Does Destiny need a "campaign"? (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Saturday, October 21, 2017, 07:21 (2392 days ago) @ Ragashingo

I agree with pretty much everything you’re saying. And I also think you may be right that Bungie isn’t interested in the kind of narrative I’m talking about. I just happen to believe that will be to Destiny’s detriment, if true.

And I do consider all those extra threads you're pointing out to be little more than lore, at least as they currently stand. That could change. There’s room for the Prince and the Fallen to become something more. But at the moment, the Prince is so inconsiquential to the motivations of our guardian that he barely exists in the minds of most players. He was mean to us during a couple cutscenes in D1, and his ship got shot down in TTK. I bet most Destiny players didn’t even realize that was the same guy.

The Cabal setup in TTK was precisely that: a setup. There main Cabal plot in TTK was resolved. Their arc in the story was complete. Bungie through in a tiny (and missable) hint that another force was on its way.

All of these connections you’re mentioning are nice touches, I agree. But again, there’s a difference between all of this and the kind of thing I’m looking for. I don’t like plot devices that are disguised as characters. It’s a common trope in bad fiction, and Destiny is full of them. Let’s look at The Stranger, for example. During her appearances in D1, we learn enough to believe that she is a genuine character, with motivations and goals that are driving her actions. Both the Guardian and the player are left wondering what she’s up to; that’s suspense, and that’s cool! But suspense is a dangerous storytelling tool to play with. It takes the form of a contract with the audience. There’d better be a payoff.

So when Luke Smith comes along and says that as far as he’s concerned, the Stranger’s story is done... that she got us where we needed to go in D1 and gave us a sweet weapon and that’s the end of her... that’s a blow for a couple of reasons. First of all, it eliminates the possibility of the Stranger being anything more than a plot device, practically speaking. And that’s just bad storytelling. And it also shows that Bungie has no problem breaking the “suspense contract” with the player. And that’s the bigger problem, in my eyes. Because that effects the player’s willingness to become invested in Bungie’s stories now and moving forward. And looking at Destiny’s story up to this point, Bungie has made this mistake far too many times. You can only watch characters behave mysteriously and think “I wonder what they’re up to” so many times without those questions actually going somewhere. The Stranger was meaningless, they hinted to the player that Mara was up to something in D1 (through her willingness to work with us) but that went nowhere in terms of the immediate narrative, Eris was introduced as an actual character with real motivations, then revealed to have some sort of hidden agenda, and that thread has been dropped for 2 years now.

So we’ll see how things go from here. There are narrative threads left hanging in Destiny 2, and hopefully Bungie has specific plans to carry those threads forward in the immediate future, rather than telling another “monster of the week” story that introduces new threads that don’t go anywhere.