Diablo novel
There are several Diablo novels released, giving further depth to the Diablo universe. Up until WWI 2008, these novels had no connection at all with the actual games, but Diablo III seems to be the first of the games with information from the books actually put in the game.
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Diablo novel is a Diablo novel, and may not be directly related to any of the games, but contains important lore information about the Diablo universe that is canon. |
Diablo Novels
These novels are all considered canon, though Demonsbane and Legacy of Blood tell smaller, self-contained stories that do not have much to do with or further the larger game plot. The Sin War trilogy develops much of the world lore and backstory of the creation of Sanctuary, plus the eternal struggle between the Burning Hells and High Heavens, and is considered the lore and canon that leads directly into the plot of Diablo III, with some small retcon adjustments here and there.
- Demonsbane (2000)
- Legacy of Blood (2001)
- The Black Road (2002)
- The Kingdom of Shadow (2002)
- Moon of the Spider (2005)
- Diablo Archive – The Sin War (2006, 2007, 2007)
Diablo Comics
One issue of a stand-alone Diablo comic was published in 2001. The stories were not connected to the larger game plot, instead serving to flesh out the world of Sanctuary in non-essential fashion.
- Tales of Sanctuary (2001)
Background
They are all official Blizzard Entertainment Novels of the Diablo universe and franchise. The first novel published was Diablo: Demonsbane as an ebook novella. Demonsbane did not sell well in ebook form (that was early in the dawn of that format), it was fairly widely read online, and its inclusion in the Diablo Archive has boosted awareness of the story.
Subsequent titles have sold fairly well, in paperback form.
Diablo 3 Plot
How tightly the story developments in the various novels will tie into the plot of Diablo 3 is not yet known, but they are pat of the same storyline. The events in the recent series of books took place thousands of years before the "current" events of Diablo 3, so the connection isn't direct. It likely will be for future Diablo Novels, though.
Leonard Boyarsky spoke on this in an October 2009 interview. [1]
- Hellforge:Speaking of background lore and all that, to what extent will the books from Richard Knaak’s Sin War Trilogy be a part Diablo III’s storyline/setting. I mean, are you guys taking anything from it at all?
- Leonard Boyarsky: Well, nothing specific. It happened 3,000 years before the events of the Diablo games, but it is… it was our attempt to really kind of get out there – you know, with some of the history of the world and kind of codify the lore to a certain degree. It’s been awhile since I read them. I’ve actually read all of them, and I helped during the process of them.
- Chris Metzen worked closely with him to make sure that his vision for what the Sin War was all about was really put forward there so the history is – maybe some of the particulars might not be exactly the way they end up being presented, but as far as the overall details and the overall thrust of the story, that’s lore... our core lore, I guess. And we’re – I don’t know if we’ll refer to them specifically, but that’s definitely like background into what we’re doing if that makes any sense.
What is Canon?
The D3 TEam has disowned plot and world events from some of the early Diablo products, and done fairly extensive retconing to even the plot developments of the earlier games themselves. This was necessary since the world story, as presented in Diablo I (and to a lesser extent in Diablo II) was largely invented as the game was being made. The creators didn't give a lot of thought to the larger world fiction, carried over a lot of real world material (the heavy Christian influence on Sanctuary's art and decoration), and didn't plan out the story very far ahead.
This drove the fiction into some dead ends, which had to be expanded upon greatly in the Sin War novel trilogy, and created some issues for the further expansion of the world story and plot in Diablo III and its planned sequels and external story properties. (More Diablo novels are planned, and likely other forms of media as seen in the Starcraft and Warcraft univeses; comics, manga, trading card games, and more?)
Bashiok addressed the state of the canon in the forum post in January 2011, in which he addressed an error on the first version of the world map, and their plans to address it. [2]
Not Hellfire
Hellfire, the Diablo I expansion pack produced by Sierra in conjunction with Blizzard North, is no longer considered canon. The game boss Na-Krul was always fairly obviously tacked on, but the Monk character seemed fairly organic to the Diablo world. No longer, and as a result the Diablo III Monk is considered an original character, with no connection to the Monk of Hellfire.[3]
Plus, it isn't the same class. We aren't taking an old class and updating it. The monk from Hellfire, and in fact the story and content of Hellfire, doesn't exist as far as game lore and story is concerned going into Diablo III.
They happen to share a name, the same as all of the other monk classes that have existed in all other RPG's since the beginning of time. It doesn't mean they're related kit/story/flavor wise.
