I'm totally with you there. The part that concerns me is that I'm not sure if it is possible for Bungie to ever fully turn things around.

This I can guarantee. I know this for certain.

I'm fine w/ Bungie being silly in Destiny, even in the lore with the Cabal being puzzled/terrified of our sweet sweet dance moves, but I really really love a good sci-fi story. Fun, good, not-dark sci-fi stories are largely what have attracted me to Bungie (tho' I guess Marathon had some pretty dark elements, but in comparison to other shooters on the market at the time it was a bright & hopeful shooter).

I'd be very sad if Bungie doesn't develop this story/world of theirs. It's got the foundation of a compelling story, when I finished the Black Garden I thought to myself, "There wasn't much resolution here, but I feel like they've set the stage for the next decade of storytelling." So far I feel like they've introduced us to some of the characters and got sidetracked writing short stories set in the universe that don't advance the plot much (TTK being a bit of an exception, but it felt more like a novella).

They just haven't delivered one. They've delivered amazing environments and a metric ton of obscure lore. "People want to hear about these Iron Lords..." what? I guess I do, because I haven't heard ANYTHING about them. Some dude shows up and higher level people do more damage to lower level people for a week. Oh and there's a flaming shield and some loot that is named _provactively_ but ultimately means nothing.

I think one of the problems Bungie continues to slip into as things move forward is they try to tell new stories that are better than what we got in Vanilla, but these new stories are crucially rooted in obscure lore that was never presented in a compelling in-game manner. So while TTK was a big step up in terms of mission design and the basic moment-to-moment script, it was also based deeply in knowing about the history of the reef and the queen and Hive sword logic and ascendant realms and all this stuff that meant nothing to me as a player. It's all good fun, but it didn't do anything to change the detachment I feel from it all. For all D1's problems, the Vault of Glass itself was in incredible culmination to the game. No, it wasn't worked into the plot in any satisfying way, but the actual journey of going down into those caves and fighting these Vex monstrosities that have impossible powers... I LOVED it. The fact that we (the guardians) didn't fully understand what was going on made perfect sense within the context of that little adventure. King's Fall, by comparison, feels like a contrived gauntlet. Like the final event during an episode of American Gladiators. It is fun, but makes absolutely no sense in terms of being an actual place that really exists within the Hive ship. It's like Bungie themselves stopped worrying about creating an experience that absorbs you into the world, and instead made the Destiny equivalent of a Super Mario level.

I want to play Dark Souls and see if it also doesn't have a story and is just obscure lore that people have been squinting at long enough to find satisfaction in sharing with other people who have been squinting long enough.

I'm no expert, but I have played a bit of DS1.

The primary difference between the way Destiny and Dark Souls integrate their stories, is that in Dark Souls, the NPCs you interact with start out in the world, and then depending on your actions, they can end up returning to the safe hub area which functions like Destiny's Tower.

In the first game and the latest, that's Firelink Shrine.

Destiny puts all its NPCs and merchants in the safe areas-- there's nobody to interact with out in the world except enemies.

NPCs in Dark Souls give you lore-- think Grimoire cards edited down to their bare minimum, delivered one line at a time by player prompts. You can hear them all (until the last start looping) or stop anytime. Many of them you can choose to kill, save, or ignore. Some will become friendlies you can summon in boss battles.

Those might seem like minor changes, but they have a huge impact.

I'd have bought into the idea that the player truly is responsible for the resurgence of the Vanguard if, at the end of the first level, you had shown up to an empty Tower? What if isolated pockets of Guardians out in the wild had to be rescued or rejuvenated to be brought back? What if the Guardian in the cryo pod high above the cosmodrome had been the Speaker instead of just some random guy we might never meet?

What if the reason you don't get any explanation isn't because people don't want to tell you, or don't have time, but because the one who has to do the explaining... is you? What if no one really knows more about the current state of the world than you do?

Of all Destiny's current NPCs, the one I find most believable and relatable is Eris. She's the only one with a real arc, and she acts crazy enough to be given latitude for cryptic or partial explanations.

I want to play Dark Souls and see if it also doesn't have a story and is just obscure lore that people have been squinting at long enough to find satisfaction in sharing with other people who have been squinting long enough.

For whatever it's worth, I think Dark Souls does a much better job of integrating it's lore into a story. Sure, lots of it has to be gleaned from item descriptions and obscure lines of dialogue. But Dark Souls has two big things going for it over Destiny (for me):

1. As narcogen pointed out, the NPCs are encountered out in the world. You run into them on your quest. Some of them are actively pursuing the same things you are. Others are just characters living their lives in a dark and dreary world. But, by the end, they all have clear motivations and an actual story to tell. That's more than I can say for anything that's ever happened in Destiny.

2. The environments tell a story. Every area is unique and helps build the lore for that particular section of the world. Again, it's a story only told in hints. Very little is said outright. But you can get a lot of information about what enemies are in that area, where they're position, what they're doing, where the items in that area are placed (and what the descriptions on those items say), etc. Again, Destiny has basically none of this.

Dark Souls is absolutely brilliant at story telling in its own way; you just have to care enough to look. I'd never though about it before, but I do think it's an apt comparison to make with Destiny. I feel like Destiny very much tries to tell a story in a very similar manner. It's just really bad at doing so.

I largely agree with most of what you just said. :)

At some point, I think you have to recognize the limitations of a story that requires you to shoot your way from here to there, X times over. Destiny is an FPS, and it's pretty darn good at that, so it's hard to justify moving away from those elements that make it a fun game to play.

Yes, definitely. I struggle with events/tasks/reasons/whatnots in shooters feeling very very contrived. I felt that Marathon and Halo told a good story with the player experiencing what was happening and being a driving character. If you boil those games down they just end up being the Stanly Parable. Push this button because, well, that's what you're told to do. I'm not sure what the secret sauce is that allows a game to transcend Doom's go get the red key to open the red door and become an engaging interactive (involved?) story, but Marathon & Halo had it, despite their tasks basically being kill stuff, get the key, & push the button.

I'm of the opinion that Vanilla Destiny had (most of?) the ingredients for that transcendent secret sauce, but forgot to mix them together. I felt I was doing stuff and experiencing action in a universe that has a deep lore, but I missed the flavor. I blame this on the rewrite (I think even a cheesy story would have been better than what we ended up with). It seems Destiny has improved with age, Bungie has been recovering (with TTK), and I'm glad to see they're having fun with Destiny, I just don't want them to give up on giving us a good story and reason for the action. Please keep trying to pull us into the story.

Personally, I enjoy the balance Destiny now has between story and gameplay. Most of the real interesting stuff happens behind the scenes in the past or the future, as described by the Grimoire, and it's not limited by the few actions my character can take in the game. My Guardian just happens to be a bit player in an extraordinary SF drama, and I don't mind that information being conveyed to me by way of text story (and in many ways actually prefer it that way, as it's certainly my most common way of interfacing with an SF story). I still maintain the Books of Sorrow story is an extremely impressive work of science fiction, even outside of its connection to Destiny.

Books of Sorrow was excellent. Now, I don't think all the grimoire needs to be "in game", but that type of story needs to be mixed into the game. They're doing better, I think they still have room to improve, but they're in a "good enough" spot now.

At some point, I think you have to recognize the limitations of a story that requires you to shoot your way from here to there, X times over. Destiny is an FPS, and it's pretty darn good at that, so it's hard to justify moving away from those elements that make it a fun game to play.

I don't know, maybe if you made it an RPG with FPS elements then you could do other things and have other sorts of interactions besides just shooting. Kind of like, oh you know, one of the best games ever made DEUS EX.