I've been doing some idle thinking about what I've seen about Diablo 3 and Diablo's goals; and pondering the Diablo cosmology and realworld mythologies. And I was wondering; has Diablo accomplish his aims? Hear me out.
Burning Hells vs High Heavens The Greater Evils' Motivations
Diablo's brothers Ball and Mephisto are hell-bent on destroying Heaven and its denizens; Baal for the sheer ecstasy of destruction, Mephisto because he just wants to see the world(s) burn. Diablo however is a maestro of terror and fear. Unlike Mephisto, he does not derive pleasure from conquest in and of itself, but rather the terror and leads up to it and its after effects.
Diablo has reached the top of the summit, bringing Heaven to its knees and corrupting the Crystal Arch. However, if he had succeeded in achieving Heaven's demise, the conquest would have become complete and there would be nothing left to do. In destroying Heaven he would destroy any motivation to exist; in destroying the Arch he would destroy himself.
But he didn't, and so the Arch survived, as does any future prospect of terror. Fear lives so long as does hope, and vice versa.
The Instinctive Eternal Conflict Thoughts on the cosmology
However, the Diablo we face is the sum total of all evil: The Prime Evil (ostensibly) seeks to tear friends and allies apart (Mephisto, Belial); seeks wonton destruction (Baal); sows fear and discord (Diablo); seeks to debase and demoralize the enemy (Azmodan, Andariel); and inflict pain (Duriel).
If all of this had been accomplished, neither Hell nor Heaven would remain. Which also makes me wonder about the "instinct" imbedded in both Angels and Demons. They came from nothingness (tohu wa-bohu, or ex nihilo), and apparently have the instinct to return to that initial state that birthed the One Anu, which manifests as war (or, in the greater scheme of things, perhaps a form of self-destruction. This theme is called chaoskampf in mythological academia). This pulls upon most every creation myth in the world, but most closely resembles Babylonian myth or Sumerian myth and the Enuma Elish.
Nephalem and Balance Diablo's symbiosis with Humanity
Taking all of this together, Diablo proves again to be unique among is demonic brethren. All of Hell wants to completely destroy Heaven, and with it see all of reality burn; Diablo, however, very well may want to break away from that strategy and simply pursue a never-ending cycle of terror and hope.
This cycle, however, pits him against the Nephalem. These beings achieve the balance necessary to stave off complete and utter destruction of Heaven. Which strikes a strange juxtaposition against the Eternal Conflict. The Conflict manifests Heaven's and Hell's inability to live together, whereas Inarius' and Lilith's rebellion saw the exact opposite, seeing a merge between the two. This merger brought about a world peopled by beings that are one step closer to the whole, a step closer to the all-encompassing Anu.
So we now have two competing theories: An instinct to achieve the nothingness that existed at the beginning of time, as manifest in the Eternal Conflict. And a yearning for unity, demonstrated by the birth of the Nephalem (which in turn birthed humanity). Psychologically speaking, these are comparable to the Thanatos Drive and Eros Drive, respectively.
These appear completely opposite and contradictory. Can both or either be true?
There's one more interesting theory from classical philosophy I might invoke to resolve this, if at least in a limited fashion. The phenomenon of entelechy. This is the continual becoming or striving. When this ends, motivation and meaning cease to exist, and that would be as true if someone achieved something just as much if they grew disinterested with achieving something.
In Summary
I believe Diablo achieved his goals. He spread terror throughout the three worlds. However, had he destroyed Heaven, there would no longer be any room for fear as hope and life would cease. Therefor, to continue being -- to continue to embody fear -- he must "fail', only to arise anew in another form.
Sorry, I feel I haven't properly explained myself here. These are just my thoughts and ramblings. I just really like philosophy and mythology. If you've made it this far, thanks for reading. Now go outside.
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Be it through hallowed grounds or lands of sorrow
All in the Forger's wake is left bereft and fallow
Is the residuum worth the cost of destruction and maiming;
Or is the shaping a culling and exercise in taming?
The road's goal is the dark Origin of Being
But be wary through what thickets it winds.
-Excerpt from the Litany of Residuum;
As Translated by He Who Brings Order
I find that to be very well thought-out and written; a refreshing change from the "OMFG D3 SUX" wailing and gnashing of teeth I'm seeing elsewhere. Well done.
I'm making some 2am Chili right now and I'm waiting for everything to sautee. Damn dems good eats.
Quote from Brx »
So as I see it diablo just happened to play his cards very well but failed in the end (even at its state of power, which makes no senses to me but that is an other topic)
Doesn't it, though?
