A Good SF Story (Destiny)

by dogcow , Hiding from Bob, in the vent core., Thursday, July 21, 2016, 21:16 (2835 days ago) @ squidnh3

I largely agree with most of what you just said. :)

At some point, I think you have to recognize the limitations of a story that requires you to shoot your way from here to there, X times over. Destiny is an FPS, and it's pretty darn good at that, so it's hard to justify moving away from those elements that make it a fun game to play.

Yes, definitely. I struggle with events/tasks/reasons/whatnots in shooters feeling very very contrived. I felt that Marathon and Halo told a good story with the player experiencing what was happening and being a driving character. If you boil those games down they just end up being the Stanly Parable. Push this button because, well, that's what you're told to do. I'm not sure what the secret sauce is that allows a game to transcend Doom's go get the red key to open the red door and become an engaging interactive (involved?) story, but Marathon & Halo had it, despite their tasks basically being kill stuff, get the key, & push the button.

I'm of the opinion that Vanilla Destiny had (most of?) the ingredients for that transcendent secret sauce, but forgot to mix them together. I felt I was doing stuff and experiencing action in a universe that has a deep lore, but I missed the flavor. I blame this on the rewrite (I think even a cheesy story would have been better than what we ended up with). It seems Destiny has improved with age, Bungie has been recovering (with TTK), and I'm glad to see they're having fun with Destiny, I just don't want them to give up on giving us a good story and reason for the action. Please keep trying to pull us into the story.

Personally, I enjoy the balance Destiny now has between story and gameplay. Most of the real interesting stuff happens behind the scenes in the past or the future, as described by the Grimoire, and it's not limited by the few actions my character can take in the game. My Guardian just happens to be a bit player in an extraordinary SF drama, and I don't mind that information being conveyed to me by way of text story (and in many ways actually prefer it that way, as it's certainly my most common way of interfacing with an SF story). I still maintain the Books of Sorrow story is an extremely impressive work of science fiction, even outside of its connection to Destiny.

Books of Sorrow was excellent. Now, I don't think all the grimoire needs to be "in game", but that type of story needs to be mixed into the game. They're doing better, I think they still have room to improve, but they're in a "good enough" spot now.