Kotaku has posted an article based on a conversation with Chris Metzen about the just-released
Book of Cain. The piece gets the release date wrong, (likely due to Amazon.com’s “out of stock” date) but there are some nice tidbits from Metzen about the creation or the book, Blizzard’s possible plans for creating similar books to cover the lore and history of SC and Warcraft, and more. Here’s a quote:
Once Metzen determined Dille was game for creating the book they rolled up their sleeves and got to work. “We sat down for dozens of hours, just downloading everything,” said Metzen. “He really hit the ground running and tried to bring it all down to a human level.”
…The introduction to the Book of Cain reads as if Deckard is saying goodbye to his niece, Leah, perhaps passing on the torch to the younger generation. Is this foreshadowing? Is Deckard going to die in Diablo III?
“While I wouldn’t care to speculate on the specifics,” Metzen told me, “I’d say his research is starting to get to him. He’s had a heavy heart but here he reads through his journal and considers his life and Leah’s future. In this world of darkness that doesn’t speak well for mankind, ultimately there is great hope; there might be something beyond worth striving for.”
I’d say Cain’s death is pretty likely, and not just because he’s 4000 years old. Blizzard has long-since established that Diablo III (and the expansions) will wrap up this particular chapter/sequence/series of story in the game. So really, wouldn’t you want closure and some finale for Cain and the other important NPCs, if we’re never going to see them again in Diablo 4, since it will (presumably) be set hundreds of years before or after the series of events in D1/D2/D3?