Well, I will try but it’s hard for me to get past the forced shared world. A world where all of us seem to share the same inn room that curiously only has one bed. But even as I try to look beyond having to see other players with their awful character names written in all caps. The story beats felt very forced.
The story started strong with the corrupted village, but it quickly just became obviously clunky. Go to this location a, to talk with someone who tells me to go to location b, to talk with someone who tells me to go to location c,…
It all felt very staged, like a thin veneer of story trying to mask game mechanics, but doing it so very obviously.
In D3 the story kept pushing me foward into dungeons and even very iconic locations like Tristram right away. The story was not strong but at least it felt replay-able. D4 felt tedious for at least the first half of the demo.
I keep thinking of the modern GoW games. I know those are not isometric, but in many ways the core gameplay is very similar. You have build types, dungeons, bosses, open worldish environments… It even has postgame grinding. If GoW was isometric then the comparison between the two games would be obvious. But what GoW did was focus on strong character and world building. It paced out game mechanics between large story sections.
D4 felt like it was built on game and monetary systems first, then had a story placed on it to fit. And that they needed to rush those systems on the player asap.
Here is the blacksmith and a short quest to get you to talk with them.
Here is another vendor with a similar quest.
Oh that third vendor you can’t interact with yet because they only talk to people who are of sufficient level…
Remember in D3 when you saved the various merchants through out the game and that was how the game paced out your interactions with them? It introduced the merchants organically in the story. Not D4 they just flat out tell you can’t talk with them yet. Great story telling…
Now;
• Why was my character important to the story? There appears many other competent adventurers around in this forced shared world. My character did not feel like a “powerful, the one and only hero” with all of them running around. Was it because I got those unexplainable vision things? Is that all?
• Where was my character going on that horse in the beginning? Obviously I was going somewhere, was that not important anymore? Again, there are other hero’s here, why are they putting the “save the world burden” on me? You have an Angel right there even. With an army. The real reason, it’s the story, try not to think so much.
• Why does my character know how to teleport? Could they just have teleported out from that cave in the beginning? I know it’s a game mechanic, but it sure felt clumsy in D4 when it’s just a mechanic that felt “there” rather than earned.
This post is getting long so I will not go on much longer (i am writing this on my phone as well and that is not enjoyable.) I did not get into the rather flat and a bit boring looking skill interface with skills that felt uninspired nor new (I played a barb) nor did I go into wondering why this introductory location to the game had to be a place that was not iconic nor visually interesting.
I will say I think the character transmog was good and I enjoyed the music. The rest though…