It doesn’t sit right with me, and every subsequent playthrough has just served to D2R Items make the moment feel worse, especially when there’s an obvious ending for Donan that would have been far more fitting.

I get why Donan had to die, sort of. All three of our companions make an incredible sacrifice to stop Lilith in the end. Lorath makes a fateful deal with the Tree of Whispers, offering his head to the tree where it will hang for all eternity in exchange for knowledge of Lilith’s position.

Neyrelle, having been put in the unenviable position of choosing which demon to trap in the soulstone, Mephisto or Lilith, flees from Hell, condemned to wander Sanctuary looking for a way to safely deal with Mephisto’s soulstone once and for all.

When Donan gets stabbed, he slowly, painfully bleeds out in Lorath’s arms, dying without ever getting the satisfaction of knowing that Lilith has been defeated, his final words being a plea to the heavens, unsure if the sum of his deeds were ever truly enough. It’s interesting to consider who has the worst fate between the three of them, and the fact that they all sacrificed so much gives the story more weight.

At the same time, hasn’t Donan suffered enough buy D2R ladder items? Donan’s greatest act was defeating the demon Astaroth and trapping him in a soulstone, but he failed to protect the stone from Lilith when she laid siege to Eldhaime Keep.