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

by Durandal, Friday, February 06, 2015, 11:24 (3375 days ago) @ roland

The initial vision for Halo was a 3rd person free roaming game. You were going to be able to drive all the way around Halo nonstop and engage enemies and ambient wildlife.

After the sale to Microsoft there were huge changes to the game and much of that vision was lost. I believe there is a comment about halo 2 that they had a whiteboard up with a flaming plane on it, and out the back were crates being pushed out with labels indicating features no longer in the game.

The point is games do change during development. Halo changed drastically from it's inception, and overall I felt the storytelling was pretty good until parts of Reach. Even Reach is superior to 343's outing, mostly due to the focus on the Forerunner and the massive changes to Halsey and the ancient humans to support 343's endeavor.

Plot aside, the halo series had largely voice over interactions, but frequently had you encounter NPCs in the field. The human marines and their interactions, even for only short portions of a map really added to the feel of the game.

Destiny lacks any NPC interaction, especially in the field. They could really use some "frontier corps" you can encounter to add flavor and personality to the game.

Right now the world is too empty and your actions irrelevant to the greater scheme. I always felt good in Halo when I managed to save all the marines and they would say stuff.