"We want to unhide the fun of destiny..." (Destiny)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Tuesday, May 23, 2017, 18:17 (2529 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

Let me say up front that my reaction to this is purely theoretical, and I of course will do my best to keep an open mind when I actually play the game. That said...

The paragraph you quoted does not inspire confidence in me with regards to the writing or characters in D2. It makes it sound as if the characters will all be 1-note, 1 dimensional "tones", and that they hope to fill out the range of tones by having different characters for each of them. This is why I hate Cayde in all of D2's marketing so far: he's always "mr sarcastic joke guy", no matter what's going on around him.
The thing is, if you really track all of Cayde's dialogue throughout D1, he doesn't joke that often. It's noticeable when he does because he and ghost are the only 2 characters that ever show humour at all, but he really is serious most of the time.

Yeah, that was my same feeling towards this line:

"You know, we have a character like Cayde who's a funny, charming rogue, but then Ikora is very serious and cerebral, and Zavala is very action oriented and, again, very serious. So, we start with those three, then we ask, "well, what are the holes that we have in the character tapestry?"

That sounds like they're wanting to add more archetypes rather than fleshing out the characters, while flanderizing the existing ones to help differentiate them from the new characters.

I definitely noticed the change between Cayde's all-business dialogue in the Dust Palace strike, to his awkward shoehorning in the Will of Oryx redux strike.
I love me some Nathan Fillion, but it seems like studios are all trying to capitalize on his snark rather than on his distinct voice and mannerisms.

Good writing usually involves rounding out every single character so that they each portray a full range of emotions. Some should obviously lean more heavily in 1 direction than others; that's natural. Some people in real life are more serious, or joke more often, or are quicker to anger. But what Bungie has said and shown so far is "when we want a moment of humour, Cayde will appear. When we want things to be super serious, you'll hear from Zavala". So even if Cayde only appears now and then, it is still eye-roll-inducing if all he ever does is crack lame jokes.

An excellent example of an aversion to this one-dimensional approach is found in Warfr Borderlands, with Patricia Tannis. She's an insane character who spouts out non-sequitors and ramblings, and has a history of reacting... poorly... when talking to people. She could have just been written off as "the crazy NPC questgiver who says random things", but she is never defined by this one trait. She is a tragic character who knows she is insane, and who feels loneliness and knows that her behavior has left her with very few friends. In the first Borderlands, a (fantastically-written) sidequest follows her descent into insanity, so you get to know two versions of her well before you ever meet her in person.
During an optional side-mission in an optional region of the map in Borderlands 2, she tells you the history of the Dahl Corp. on Pandora (which is the company that she worked for that abandoned her and many of the people on the planet). This quest helps further explain how she is still very intelligent, and capable of rationalizing the world around her. There's more development, but the point is that they avoid one-note characters very well, and Bungie used to, but has begun moving away from that in favor of making the characters more exaggerated versions of themselves.

But again, it could totally be the case that Destiny 2's writing is nothing like what I fear it is. Most of what I'm basing this off is marketing, which may not be an accurate representation of the game.

Like I said, Just look at how the characters change (or get zero development) over the course of D1. I can't say that I'd prefer Joe Staten's boring characters to the one-note cartoon characters that we're slowly moving towards, but I'm hoping for more. At least a good balance between characters with depth, and those with cheesy dialogue.

That stuff aside, it's a very cool article.