Photo via Blizzard
Grit, and grime, and grim-darkness in our culture has seen a steady increase in popularity since the mid to late 2010's. With gigantic franchises like Game of Thrones (or ASOIAF) dominating the culture it has become very apparent that people are into manmade horrors beyond our comprehension. Tales of war, disease, strife, and all the other things that make us terrified of humanities worst qualities titillate us like nothing else. We stare into the endless void of human construction with eager eyes and open minds. Stories of friendship and persevering are all well and good but the familiarity of the struggle (if you can call facing down a White Walker familiar) resonates with us. Diablo 4 scratches that same itch and the initial quest really brings it home that there may be demons about, but the real monsters are those hiding inside people.
A snowy mountain ridge looms in the foreground. Slowly, with much exhaustion, a weary horse appears from the left side of the screen and on his back is my giant, muscular barbarian who looks comically big for the midsize horse. In short order, a series of events leads you into a cave with your horse gored and the beast of the wilds closing in from all side. Your freezing to death, when suddenly a strange faceless wolf showing bone appears in what is seemingly a dream and in a flash of demonic symbols the night is over and it is time to move on. After fighting a short ways through a horde of wargs that jump from the woods and howl a bone chilling melody colder than the snow falling on your head you reach a little village that at first appears abandoned. A few villagers tend to a madman in a hovel and in short order you are sent on a quest to rid the nearby ruins of demons.
You arrive, kick ass, and find yourself face to face with a Baron Demon from Hell guarding the corpse of a decapitated priest. So far, so Diablo. Demons are invading and its time they are separated from their heads. You beat the demon and return to a thankful village, the madman having escaped into the woods, but they don't care because you've done it! They don't have any gold for you but they do have some stew and beer. Which is of course poisoned. You are knocked out cold and dragged to a barn via hand cart while an odd prophecy fades in and out on the right side of the screen. The villager hums some sort of tune while he drags you along. While you are unconscious, he feeds you blood petals and is nearly ready to sacrifice you to a mysterious Mother before the madman returns and saves you. It turns out, he too slayed some demons and was rewarded with some sleepy juice.
You fight your way out and find out the village was corrupted by Lilith, demon mother of the world you inhabit, called Sanctuary. In a vision, you see her appear behind the currently headless and formerly ruthlessly admonishing priest and convinces the villagers to kill their him and free themselves to live in sin. By all appearances, no spell was involved nor were there any particularly strong words used. Lilith appears, and simply convinces them to worship her and not the Cathedral of Light, which is run by her former baby daddy, the father of Sanctuary and home sick angel, Inarius.
She may be a demon, but that doesn't mean the village had to fall at her feet. They could have said no. Lilith may have simply vanished, disappointed in their lack of faith (or killed them all) but there is not even a hint of rebellion against their Mother. They simply accept her and turn to wickedness.
That simple truth is a central theme in grimdark and adjacent genres. In Game of Thrones, the White Walkers are the world ending threat but entirely survivable if the people of the world would simply put aside their differences and their "sin" to fight them off. In that way, the White Walkers aren't really even a threat in the conventional manner of an invading army but are more akin to an act of nature. They are here and they are coming but, oh, if only people would act right long enough to fight them off. This has lead many to associate the White Walkers with climate change. It is something that will simply happen and quite easily if nothing is done to stop them.
In The Last of Us, the common sentiment is that is has always been a story about people with a zombie set dressing. Yeah, the zombies are there, but so is lightning and wind and wildfires. It is how such traumatic events effect the human population that is most riveting. What will Joel do to protect Ellie? What happens when revolutionaries become the governing force in the land? All of these things compel us.
In the show Parks and Rec, Donna finds Ben distraught over something and assumes that Game of Thrones has been cancelled. Ben immediately dispels such heresy because Game of Thrones will never be cancelled. He says it best why, "its not just for fantasy enthusiast, they're telling human stories in a fantasy world." This entire blog could be summarized by that quote alone.
Diablo , like other aRPGs, draws in a wide variety of people to play the game. People are drawn to it for the plot, atmosphere, character builds, hardcore runs, or really some combination of all of those. But as demonstrated by the rather light fantasy and cartoonish set dressing of Diablo 3, people want that grit and darkness and by Inarius Diablo 4 is going to give it to us. My short time with the closed beta left me hungering for more and while there are some more questions to be answered I can say with the utmost confidence that no matter how I feel about the rest of the game I am going to revel in the blood and gore of the plot and the intriguing world Blizzard has created. In the mean time, the Open Beta is available to everyone this weekend so check it out if you have the time and see for yourself.
NOTE FROM CHASE:
When I talk about a Blizzard product, its impossible to ignore the recent controversies. I won't go over it in detail, but if you need a refresher or want to catch up on everything, PC Gamer has a convenient article with a timeline. You can read about that here. I do truly hope that period of Blizzard is behind them. The fat has been trimmed and improvements have been made, but as long as Bobby Kotick is still in power I don't have much hope things will truly get better. Here's hoping by then the Activision-Blizzard deal is done and they kick Bobby Kotick out so Blizzard can finally begin to shed the reputation it has garnered from recent controversies. Whether Blizzard is sold or not, I will be buying Diablo when it releases. Hundreds of people have worked hard for that product and they don't deserve to see their passion suffer because of some assholes, many of which are still gone. Still, I do not blame anyone who is morally opposed to it. Regardless of where you stand, Blizzard still has some work to do and I hope they get it done.
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