biggest complaint is you didn't put an annotation or edit in where to skip the spoilers about the Campaign, but I realize the entire video is a huge spoiler! XD Don't know anything about Hearthfire or whatever it's called, but I will watch nonetheless, even though I may not have a long ass reply, which you'll probably be thankful for! Have a good day, friend!

17 minutes in and I love how you explain how this game really is. Don't get me wrong - I played the hell out of it, but most of your points are accurate. I mostly drudged through it on Diablo 2 nostalgia and having fun with the skills. Edit - This is the most entertaining video game review I've ever watched. Very good job!

Great video as always man! Im going to be a smarty pants and say that "meta sense" is already concept that has a name. Its called genre savvy. Or medium awareness. God i love tvtropes!

I know i am a year late, which is mildly funny cause i am exactly year late, but it was always bothering me that Blizzard hired Leonard Boyarsky who worked on original Fallout and later Arcanum and VTM:Bloodlines to develop story and world. Maybe originally they really had intention to make much more involved plot, but later became more interested in game loops, as with all their later games. Which is sad, cause while Blizzard stories were never particularly complex, they still were effective at building mood of a game. At least Boyarsky left Blizzard and now is at it again working on Tyranny at Obsidian.

For clarification: Zoltun Khulle does NOT betray you. In fact quite the opposite. The game tries so hard to paint him as an antagonist and that he does do this twist, but, if you look at the dialogue and his actions, he is the best choice out of all the options given at this point in the game. He is more a hero than our hero! Adria is a known witch, which in lore is sort of bad to know, and, knowing that she knows about the black soulstone already, this sort of outside interference is a huge red flag. Zoltun Kulle basically states to take a step back and figure out what is truly going on. But no. Our character is lawful stupid and just jumps right on him as soon as he doesn't give us what we want. We are the assholes.

Looking back on this video from now, after they made that announcement about a Diablo mobile game, it's interesting to hear you conjecture about one day there being a Diablo game all about the builds where you basically just watch your character fight for you.

Ah man, as soon as I heard that ME3 song my heart sank. You literally can't understand just how crushed that game made me. It's left permanent emotional damage to my soul.

When you play as a necromancer and ask the smith about his wife he actually gives an answer, pretty sure someone at blizzard watched this video

"There are two types of things. Things that are one way, and things that are the opposite way"

in previous games Cain identified your items in town, and in Diablo2 you also can use scrolls to identify items, and there also where Town portal scrolls to go to town, now its compressed in the Portal button and the book of cain to identify in town

The campaign map is so hillarious, I've barely pay attention to the story when I played back when it was released, but I've never realised how silly it is. Great stuff.

This man is a prophet sad what's happening to wow but I guess even back in 2015 wasn't hard to see coming

Deckard can't portal back to town because portals are activated by scrolls in this universe and in every past installment, but the requirement of the use of a consumable was removed from 3 to streamline the gameplay. He ran out of scrolls, simple as that. You put the crown on Leoric because you need to kill his spirit. It's necessary to summon him to do that. Having to unleash something for the express purpose of destroying it is a fairly common thing. Waypoints only activate when you come across them; you can only portal between waypoints you've discovered. It is not unreasonable for an enchantment to work this way.

Didn't expect to enjoy this video but was pleasantly surprised. Good stuff. I always enjoy listening to a well-thought-out critical opinion on games and game design. I think you nailed a lot of the fundamental issues with Diablo 3, especially in its pathetic story and wasted lore. The gameplay is something that I agree with you on, but still indulge in periodically. Until season 9 or so, I had a lot of fun starting over, putting together my build and rifting with my friends on a new class. One issue that I was hoping you would address is the power creep and how (IMO) it makes the game feel very... gamey, for lack of a better term. My ability to progress into higher rifts each season isn't an increase in skill or even in time dedicated, but more likely the result of power creep on the existing sets and gems. To me, that was the final straw (combined with the lack of anything new to do in the latest seasons) that caused me to quit playing.

Tbh that's a problem is most forms of media, having one of the villains go "haha, you may have this shard of maguffin, but im heading to the water temple right now to get the otherpart".... erm we never knew it was there but... thanks?

im going to spoil everything: the game, the plot, your dinner. lol

I really hate it when some awful, but preventable twist happens, and my incredibly powerful character stands around gormlessly doing fuck all because they're frozen in a cutscene

I am making my way through your whole repertoire. You sir, need a tenured position. You are the best gaming academic I’ve read.

thank you, i really enjoy your Critique.