Does Destiny need a "campaign"? (Destiny)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Friday, October 20, 2017, 11:41 (2392 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY
edited by Korny, Friday, October 20, 2017, 11:49

Patrick suggests a thought at one point that perhaps the reason Bungie's campaign stories have been less than stellar as of late is that perhaps their (Bungie's) heart isn't in it the way it was during the Halo days? That Destiny is so much more than its campaign, and so much time and energy needs to go into the "end-game", and that is where the most exciting content tends to be... could it be that including a traditional, linear campaign is perhaps not necessary in future installments?

Yes and no. I don't think we need another Rise of Iron campaign, but maybe a Taken King will work. We definitely need a robust campaign in Destiny 3, though.

Rise of Iron was very much a side story, but if Bungie hadn't tacked on a "the world will end" angle to it, it would have simply been filler, because no characters get fleshed out (Saladin tends to simply come off as whiny throughout most of it), there's very little interplay between the people and the missions, and ultimately it's just a handful of events that end up not having any kind of permanent effect on the game world, and which don't really bring any consequence to the characters themselves. Besides Tyra and Saladin, what happened to any of the other characters that we met? What is the current state of the Plaguelands? SIVA isn't replicating anymore simply because we blew up an underground chamber? Then what happened to the samples carried offworld?

Nobody knows, nobody really cares because nothing has changed, and we don't see any evidence that RoI meant anything.

Then you look at Taken King, which had consequences that persist to this day. The Dreadnaught is still there, the Taken are not only still on the loose, but Oryx's sisters have taken control. Ghost has been reading up on the Books of Sorrow (which is more than he did for the Vex), and the Taken even have a small part in the Destiny 2 campaign (once again scaring away the Cabal that would have posed a bigger threat on Io).
Taken King's campaign feels essential, much in the same way that Destiny 2 has.

Campaign missions can really add to the experience, but their unique nature and/or setpieces don't mean a whole lot if you can't replay them or expand on them (alternate dialogue helps, especially if it depends on your character's knowledge of events, such as the kind you get from being a veteran player).
I dunno. Playing through Horizon Zero Dawn, I really appreciate how essential so many of the quests feel in terms of fleshing out characters and regions, and how doing sidequests does have an effect on dialogue and/or understanding of said regions, the people that you meet, events that happened before you showed up, and even the technology (both for you and Aloy). Little things such as Nil talking about a prison that he did a stint in, to simply playing through the story long enough for Aloy to learn what a GAIA core is all have an impact on things later on in the story.

Nothing in Destiny 2 really has this effect, despite there being Adventures and such that could easily impact the campaign or dialogue (such as the EDZ Adventures that have to do with boosting and clearing coms, all of which could have tied into the single story mission that had to do with setting up a radio network. And stuff like the Drakes or the bowels of the Archology never come into play again.

I'm not sure where I land on this thought, but they do make some fantastic points in the podcast. One thing that they mention is how powerful the experience becomes in those brief moments during the campaign where you find yourself matched in with other players, and how it seems like a shame that this only happens twice during the campaign. But as Patrick says, the nature of a linear campaign makes it difficult for Bungie to lean on that kind of experience, because the vast majority of players will go through the campaign over the first couple weeks, and then never touch it again. So for the few players who do play the campaign later, they won't be able to find anyone to get matched with when they reach those sections. This is contrasted against the moments where Strikes overlap with public Patrol encounters, and how that is a more consistently reliable occurrence over time because that content is more repeated by players.

Indeed. The first time that Sammy and I ran that mission, there were a fair handful of other Guardians also fighting for the City (Where'd they get their Light back? Who knows!). After that, we never ran into more than one or two people, which is a shame (if only there was a Meditation where you could play as a civilian or no-light Guardian fighting for the city...).

It's an interesting topic, and I do think there is something to the idea. I absolutely love a traditional single-player campaign. But across all of D1 and these early days of D2, the campaign has never been Destiny's strong suit (I know that is a matter of personal opinion, but I feel it's a fairly solid claim to make). I find it fascinating to imagine a Destiny game without a traditional campaign. What would that look like? I do think it is possible. I could see a version of Destiny where the Strikes become the major, tent-pole story events (where you'd experience all the unique locations and bombastic set-piece moments), while the rest of the storytelling is handled through a mix of patrol/adventure/side-quest activities that take place across the various open worlds. This would keep the patrol areas more highly populated and bustling with activity, while providing more opportunities for players who are on their own "paths" to intersect and work together, or not.

I mean, that's what I hope for in lieu of another Rise of Iron, or anything that introduces new patrol areas that will only further divide the player-base (It didn't take long for Mars to become a ghost town in D1). I hope they expand on the existing areas, and flesh out the current regions with more activities or encounters (Flashpoints should have been something distinct, not "generic Public event with a single bonus enemy plus one more wandering around between event").

I don't want more endgame stuff, I would just like more stuff to be able to do. Variety is good. Give us a questline that ends with unlocking a Horde mode, or a Bounty list like The Dark Below gave us (remember the Hand/Eyes/Heart of Crota that would ultimately unlock the Will of Crota strike?). Give us more exotic quests with unique missions like rebuilding our Gjallarhorn did.
I never did give up on the hope that we could have something like missions to clear out future SRL maps on foot (or in vehicles). Little stuff like that that would make us have an impact on the map's own existence (especially if we were the ones to, say, park the Forklift on Haakon's Precipice).

Side tangent: I've noticed over the past week or two that it has already become shockingly rare to see other players while out on patrol. I complete almost all of my Flashpoint Milestones solo, without seeing another player at all. And now that we can fast travel, I hardly ever get to see a fireteam of Guardians drive by on their sparrows. Anyone else having this experience?

Like Blue said, part of this is because you can't play through Story Missions freely anymore, there's not much incentive to play the random ones that Ikora offers, and very few missions and strikes take you through public areas. Combine that with the ability to fast travel to and fro, and it's not really surprising that we don't see too many strangers whizzing by.

The Adventures and Quests do help offset that quite a bit, but even those tend to be fairly quick, and you don't really get anything out of helping others do them, so the unique enemies and encounters are a rare sight as well. So yeah, it's not that Destiny has so many resources devoted to a campaign that's the problem, it's how Bungie fails to tie them into the greater world of the game that makes them feel like missed opportunities, the fact that we aren't able to really replay more than a small handful of the missions per week, and the fact that they aren't expanded upon once we've played through them.