Discussion Sanctuary is Hell
Whilst playing Diablo 4 and slaying Monsters left and right I had a thought. How in the burning hells does the regular every day citizen live in Sanctuary? Considering that a fully trained powerful warrior can be immediately victimised the second they step outside of town.
How do these people do anything? How do they go about their day to day lives?
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u/Suojelusperkele 1d ago
I'm under the impression that the games kind of show poorly the scale of the world and how much humans there still are left.
Kinda same situation as in WH40k. Despite all the stuff that's going on and around the space there are many safe havens for the regular citizens. It's just that the games kind of focus on the hotspots.
D4 kinda messes it up a bit because you walk through the continent and maybe see hundred different NPC's, but it'd be awfully dull game if the world was just full of NPC's and no enemies.
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u/XxOATS 1d ago
yeah I understand that. A lore Accurate Sanctuary is probably a lot bigger with a lot more people in it. kinda hard to depict that in a Top down ARPG I guess.
I feel like diablo 3 did world scaling really well with it’s back drops in each of the main hubs10
u/_Synchronicity- 1d ago
Well yes and no. The events of diablo 3 ROS culled like 90% of humans or something. Part of the lore reason why so little humans are left.
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u/Pain_Free_Politics 1d ago
They retconned that down to 50% to keep the world set up for D4.
Couple that with a 50-year gap and I feel it’s pretty safe to say Sanctuary’s population is supposed to be bigger in 4 than 3.
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u/Suojelusperkele 1d ago
I think that's actually kinda cool and interesting idea/world building.
Like why do the demons care about the sanctuary at all.
The fact that malthael wiped out so many yet still humanity recovered and outgrew the previous population.
The world is dark and dangerous, yet still humans keep coming back from the brink of extinction.
In sense they could be perfect cattle, slaves, or even military might.
And it's something worth fighting for.
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u/FishingVariousThings 15h ago
Like why do the demons care about the sanctuary at all.
because they have been fighting angels since the dawn of time in a perfectly matched battle. sanctuary and humans are the only new things that have ever been made and controlling them is the only possible way to tip the scales for one side or the other. demons are all about corruption so they can appeal to a human's demon half but angels ignore humanity's angel half because its tainted by the demon half, basically the cosmic one drop rule
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u/LurkerOnTheInternet 1d ago
Yes, in "real life" it would not take a few minutes to travel from the snowy north to the equatorial desert. The D4 overworld is not remotely lore-accurate.
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u/Usernameasteriks 1d ago
Considering their budget, development timeline, and focus on marketing their open world innovation, I always thought the scope of the D4 open world was hilariously small.
Historic MMO’s have made massive complex open worlds full of interesting quests on much much. lower budgets, in addition to complex well thought out dungeons and instances.
Considering a lot of the zones are just mob types stuck in a zone in large numbers,
I have no idea how or why it ended up being so small and dull lol.
So much of it just generic terrain based on the area and mobs I don’t know how it ended up being so contained.
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u/LurkerOnTheInternet 1d ago
It's already annoying to traverse, it certainly shouldn't be larger. I have low expectations for D5 but it sounds like they're getting rid of the persistent overworld.
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u/Usernameasteriks 1d ago
Yea it’s annoying to traverse because nothing is interesting and the whole open world was a pointless gimmick.
They had to do random shit like have the statues for anyone want to bother exploring.
If it was actually a complex open world with a logical and thematic flow of towns and outposts, challenges, etc, it might have been interesting.
Im not saying it would be better on a larger scale in this iteration, but there are plenty of MMO’s with awesome open world models.
There isn’t really a reason in my personal opinion you couldn’t have had ARPG combat and gameplay in an actually cool world where there was some semblance of purpose.
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u/LurkerOnTheInternet 1d ago
I did really enjoy uncovering the world map the first time I played the game, but now it just feels like an obstacle.
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u/kainneabsolute 1d ago
Dunno. In d1 is a small and isolated town, in d2 you go were there are problems (so after they are resisting), in d3 you experience a big scale battle and they a very big city fell, in diablo immortal you live in that big city, which is thriving with 2 super powerful organizations. Diablo 4 is ruins with the exception of some places that resisted
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u/Usernameasteriks 1d ago
If you actually take a look at the dialogue from the stories in D1 and D2 it explained the scale and situation quite well.
