gamerdad When I play games like Diablo IV I often need to take a beat and try to remind myself that these games are designed for teenagers. Sure, we lifetime gamers in our 40s still dive into big titles like this and get lost in the fantasy of bashing baddies with our big fantasy weapons, but really, they are narratively simple for a reason.

I’ve been mildly surprised by D4 tho.

I mean, yeah, I’ve been bouncing back and forth between the main story quests and the side-questing (to grow my character) but for a brute force slugfest, the story is actually pretty solid.

Too, the side quests are anything but raw fetch quests. There are entangled narrative arcs and plots with reputational impacts. You are not just running off to find random object X but rather you are, say, replacing objects that got broken in previous quests to help characters with questionable motives, if you so choose.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying games designed for kids can’t be narratively interesting, but often the plot is there as much to force skill grinding or whatever as it is to tell s an actually interesting story.

Heck, sure… maybe D4 isn’t gonna win any writing awards. But it has been pleasantly and surprisingly compelling to pay attention to the story in this one.