With ya Kerm (Destiny)

by Leviathan , Hotel Zanzibar, Friday, February 06, 2015, 15:48 (3375 days ago) @ Kermit

I thought ODST was fantastic from a story perspective. [Theory blown.] I also thought Reach tried to present actual humans pretty well, but okay, okay, the story didn't work as well as it should have.

Yes, always play The Last of Us again. No game I've ever played does narrative better.

I too don't view the storytelling as a downward slide. Ups and downs. Strengths and weaknesses.

Halo CE laid down an intriguing premise and gave us two iconic heroes to get behind. The innovative and hilariously-fun gameplay made that premise like a true adventure.

Halo 2 lost a bit of the oomph and excitement in some places, but delivered a detailed, character-driven (at least on the Arbiter's side) story that expanded the Halo universe ten-fold from the first game, from characters to culture to lore to mystery. Sure, the cliffhanger killed me at first, but that's more about the serial nature of the release and less about what's actually happening in the story.

Halo 3 didn't have as much story to tell because it was the third act - and I was very happy about that because the gameplay fulfilled that third act promise by upping the ante with wide landscapes and huge battles that made it feel like Return of the King. Thankfully, I didn't think the main characters were lost in the epic stakes, either, and so in the middle of these climactic showdowns, I felt more for the Chief, Cortana, Arbiter, and Johnson than ever before.

ODST and Reach's overall plots weren't very cohesive to me and the narrative seemed to get away from itself, but they made up for it with great characters, especially ODST.

I don't have a problem with Destiny's story and I think the universe is great, perhaps more ripe with potential than Halo ever was. The only problem is...Bungie forgot to put it in the game. :)

I've always gotten the gist that Bungie wants to tell a great story, but with their huge ambitions some things have to get cut so other things can survive. And I think they value gameplay over narrative. With Destiny, you also have a completely new format of gameplay and ways to deliver the story which I could see making it hard to get right out the gate, especially when there's art and engineering trying to deliver on a new kind of game as well.

I also think the larger the studio, the harder it is to interconnect story and gameplay. You've got things getting cut or added in the game world over here, and you've got to scramble to try and plug the holes they make in the story, or gloss over them as that launch quickly approaches. Maybe that's why so much of the Destiny narrative fell through the cracks this time.

I can totally see them learning from it and bouncing back.