The Worldstone's influence kept humanity's Nephalem powers in check. With that destroyed, their legacy resurfaced in a scant few (the characters we play in the game). The Three Primes had always been destroyed by groups of talented warrior humans, but Diablo's gambit saw himself reincarnated as THE Prime Evil, embodying all the greater lords of Hell. What he failed to take into account was that Nephalem legacy awakening and pursuing him into Heaven.
Now we have a unified Prime Evil facing off against a group of warriors birthed from both Angels and Demons and embodying the best of each. The battle that took place at the Crystal Arch had to be titanic; I don't see how it survived the conflict at all.
Which brings me to the Worldstone itself. In the end, what did Baal really accomplish? Though he created a permanent portal between Heaven and Hell, he has unleashed the most powerful enemy Hell has ever faced!
Could Diablo have had an opportunity to take this into account? I mean, by the time he's in Heaven, Hell's numbers are decimated; he has no strong allies; and he's fighting Nephalem, which is Baal's fault! He's essentially alone. He's had his ass handed to him numerous times, so was becoming the Prime Evil really the solution to all these things?
I suppose you're right. Unless Diablo had yet another card up his sleeve, why go through all this trouble just to fail? Perhaps his failure is essentially "programmed" into the fabric of reality?
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Be it through hallowed grounds or lands of sorrow
All in the Forger's wake is left bereft and fallow
Is the residuum worth the cost of destruction and maiming;
Or is the shaping a culling and exercise in taming?
The road's goal is the dark Origin of Being
But be wary through what thickets it winds.
-Excerpt from the Litany of Residuum;
As Translated by He Who Brings Order
I agree with you when you said that destroying heaven can solve the problems. However, I think heaven was not destoried becasue it could be something we gamers do in Diablo 4.
I suppose you're right. Unless Diablo had yet another card up his sleeve, why go through all this trouble just to fail? Perhaps his failure is essentially "programmed" into the fabric of reality?
Because by having the idiot hero kill him, all of the evils are back into play again, not stuck in a soulstone somewhere. Come to think of it, how the hell did Adria even get the souls of the three prime evils? They made a huge point in D2 about smashing the soulstones to permanently banish the three, and somehow Adria's supposedly grabbed their souls anyway?
Jesus christ, both D3 and SC2 are full of gaping plot holes. Metzen's really been going downhill lately :-/
Diablo is the Lord of Terror, and if he's taking his job seriously, then he doesn't need hope, justice, or valor around. He does need sentient beings to terrorize, hence destroying everything would be a bad idea, but the heavens themselves are not needed. Humans/Nephalim were born from angels and demons, but they are self-sufficient now. Justice and Terror lies within humanity itself, it does not depend on the continuing existence of the pure expressions of those concepts.
The angels in Act IV had a funny way of confusing these expressions with the real thing. For example, when Diablo captured Auriel, the Angels seemed to literally feel like the virtue of Hope itself was lost. The Nephalim (your hero) proved them wrong by continuing on with downright arrogant confidence, and Tyreal himself as a human eventually overcame his despair as well. When Diablo is defeated, Auriel foolishly exclaims "Evil itself has been defeated forever!", to which my monk wisely replied "evil is not so easily defeated." Again the angels only see good and evil in their pure external expressions, and do not realize that all these possibilities for different goods and evil lie within the self, particularly for the human nephalim. (Even angels have been shown to fall though.)
So basically, all diablo *needs* is the freedom to terrorize all creation. IIRC his goal was only to corrupt the crystal arch, to rob angels of their power and more importantly their ability to reincarnate, then possibly twist it to his own ends to create/enslave corrupt angels. These in turn would serve the purpose of spreading terror over all creation, with Diablo as the de-facto ruler over one mega-hell. Again no perfect balance is needed here, you just need to let sentient beings have the ability to survive, life can still be very hellish within those parameters if it's always dangerous and terrifying. (Way too many real world examples in history and the modern world of how this works....)
Maybe creation itself has some kind of auto-correcting tendency that makes this whole thing cyclical (it is after all, the Eternal conflict), but I doubt it was part of Diablo's plan. If what Adria said about the soulstone is true, Diablo is kinda screwed now, the seven evils might emerge separately from the abyss at this rate. Unless he planned to be reborn as Tathamet or something equally silly (I don't think there is any way we could fight Tathamet in a Diablo game.)
No. Diablo did not succeed. To suggest that Diablo doesn't really want to destroy Heaven because then there would be nothing left to do is based on no evidence, in fact, it contradicts Diablo's threat to Imperious that he is going to destroy Heaven.
Diablo at this point is Team Rocket, blasting off again.
