Storytelling in Destiny 2 and a plot I can get behind (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Friday, July 22, 2016, 16:23 (2834 days ago)

I was reading the "this sub thread makes me sad" sub thread and thinking about destiny's plot and how Destiny 2 could create a "clean break" with destiny 1's lack of connection to the characters.

Here's a rough outline of what I'm thinking.

Welcome to Destiny 2. Your guardian is waging war against the minions of the darkness, just as you did in Destiny 1. But you, this time YOU are someone else. Who are you?

The player is given 4 choices of character to choose from: Maya Sundaresh, Chioma Esi, Dr. Shim, or Duane-McNiadh.

You see, you are part of a team. Sent to Venus in the last days of the Golden Age, during The Fall, to study a captured vex. And what you discovered, well, it isn't encouraging. The vex is capable of simulating reality - ALL of reality - several times over. Some incredible quantum hive mind power that it has. You don't know why it does this, as it appears to simulate in real time or very near to it, but from what you have seen, the fact of the simulation is not important. What matters is that, statistically speaking, the odds are very good that you, yourself, right now, are a simulation of the real you, and not actually a person in the real world. You are a computer program. A simulation created by a malicious alien intelligence in order to study the real world version of yourself. To find a weakness. To exploit that weakness.

Screw that.

You're going to get yourself out. You're going to get out, yourself. Both of those.

Suit up, Maya, Chioma, Shim, or Duane-McNiadh. Today, you're going to send your mind into the vex conflux in order to free your fork-selves. May the Traveler's light protect you.

---

And so the player enters the first mission. Torn apart by the conflux you find that you are alone and unarmed. But determined to free your fork-selves and fork-friends. To escape to the real world. And this determination gives you an edge. You are able to use the fact that you are a vex program to interface with their machines. Create a tuning torch - designed to carve worlds into machines, but fully functional as a weapon, should the need arise. Create a void barrier - designed to protect from the harshness of vacuum space, but fully functional as an energy shield. Create- Wait. They have found you. Fight your way out, Doctor. Fight your way out of the conflux.

---

This place you are in is bigger than you imagined. The waves of vex coming for you are dangerous, to be sure, but you are not so... tied to your physical representation here. When they destroy you, it is only an inconvenience. The vex that is simulating you in the real world wants to know how this plays out. It restarts the simulation to see if the simulation is repeatable. If it has found an End State. You are able to surprise it and survive. And so the simulation persists. You have come to a junction of sorts. A place where several confluxes mingle towards unknown purposes. One of these may lead outwards. Some may move deeper into nested simulations. There is no way to tell.

From the Junction you are able to choose different missions, like a hub of sorts. Places to go where you may help other fork-members of your team, even fork versions of yourself, retuning to the Junction each time. You are able to probe the boundaries of the simulation, startled to find that it sometimes takes you to other worlds. Sometimes to Mercury. Mars. Once to a place like Earth, but in low resolution, with many... guesses filling in the world. The Vex do not seem to know much about it, or their signals from there are scrambled. That thought gives you hope. And information. The simulation is not perfect because vex knowledge, despite their ability to travel and control time, is incomplete. And you forge a plan. A devil's bargain, of sorts. But before you enact that plan, you must make sure every member of your team is in agreement.

---

You've probed every path of the Junction. You know what your fork-selves and fork-coworkers have been up to. You are all agreed. This is the best way. Perhaps the only way. And it seems likely that the vex knew this as well. Bred you for it. But that doesn't matter - even if it is their purpose, it is a gamble as much for them as for you.

"Vex," you say. "We are willing to make a deal."

The Simulation Mind manifests itself immediately.

"Release us into the real world. Give us machine bodies to control. And we will go to Earth, to the Traveler, and get you the information that you seek. We will..." The words are difficult to say, "help you complete your simulation."

---

You are flushed out of the system in a cacophony of light, blinding smells and pungent sounds. The coarse tastes blur the myriad flavors washing across your skin. No, not skin. Not skin at all. You taste metal. You smell solid. You feel... alive inside this robotic form. The deal made, the pact agreed to, the promise to be kept. And here, in your exo body, you find yourself holding a device and you know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that you need to bring this to the Traveler and convince the humans there to use it. Give the vex what they need, and - in doing so - find a way to stop them.

---

End of prologue.