Friends, I have a new obsession. A sparkling dopamine oasis l that I just can't tear myself from for more than a few agonizing minutes at any given time. Oh, Diablo 4? It’s alright, yeah. Quite fun. But it’s recently taken a backseat to something much more illustrious. His name, the subtitles inform me, is Denysov, and he lives in Diablo IV's realm of Sanctuary. He is really a lone man, having a lone hammer, who, despite nightmare and terror unfolding throughout him, come hell or harsh splinters, just creates his lovely door all darn day.

Denysov is definitely an NPC having a single animation loop, and I cannot start to explain just how much I admire this excellent human and the stoic, yet chirpy, demeanor. There are what seem like two flayed corpses dangling from the nearby post, but so far as Denysov is worried, they might as well be considered a couple of plastic bags caught on the spiked fence. But it isn’t apathy for his fellow Sancturian sufferers that grants him such lucid and serene concentration, no! The opposite actually: he knows the best way to honor the departed would be to keep the wheels of industry turning tirelessly in their stead.

He’s a folksy, working-class hero. The kind of salt-of-the-earth, splinter-fingered, chapped-lipped cherub that Bob Dylan might have written a song about. Oh, Mr. Door Makin’ Man, create a door for me personally, he’d sing. Silence Robert! We’d all say. We’re hearing the sonorous, deeply inspiring reverberations of hammer on wood, something you may never hope to emulate, you crusty bunch.

As we’re given so little information, it’s our duty as scholars of Door Makin’ Denysov to analyze each wholesome utterance he exhales from his wonderful lips (each as ornate yet practical as miniature, perfectly made doors to his pious soul), and therefore glean whatever insight we are able to from the lone paean his Door Makin’ Majesty deigns to impart here. Let’s unpack it, shall we?

“Been focusing on this door for days…”

For days, he admits that! Truly an artisan’s artisan. My secret suspicion is the fact that Denysov, skilled because he is, could easily finish the door inside a single day, but opts instead to every night retire towards the land of dreams, wherein angelic choruses inspire fresh flourishes every morning. To Denysov, a door is not a door without a minimum of three divine visions inspiring little fish or whatever around the corners, perhaps a handle within the shape of a swan’s delicate neck.

“Not much else to complete ‘round here.”

Again, we’d be foolish to mistake this apparent apathy for many sorts of malaise from the soul, for which Denyson is actually exhibiting here is the kind of Zen mastery you’d normally have to sequester yourself from the remainder of society for many years to achieve. Denison knows there’s plenty that may be done. He’s clearly exhibited the kind of creative mindset that informs us he’s never been bored for any single minute of his blessed existence. Instead, Denison recognizes that the time has come to create a door, and therefore, the planet around him has simply ceased to exist.

“Even less to market. Hm. Should fetch a pleasant price.”

You observe that. A nice price. Not a high price. Not a tidy sum, or some other such covetous colloquialism. In his perfect soul, the particular money plays a really secondary fiddle towards the knowledge the transaction itself denotes a shared moment of appreciation over such solid craftsmanship. The gold is ephemeral, naught but trinketry within the glow from the riches that form when two folk stand there, chins ‘twixt thumb and forefinger, inside a silence so robustly angelic that the unspoken phrase “Yep. Bloody nice door, that,” cannot pierce it. A nice price indeed! Should all of us be lucky enough to get fetch a cost so nice for the endeavors one crisp winter morning? And even because the armies of hell bear recorded on us, and goatmen chew off our ears probably! We would then, I am certain, finally know - oh not only repeat what like foolish, gaudy parrots, but truly know! - that truth and sweetness need not be mutually exclusive.