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

by Malagate , Sea of Tranquility, Friday, February 06, 2015, 13:06 (3375 days ago) @ Ragashingo

I think you're completely right about the story being incomplete, and it makes me really sad. Episodic story telling only works if there's a mini-arc in each episode. The Dark Below has one, but the main game has nothing. The Vault of Glass is completely stand-alone (except for being mentioned only by name during the Archive mission) and doesn't connect to the story at all. The warsats have no climax or ending to their story. The stranger is utter nonsense. Uh.. what else is there? Where the vex are coming from after the Black Garden is a red herring since we already knew they time traveled. And so on.

The end result is that the game is wholly unsatisfying on a narrative level. Right now, the only Legends I've heard are the myths that the game has a plot at all. I heard the tales, but I've never seen it.

As impressive as the raids are from a gameplay and teamwork standpoint I kinda hate them in terms of storytelling. The defeat at the Vault of Glass should have been staged as a major setback for the Vex... an undoing AND revealing of their long term plans. Instead we... killed a big guy and then nothing... At the very least it needed a beginning and ending cutscene. Ideally it would be the culmination of a quest line that would give it importance and relevance! Did we even win a victory against the Vex in the VoG? Or can they just remake something similar on another world outside our solar system? Heck, was that their only Vault of Glass or are there thousands more spread across the galaxy? The story of the Guardian who invaded the Vault and forged the Relic should have been revealed to us along the way as well.

Same with Crota's End. I think we penetrated a Hive higher dimension and permanently killed the spirit of one of their several gods, finishing the work that Eris and company started. But with no closing cutscene or even an ending voiceover the significance of our actions are lost. Especially to a player who is not going to take the time to understand scattered, hard to find Grimoire cards!

One "problem" with the raids is Bungie wants to focus on the teamwork and gameplay and not have story get in the way... and in some ways I respect that. Having 343 Guilty Spark give interesting plot points about the Flood from far away in the middle of a Library battle didn't work very well either... but surely SOMETHING can be done to impart the importance and the results of the raids. Right now they aren't even trying. :(

The warsats I'm all right with for now. They are part of the ongoing story of Rasputin. The big failure of the warsat plot thread isn't that they have no ending but that their reason to exist and the reason we rescue them is never really explained in game. In the Grimoire we learn that Rasputin controls them and since we connected him to The Array he has used them to test his available strength. So presumably we transmat them to our ship and later we or other Forces of the City place them in needed orbits? To defend locations outside the reach of The Traveler? That Rasputin may very likely be Rampant and that we might very well be rearming a Rampant AI should be teased somewhere in their too. But I don't think its right yet to complain that the warsats have no ending when really we just have reached the ending yet.

As I said, I'm still holding a lot of hope for the Exo Stranger and I like her position within the story for the most part. Her big cutscene points to a lot of neat stuff. She is not a Guardian... so is she an Exo that didn't lose its memory? Or something else? She has a ship and a crew that have to hide from something. But what? She has traveled much further than anyone from The City and seems to know more about what is going on. But how? Then her Grimoire cards make clear that she is some sort of time traveler maybe trying to find the right way to save The Traveler and humanity. How did that happen? And then there's the way she breaks eye contact and looks away when she says that a side must always be chosen... even if its the wrong side. Did she choose the wrong side at some point?! Bungie should have given us something new about her during the ending victory day cutscene but like Rasputin and the warsats I feel her story isn't close to being finished and so I'm more forgiving of its outstanding mysteries.

All that said, all my hopes of the Rasputin and the Exo Stranger being good story points relies on their stories panning out and actually being told and having a real ending. Its possible I'm hoping for too much given the lack of endings Destiny has provided us so far. But maybe Bungie will have seen the feedback and will work double hard to flesh out Destiny's story in the future and will build on what I think are strong beginnings of story...

I am completely with you up until you talk about 343's distant chatter. It worked for me for a number of reasons. Having an NPC that at least pretended to be reacting to the goings-on helped the experience. That effect is compounded when things like passing chatter between NPC's drops little bits of exposition.

But with regard to bookending the Raids with cutscenes, yes absolutely. I would go one further and say a bit of voiceover into to each section of a Raid, hopefully tying together a narrative, would be the best option.

~m