Maybe this is why Bungie hates story-telling now? (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Friday, February 06, 2015, 11:05 (3375 days ago) @ iconicbanana

So I think it makes perfect sense when someone who isn't telling the story, but instead is trying to present someone else's story that doesn't make sense to them, says they hate storytelling.

I disagree. Someone who says they hate storytelling has no business telling stories, period. Give their job to someone else.

Let me explain:

I'm a professional Editor, and my job is to tell someone else's story in a more cohesive way than they can. Very often, the way the story is presented to me doesn't make sense at all. But I love storytelling. LOVE it. Distilling that confused mess down is a skill, to be sure, but it isn't an inherently challenging or obtuse process. It's all about breaking the narrative down to the key points, separating the wheat from the chaff, and then building that narrative back up to really highlight the key elements.

The video on the front page at DBO is a *great* example of someone doing just that. In fact, he's telling the Dark Below's story in a dramatically better way than Bungie did, using only the materials that Bungie has published. It's shocking to me how compelling the story is when told that way, and how bland and boring the story is when told the way that Bungie is telling it. There's a massive disconnect there. Whoever is in charge of the narrative in Destiny needs to be given a lot more power and resources, giving them the benefit of the doubt on their ability to actually tell a story, given their druthers.

it's part of what's so frustrating about the game. The lore is there. The writing on the grimoire cards is compelling. But the actual in-game content is atrocious on all levels. It's laughable and shameful at the same time.

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With video games, you kind of have to develop the game in a specific order in order for the story to be told well. First, you need an idea of the world you'll play in (space magic). Then you need to know what kind of game it is (FPS with RPG and MMO elements). At this point the coders can get to work on the engines that will run the game. Then you need to lay out the story. Right then and there, it needs to happen. This informs the artists about the game world they'll be creating. It lets the coders design scripting tools to set up specific, story driven encounters. It describes how the AI needs to work for each enemy type, how powerful the weapons in the player's and AI's arsenals are, and who the key figures of the plot are.

You can't re-write a story 9 years into development and expect it to be good without having another 9 years to change the entire game to match the new story.

And if your story sucks, you need to fix it before you dive headlong into development. There's no way Bungie "discovered" they had a bad story 9 years in. Most likely, they had an awesome story. But then they also had deadlines. And they weren't going to meet them because the story was too big. So they hacked apart the pieces that were done already and smashed them back together to get *something* to the public. This is all conjecture, but the facts fit.

Bungie probably is super sad that they weren't able to put out the game that they wanted to. But Activision's shareholders are thrilled, because they made a crapton of money, AND didn't have to pay the contract bonuses because the game wasn't as highly rated as the bonuses required. And money, my dear friends, is the name of all big games.