u/Dix9-69

It took me way too long to realize it was someone showing a baby turtle to their grandpa.

As time has passed it's becoming more and more glaring the complete lack of reference to the player characters from Diablo 3 in Diablo 4. Every Diablo game up until 4 has at least in passing referenced the player characters from the previous installment.

Famously Diablo 2 features all three of the original characters from Diablo 1 as boss fights. With the Rogue being the first boss in the game Blood Raven, the Sorcerer being the Summoner in the Arcane Sanctuary and obviously the Warrior becomes Diablo.

Then in 3 there are a few direct references to the player characters from like the Wizard is the D2 Sorcerer's apprentice, Kormac's Templar Order was founded by the D2 Paladin, and Xul the D2 necro is referenced to be the necromancer Mehtans master. The male barbarian was originally going to be the same guy from D2 but they scrapped it because it just made him too different from all the other characters.

But for D4 we really don't get anything at all. In Hawezar we get the side quest for Tomyris to inherit the name Johanna from her dead master, but it seems like she's probably at least two generations removed so to speak. In Vessel of Hatred one of the strongholds ends up uncovering the gateway to the Necropolis which was the home of the D3 Necromancer that was destroyed by Malthael's reapers, but no mention of the character is actually made in any of the side quests there. Also Lyndon is chilling at Backwater but he doesn't really refer back to D3 outside of just existing.

My head canon for Tyrael's before Vessel of Hatred absence was that he went away to hunt down the corrupted Nephalem as it was kind of foreshadowed in the ending slides of Reaper of Souls where he talks about his fear of them falling to corruption. But now that Tyrael is back, we know that he was actually just chilling out in the West helping them rebuild and forgot to check a calendar all this time. I was kind of hoping for even a throwaway line to Lorath about the player character reminding him of the Nephalem or any tiny morsel of a reference. But we got nothing instead.

My assumption is either they couldn't find a good way to canonize them in a satisfying way outside of HoTS and Diablo Immortal or they felt Diablo 3 was a stain on the franchise and wanted to remind people as little of it as possible - which I think is likely and a shame. Also, kind of rich considering Vessel of Hatred is for sure the new low point for a lot of us. Very glad Blizzard learned from their mistake and knocked it out of the park with Lord of Hatred.

I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on this, do you wish there were direct references to the Nephalem or do you prefer the route Blizzard has taken?

I can’t be the only one to think that the inevitable fate of Tyrael is going to be the original concept for the intro of Reaper of Souls.

For those who don’t know it was originally planned for Tyrael to be killed by Imperius in the intro of Reaper of Souls but Blizzard got cold feet because they thought it was just too dark. I think now especially after LoH this is going to be an inevitable rug pull to take the fan base off guard. Like we go to Westmarch thinking we are going to face Baal or Diablo and BAM here’s the high heavens being big pieces of shit again.

Either way, Exarchs randomly showing up at the horadric vault to the confusion of Tyrael and Lorath definitely hint of some angelic shenanigans forthcoming, like maybe even Malthael being reincarnated in the Arch because he was still an Angel when he was killed. Tons of potential ahead and I’m very excited.

Edit: rewatched the behind the scenes video for ROS and it turns out I was misremembering Tyrael dying, he was actually only supposed to be beaten within an inch of life by Imperius and Blizzard didn't want to kill him because he was just too important to the story. Although I still think Imperius killing him in the future is going to be a very likely outcome for our boy.