Why ask questions you already know the answer to? (Destiny)

by Malagate , Sea of Tranquility, Wednesday, September 27, 2017, 09:31 (2425 days ago) @ Cody Miller

The vast majority of significant artists fall into a particular mode. Typically this follows the length of their entire career. It's why filmmakers(Kubric, Cameron, Lynch, Nolan) and authors(Gibson, Mieville) and painters(Dali, basically everyone), but especially musicians, are lauded for reinventing themselves; breaking their own molds, as it were. I'll point out here that none of the greats(or merely "goods") I've mentioned have been completely successful. However many Avatar films are in production, and the fact that we just got news of even more Twin Peaks coming down the pike can be submitted as evidence of this.

This has been borne out in video games as well, obviously. See Kojima, see Ken Levine. Bungie is no different. We could make a list of Bungie themes and tropes that stretch back across multiple IP's and we'd see a particular repetition.

Destiny, the word itself, tells us all we'd need to know from the get-go, even without prior knowledge of Bungie. And yet coupled with knowledge of the Bungie body of work that you have, you still ask the question. You can call it whatever you like, but the predetermination has happened. They aren't in the habit of giving narratives with choices; the faceless hero has been a staple because its a better universal fit for the audience. And in the case of Destiny, personalizing our avatars and letting us create our own backstories only strengthens the fiction.

Because we, the audience, were chosen for greatness. There's no amount of personality or internal struggle that goes with it. It's literally the conflict between Light and Dark. The long bones have been laid out. The meat on the skeleton that gets us between here and there is where motivations and nuance come in. Which is why the Stranger is important, as are Osiris, Mara Sov, and her brother. Rasputin, as well. They are the ones that struggle. They add all the subplots and variation to the overall tapestry. We are marked by the Traveler to have a Destiny beyond theirs.

I don't know how most of the new Trials lore hasn't hammered this home, either. I'll be the first to admit I haven't pored over every scrap of it, but I feel like it's pretty clear where things are going.

"Guardians make their own fate" is a contextual reference to the Vault, I'll wager. Outside of that, perhaps an ethos for the IP itself. Perhaps in regard to prevailing by razor-thin margins against enemies on a scale and scope we couldn't previously perceive. But if you're expecting some revelatory inner dialogue, or some heretofore unseen level of character development, I think you'll be left wanting.

~m