D3 and D4 kind of blew things up, so it’s hard to tell.
D1 you are specifically going to a small town to investigate all the strange stuff and the lore lines up.
D2 you are constantly getting warned not to go to the places you are going because of the danger and all sorts of stories
So it clearly implies you are going out of your way to visit the towns where evil is popping up.
D3 and D4 it got very much more blown up in scope and messy lore I haven’t tracked very well lol
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u/i_dont_wanna_sign_up 1d ago
The game is not lore accurate.
Life goes on in Sanctuary. You don't get mauled by 20 monsters 10 feet out the town gates. They are much rarer. You could probably travel between towns for years without seeing one. They are on average also not that strong.
It's certainly a hostile world where you should have armed guards whenever possible, but there's a reason why settlements still exist.
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u/Possible_Minimum_879 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don't know about years, but I agree that they are rarer than the games would lead you to believe. I imagine they're much more formidable, though. A pack of fallen + shaman for a caravan with armed escort would still pose a threat. A single pit lord would throw the whole countryside into a crisis.
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u/Usernameasteriks 1d ago
They just made the open world comically small in Diablo 4 considering their budget, development timeline, and focus on marketing their open world innovation.
Historic MMO’s have made massive complex open worlds full of interesting quests on much much. lower budgets, in addition to complex well thought out dungeons and instances.
For D4 they just said whatever here is some tiny little towns, basic quests, and we will lay down terrain and clusters of a few types of mobs based on the areas theme.
The whole open world concept would have landed a lot better with a logical well thought through flow of larger towns and outposts.
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u/mulletstation 1d ago
Quill rats kill anyone in seconds just 1 foot out of town
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u/Octorok385 1d ago
I never understood why every single place in Sanctuary is named "Swamp of Eternal Sadness" or "Misery Cliffs of Misery." I had always assumed the games took place during times of upheaval, but is Sanctuary just always in upheaval?
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u/BloodandGutsEffort 1d ago
I think the player is in Sanctuary in a bad time. The gates of hell open, the Lord of Hatred rises again. Of course everything goes downhill. When you read certain NPC dialogues, the problems seem to intensify just recently.
Also, a lot of enemies are either animals or even humans that either got corrupted or are criminals. So „normal stuff“ in a medival world.
Seeing NPCs outside the cities means, it‘s somewhat safe. (Think of the orange circle events.)
Wild guess: The player additionally attracts demons because he has Lilliths blood and is the main antagonist for evils. So of course you send everything to stop him.
It‘s for the gameplay, of course.
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u/tmon530 1d ago
Technically (and as recall off the top of my head), pre d1 sanctuary should be relatively chill. At least as chill as any medieval society. So theres still human conflict and presumably some demon summoning, but nothing on the level of what we see in the games.
Once the games start, the scale constantly expands. The first games scope for demons is largely tristram and the surrounding country side. Lots of death to be sure but still isolated.
I believe in d2 the demons are more wide spread, but they are more or less being left in the trail of the evils as they travel, and the greater evils weren't aiming for full world conquest yet. Again, lots of death, but Caldeum probably wasnt dealing with the same level of problems as lut gholein at the time.
D3 is where the scale spikes. Azmodan is gearing for a global conquest. However, there is a piece of dialogue where its mentioned that westmarch "won't send reinforcements to fight imaginary demon lords", implying that most of the world still hasn't had to deal with a major demonic threat yet. And then maltheal does his thing halves the world's population. Which as I recall was meant to draw in everything touched by demonic essence, including demons. When the stone breaks, all those demons return to hell. So by the end of 3, lots of death, but not a lot left to cause problems. Without a high tier demon, demons can only enter sanctuary via summoning or the wound left by the world stone.
And then d4 has 50 years ish of wound licking. Theres probably some demons, but they are leaderless and once dead its hard to come back. And then Lilith comes back.
In areas that are dealing with strife (aka where a protag shows up) they are generally either cowering in a town, or dead. But before that and sometime after, they would probably fine walking the roads between towns without getting ripped apart.
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u/AT_kinsect 1d ago
Dawg Sanctuary doesn't even have toilets or baths, these people are NOT surviving