Dorzma Forever! Artwork by Kris Dobbins.
Clearly, the rape allegations happening at the same time might have hit too close to home for Blizzard. They don't want a game to immortalize their problem forever.
While I agree with that stance in general, I find that “Rape has no place in the ‘Diablo’ universe" comment interesting since they were apparently fine with it being subtly included in Diablo III. Leah is technically a child of rape since Aidan was under Diablo's influence when he conceived her with Adria, so you can't really call it consensual, and there's a sidequest character in Act V
whose lore when you kill her implies that her mother was raped by a demon.
Edited by Willbyr on Jan 2nd 2023 at 4:17:30 AM
Or how Diablo II's second act had a bunch of mutilated and topless women all over the place when exploring the Sultan's palace.
Still though, I don't blame them for axing the character and their arc, because I doubt Blizzard's style of storytelling would even allow for any sort of compelling character development, rape or not. Most people play Diablo games to slay hordes of demons and collect phat lewt, not the story.
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For one Leah's conception being rape is never really brought up and dwelt on in any detail.
For 2, Aidan's nature (being more or less retconned from a generic PC into actually having been a character in the game where he's mostly a meat puppet and basically gets a full on protracted soul death) makes the issue of his lack of consent feel like just another thing Diablo used him to do. That and the line between "Aidan" "The Dark Wanderer" and "Diablo" is blurry. Where one begins and the other ends.
This is a wide difference from a character where, from the sound of it, her having been Raped was going to be a core part of who she was. Not a "If you really look into the details" bit.
He's credited as lead writer for Witcher 1 and 2 (also dialogue designer on that last one), and Story Concepts for CP 2077.
Witcher 1 being the game where you get sex collectible card for everyone Geralt bangs and features Triss basically having sex with Geralt under... dubious consent so ya know.
That said I do need to point out that both CP 2077 and Witcher having more sexual content (and non consenting sexual content) is also par for their source material so I can't exactly put the blame entirely on him or CDPR.
Edited by Ghilz on Jan 2nd 2023 at 7:56:01 AM
That's a fair point. Maybe it simply affected the guy and he thought Diablo, being a similarly dark world, would allow for the same level of "shock content"? Who can really say. I'm glad its been cut. Quite frankly too many "adult" series rely on rape as a crutch to signal how "dark" and "mature" they are. A lot of mid 2000s Seinen manga are guilty of this (looking at you Wolf Guy - Wolfen Crest).
In the Witcher's case I'd absolutely not be surprised to learn there's characters whose backstory revolves around them being rape victims in the book.
Those books get weird and the game (and TV Show) frankly paper over a lot of stuff.
And to be fair I don't think there's characters in either games whose main identity is rape victim. Only one I can think that comes close is Evelyn Parker in CP 2077 and that's mostly what leads to her suicide rather than how she is for most of your interactions with her. Also the focus is more on the torture she endured than the sex stuff when you learn about it. The later is more implied than stated out loud. So again, not like the guy really added any either?
Edited by Ghilz on Jan 3rd 2023 at 12:17:25 PM
As I mentioned earlier his only credit on CP 2077 is "Story Concepts" so he most likely did not.
Then again, that's not just a random line either. It's the first line Adam Smasher has in the game, making it an Establishing Character Moment.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was indeed something he specifically wanted to get across even if he didn't write the actual line.
Disgusted, but not surprisedNo need to be snide just because I'm presenting a different explanation for the line.
I'm not even disagreeing with the idea that he didn't write the line. Just that he might have wanted to establish that Adam Smasher was a monster in his first scene.
Edited by M84 on Jan 4th 2023 at 4:34:54 AM
Disgusted, but not surprisedYeah but it's a silly explanation when one looks at the credit when you consider that first of all theres a story director above him, and 2 senior writers and a principal writer, all of whom would have had more pull than him on how dialogue gets written.
So pointing to the guy credited with "Story concepts" and going "Yeah that one line is probably from him" does approach tin foil hat territory. "You can use my plot idea of a chip with someone's soul but ya gotta use the "sack of meat" line too."
(And that's without going that there's 2 more people responsible for turning the writing into English so god knows how the original Polish line goes).
IMHO it sounds even more silly in a game with millions of line, several about or involving sex and just picking that one. "Yeah, that's from him."
Not saying he can't have inspired it, or brainstormed it (ie: "Adam smasher should say something crass and that refers to people as meat coz it emphasizes how inhuman and a machine he is when we first see him"), but he's most certainly not the one who wrote it for the simple reason we know he didn't write the script for any scenes. Less they forgot to credit him, which to be fair is a thing in video games and a whole can for worm.
Edited by Ghilz on Jan 3rd 2023 at 12:58:44 PM
Like I said, I'm not disagreeing that he didn't write the line itself.
Just that one of the story concepts he wanted established is that Adam Smasher is a monster who would do things like make rape threats.
It would be consistent considering this recent story seems to imply that this guy likes the use of rape as a narrative device.
Edited by M84 on Jan 3rd 2023 at 5:00:28 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedThe Devs did a livestream today to preview the Early Access/Open Beta weekends. Haven't watched the whole thing yet, but there's some interesting stuff there.
Also we got system requirements.
Minimum:
Recommended
For a modern AAA game that's pretty modest. The minimum required GTX 660 was released over a decade ago back in 2012. Guessing it's because most of the "world" isn't actually 3D the GPU isn't going to be getting much of a workout, so the only hard requirement is Direct X 12 compatibility.
I am planning on participating in the open beta weekend since it sounds like a good opportunity to decide whether or not I'm going to buy the game on release.
Edited by Falrinn on Feb 28th 2023 at 7:18:28 AM
Played the Open Beta all the way up to level 19 so far, finished the main campaign so I'm just doing side quests until level 20. Might try out a different class then if I'm still interested.
I'd say that while the tone is closer to Diablo 2, the gameplay actually feels more like an evolution of Diablo 3, with the arguable exception of the return of skill trees.note . Stuff like inventory management, how your spells are arranged, what NP Cs do in town, are all much closer to D3 than D2.
Which I like. I understand the desire to shift to the darker tone of the older games, but Diablo 3's gameplay was vastly superior when it comes to modern standards.
Storywise I'm definately interested, but it's hard for me to make too many judgements just yet. What I will say is that the game makes it VERY clear that Lilith's return is bad news for Sanctuary. She might not be aligned with the Greater Evils, but she is still very much a demon. I do think I like what I've seen so far though.
