Has anyone else realized how - lore wise- Diablo 2 was nothing but a huge Screw you to the fans?

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

If the writers are faithfully to the material and the Story So Far, it doesn't matter whether it's dark or light. Faithfulness is a credit to the writers and to the fans. And unfortunately, the only way to faithfully make a sequel to Diablo 1 is to show not only that Evil Survived, but what its survival wrought.

Without turning this into yet another Ahem-you-know-what thread, I think that faithfulness was lost between 2001 and now. Name-dropping a few familiar characters and the like doesn't cut it. To make a proper sequel, you need to think very carefully about what would happen next.

D2 did this to D1. Big time.

I agree, and to elaborate:

The ending in Diablo practically told you: "Okay, you managed to eliminate the initial threat. Do you think you are done? No, you poor sap, this is only just beginning."

It tells you that contained Diablo's essence for now, but that you are not at all certain if you can keep Diablo at bay, foreshadowing that you need to travel wide and far to get answers "or perhaps, salvation".

Diablo II seamlessly takes up all strings and brings them to their logical conclusions, working new threads into the pattern as it does so, and also bringing many of them to a close - but they left a few story threads lying around to be used in D3.

@ME series: I actually played the first two (no three for me, because of Origin), but I know the controversy about the ending. Seems to me that they patterned the whole story quite well, and only royally messed up the last five minutes. That's a problem for a lot of really good stories: it's incredibly hard to craft an ending that lives up to the story, weaving all your story threads into a good finish. Often, they kinda prop the ending on just so the story is finished.