It is mentionned like 5 sec in to whole game, Adria 'marked' the evils before they died so they would go to the black soulstone automaticly after...YEAH RIGHT one of worst plot hole of the story. This whole black soul stone plot was only engineered so that metzen could create a super diablo and that all the evils could take a part in the story somehow. Piece of shit if you ask me. Like putting a girl in the center of a the plot: "studies say this is big big money"...Making me sad again
I agree with you when you said that destroying heaven can solve the problems. However, I think heaven was not destoried becasue it could be something we gamers do in Diablo 4.
OR...in world of diablo. I don't even want to have this discussion since the lore and story have been raped and want to be alone now. Leave diablo alone.
She didn't actually state that she marked them before they died. The dialogue where you ask about her quest she tells us that she spent the last twenty years preparing to trap the souls within the back soulstone. Twenty years is a long time and with Diablo's participation in her plans, and his knowledge of how a soulstone functions, this isn't a stretch at all.
I don't know why you're against it... If you also ask Tyrael about the Prime Evil right at the end, he responds that the Evils came from Tathamet, and what Diablo is trying to achieve is a reunification of an Evil close to Tathamet. Would you have preferred it if Leah was an ugly little man...? What difference does it make what gender she is?
It all makes perfect sense, its all within the bounds of the Diablo series, and its well laid out. Just because a scant few refuse to like it and loathes to place the sum of all parts together doesn't mean the its bad. It just means you didn't like the story... that's it.
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Burning Hells vs High Heavens
The Greater Evils' Motivations
Diablo's brothers Ball and Mephisto are hell-bent on destroying Heaven and its denizens; Baal for the sheer ecstasy of destruction, Mephisto because he just wants to see the world(s) burn. Diablo however is a maestro of terror and fear. Unlike Mephisto, he does not derive pleasure from conquest in and of itself, but rather the terror and leads up to it and its after effects.
Diablo has reached the top of the summit, bringing Heaven to its knees and corrupting the Crystal Arch. However, if he had succeeded in achieving Heaven's demise, the conquest would have become complete and there would be nothing left to do. In destroying Heaven he would destroy any motivation to exist; in destroying the Arch he would destroy himself.
But he didn't, and so the Arch survived, as does any future prospect of terror. Fear lives so long as does hope, and vice versa.
The Instinctive Eternal Conflict
Thoughts on the cosmology
However, the Diablo we face is the sum total of all evil: The Prime Evil (ostensibly) seeks to tear friends and allies apart (Mephisto, Belial); seeks wonton destruction (Baal); sows fear and discord (Diablo); seeks to debase and demoralize the enemy (Azmodan, Andariel); and inflict pain (Duriel).
If all of this had been accomplished, neither Hell nor Heaven would remain. Which also makes me wonder about the "instinct" imbedded in both Angels and Demons. They came from nothingness (tohu wa-bohu, or ex nihilo), and apparently have the instinct to return to that initial state that birthed the One Anu, which manifests as war (or, in the greater scheme of things, perhaps a form of self-destruction. This theme is called chaoskampf in mythological academia). This pulls upon most every creation myth in the world, but most closely resembles Babylonian myth or Sumerian myth and the Enuma Elish.
Nephalem and Balance
Diablo's symbiosis with Humanity
Taking all of this together, Diablo proves again to be unique among is demonic brethren. All of Hell wants to completely destroy Heaven, and with it see all of reality burn; Diablo, however, very well may want to break away from that strategy and simply pursue a never-ending cycle of terror and hope.
This cycle, however, pits him against the Nephalem. These beings achieve the balance necessary to stave off complete and utter destruction of Heaven. Which strikes a strange juxtaposition against the Eternal Conflict. The Conflict manifests Heaven's and Hell's inability to live together, whereas Inarius' and Lilith's rebellion saw the exact opposite, seeing a merge between the two. This merger brought about a world peopled by beings that are one step closer to the whole, a step closer to the all-encompassing Anu.
So we now have two competing theories: An instinct to achieve the nothingness that existed at the beginning of time, as manifest in the Eternal Conflict. And a yearning for unity, demonstrated by the birth of the Nephalem (which in turn birthed humanity). Psychologically speaking, these are comparable to the Thanatos Drive and Eros Drive, respectively.
These appear completely opposite and contradictory. Can both or either be true?
There's one more interesting theory from classical philosophy I might invoke to resolve this, if at least in a limited fashion. The phenomenon of entelechy. This is the continual becoming or striving. When this ends, motivation and meaning cease to exist, and that would be as true if someone achieved something just as much if they grew disinterested with achieving something.
