Linear time and Paracausal Forces (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Saturday, November 18, 2017, 21:44 (2358 days ago) @ Ragashingo

Well, the Mercury thing was understandable. Humanity’s military power was first smashed by Oryx and its SSFs were disabled by Gary. Everyone shrugged ‘cause there was nothing anyone could really do.

A better example would be Calus and his planet eating Leviathan. Sure, the Raid is pretty good, but sheesh the buildup and plot integration is... woefully lacking. :(

About Calus: There's an adventure on Nessus that is literally nothing but prologue to his ship arriving. There's a heavy weapon quest item drop that begins a chain that "permanently" occupies a heavy weapon slot that eventually arrives at "await the world eater." And there's some dialogue in D1 about an outbound signal being sent straight to the emperor. And all of that is 100% missable and it's very possible for players to simply log in and have this raid show up and think "where the hell did this come from and why is it here?"

Frankly, that adventure was pretty fun, but it would have been more effective storytelling to make it a prerequisite to raiding. It's not even totally clear that the adventure has anything to do with the Leviathan. At no point in the game does anyone on our team put together the pieces and explain what that ship is and why it's here. Sure, the players have done that, but it makes the characters in the game seem even less intelligent by comparison that they can't put two and two together.

I'm really not sure why the choice has been made, repeatedly, to not have the characters in the game actually learn anything or figure anything out from the bits of information we've collected along the way, but their inability to grow, change, learn, and adapt is incredibly frustrating for me, especially given how absolutely perfect the premise of D2 was for all of those things to take place. Instead it was a story about re-establishing the status quo. Only Hawthorne changed at all, and that was a long wait for her perspective to move an inch.

What I'm saying is, and I'm shocked to be typing this, I completely agree with you.