I am still not finished with Lord of Hatred, but I think I am far enough to be able to criticize this aspect, and that is that while they managed to weave the arcs of the character beautifully with the in-game story, I think Adreona is not good in general, because she is ill defined and largely portrayed in a book (where is also not a good character) and the kind of emotional weight they want to achieve with her and Lorath cannot be achieved unless she is a good character.
If I didn't read the book, the Lorath cinematic would've fallen flat for me, because while he tells you that she means a lot to him and they were more than friends, you don't have any grasp on it. There isn't even a scene between them before it, which would've solved 90% of the issues I have with this. I know there can be an argument that it's more dramatic and heartbreaking if this was the first moment they meet after decades, but you absolutely have nothing to go for in understanding why Lorath is as broken as he is about it, aside from killing a person and playing into Mephisto's hand.
Adreona doesn't get to be a character at any point, she is a plot device to deliver more suffering for Lorath, and while Neyrelle is also used for the same reason, she is at least a character who has an arc. Adreona in "The Lost Horadrim" also has no arc, she herself begins and ends the book relatively the same, with the only change she goes through being that she now likes Lorath a bit more and gives him and trust. She already suspected Myrina being evil, she already wanted the best for Skovos and she was a Captain so realistically she was prepared to be queen. It's not like she was friends with Myrina, so she got betrayed, or she was a nobody who didn't want the throne suddenly have it thrust upon her, she didn't have to work to become the character she is at the end of the book, she just had to trust and like Lorath.
She is a non-character, she is everything I have issue with when it comes to "strong female characters" as in just making them mean and tough without giving them an arc that doesn't revolve around them awarding the male protagonist with romance and/or sex.
I liked the Lorath cinematic with Adreona and Mephisto, but I feel that if I didn't read the book and I don't have extreme goodwill and love for Lorath, I would've shrugged it off as "Okay, now what?" kinda thing.
The emotional impact is not there. They don't even have a romance in the book. They have a one night stand that Lorath mythicizes to himself because it represents his desire for normalcy and a simple life, which he was robbed from by trauma and the fact that he gave up everything for the Horadrim, only for Tyrael and Donan to both leave him.
Even if what he had with Adreona was not real romance, we should've seen his yearning and his romantization of her that doesn't exist in reality so much earlier. And I say all of this as someone who love Diablo 4's writing. I don't need big things to understand the scenes. You don't need to know anything about Tyrael and Lorath to understand how much Tyrael means to him, you just need to read that note that's basically drunken scribbles wondering why Tyrael abandoned him and wanting him back. You know everything that Lorath doesn't voice about Neyrelle when you see the bottles near her body and realize he was drinking himself to stupor because of the pain from losing her.
Neyrelle (and as a foil, Elias), Tyrael and Donan already serve as Lorath's emotional core. They already represent regrets, fears and unspoken words he wishes he could tell them all before it was too late and he lost them. Everyone he loves leaves him and he blames himself for all of it. They are both his greatest joy and his greatest pain.
Adreona fails spectacularly at filling in this role for Lorath in the final stretch of his arc and that's what bothers me. It could've been better. She just feels so thrust in and artificially engineered without absolute commitment to either romance or one sided yearning. Everything she represents to Lorath is done hundred times better by the other characters in his life. And if I didn't read the book, I would've come out of that scene feeling like Lorath's reaction is equivalent of being served jury duty and not someone killing the woman he loved for 30 years. Because I don't have the later fact presented emotionally to me at any point leading to the cinematic.
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