In Summary
I believe Diablo achieved his goals. He spread terror throughout the three worlds. However, had he destroyed Heaven, there would no longer be any room for fear as hope and life would cease. Therefor, to continue being -- to continue to embody fear -- he must "fail', only to arise anew in another form.
Sorry, I feel I haven't properly explained myself here. These are just my thoughts and ramblings. I just really like philosophy and mythology. If you've made it this far, thanks for reading. Now go outside.
All in the Forger's wake is left bereft and fallow-Excerpt from the Litany of Residuum;
As Translated by He Who Brings Order
Doesn't it, though?
The Worldstone's influence kept humanity's Nephalem powers in check. With that destroyed, their legacy resurfaced in a scant few (the characters we play in the game). The Three Primes had always been destroyed by groups of talented warrior humans, but Diablo's gambit saw himself reincarnated as THE Prime Evil, embodying all the greater lords of Hell. What he failed to take into account was that Nephalem legacy awakening and pursuing him into Heaven.
Now we have a unified Prime Evil facing off against a group of warriors birthed from both Angels and Demons and embodying the best of each. The battle that took place at the Crystal Arch had to be titanic; I don't see how it survived the conflict at all.
Which brings me to the Worldstone itself. In the end, what did Baal really accomplish? Though he created a permanent portal between Heaven and Hell, he has unleashed the most powerful enemy Hell has ever faced!
Could Diablo have had an opportunity to take this into account? I mean, by the time he's in Heaven, Hell's numbers are decimated; he has no strong allies; and he's fighting Nephalem, which is Baal's fault! He's essentially alone. He's had his ass handed to him numerous times, so was becoming the Prime Evil really the solution to all these things?
I suppose you're right. Unless Diablo had yet another card up his sleeve, why go through all this trouble just to fail? Perhaps his failure is essentially "programmed" into the fabric of reality?
All in the Forger's wake is left bereft and fallow-Excerpt from the Litany of Residuum;
As Translated by He Who Brings Order
Because by having the idiot hero kill him, all of the evils are back into play again, not stuck in a soulstone somewhere. Come to think of it, how the hell did Adria even get the souls of the three prime evils? They made a huge point in D2 about smashing the soulstones to permanently banish the three, and somehow Adria's supposedly grabbed their souls anyway?
Jesus christ, both D3 and SC2 are full of gaping plot holes. Metzen's really been going downhill lately :-/
The angels in Act IV had a funny way of confusing these expressions with the real thing. For example, when Diablo captured Auriel, the Angels seemed to literally feel like the virtue of Hope itself was lost. The Nephalim (your hero) proved them wrong by continuing on with downright arrogant confidence, and Tyreal himself as a human eventually overcame his despair as well. When Diablo is defeated, Auriel foolishly exclaims "Evil itself has been defeated forever!", to which my monk wisely replied "evil is not so easily defeated." Again the angels only see good and evil in their pure external expressions, and do not realize that all these possibilities for different goods and evil lie within the self, particularly for the human nephalim. (Even angels have been shown to fall though.)
So basically, all diablo *needs* is the freedom to terrorize all creation. IIRC his goal was only to corrupt the crystal arch, to rob angels of their power and more importantly their ability to reincarnate, then possibly twist it to his own ends to create/enslave corrupt angels. These in turn would serve the purpose of spreading terror over all creation, with Diablo as the de-facto ruler over one mega-hell. Again no perfect balance is needed here, you just need to let sentient beings have the ability to survive, life can still be very hellish within those parameters if it's always dangerous and terrifying. (Way too many real world examples in history and the modern world of how this works....)
Maybe creation itself has some kind of auto-correcting tendency that makes this whole thing cyclical (it is after all, the Eternal conflict), but I doubt it was part of Diablo's plan. If what Adria said about the soulstone is true, Diablo is kinda screwed now, the seven evils might emerge separately from the abyss at this rate. Unless he planned to be reborn as Tathamet or something equally silly (I don't think there is any way we could fight Tathamet in a Diablo game.)
Diablo at this point is Team Rocket, blasting off again.
"I'll get you next time, Gadget, next time."
I don't know why you're against it... If you also ask Tyrael about the Prime Evil right at the end, he responds that the Evils came from Tathamet, and what Diablo is trying to achieve is a reunification of an Evil close to Tathamet. Would you have preferred it if Leah was an ugly little man...? What difference does it make what gender she is?
It all makes perfect sense, its all within the bounds of the Diablo series, and its well laid out. Just because a scant few refuse to like it and loathes to place the sum of all parts together doesn't mean the its bad. It just means you didn't like the story... that's it.