Blizzard has people who ensure the swathes of lore across World of Warcraft, Diablo, and more are kept in mind when new stories are being written. One of them, though, had the unenviable task of hand-transcribing all the words said in the first two Diablo games, including the Lord of Destruction expansion.
Speaking to PCGamer in the latest issue of its magazine (on sale now), Blizzard's senior manager of lore Sean Copeland explains that, before 2005, the developer didn't really keep tabs on the internal history of its games. As such, there wasn't much documentation about the world the first two Diablo games painted, leading to a brutal catch-up task.
While Blizzard clearly goes to great lengths these days to keep lore chronicled, the odd retconning isn't off the table. Diablo 1 flows into its sequel quite neatly - felling the titular beast in Diablo 1 leads the hero you play to becoming corrupted in Diablo 2, making them the villain. The third game, however, makes some changes as that same hero becomes Prince Aidan, who is the eldest son of a King that Diablo ensnared to kick off the events of the original game.
"What I've found when it comes to creative sessions is the word no, or being 'lore police, as it were, usually doesn't help the creative process," Copeland says. "We want to make sure that we give [writers] the suggestions to make their story work, because at the end of the day, we're all trying to tell cool stories."
If you fancy reading about the history of Diablo in full, you can catch the latest issue of PCGamer.
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