You pulled that out of your sock drawer, didn't you?

While we had to defeat 343GS' intensions, I never thought of him as evil or even a serious antagonist.

Only the Covenant filled the antagonistic role during the period I played those games. They were the one true evil at that time.

A lot of this has to do with the setting, I think.

In Halo, you are very clearly told what is going on in the instruction manual. You get the basic facts about who you are and what your goals are.

You are Master Chief. Master of any weapon. Pilot of any vehicle. You are likely the last of your kind, after losing the battle, and fleeing to this ancient ring.

Right there, from the instruction manual, you have pretty much everything you need to know.

You don't know what this ring is, but you know the Covenant want it. Your mission is clear at this point: deny them that which they want.

Then the flood happens and your motivation changes, from wanting to save humanity, to saving everyone.

Pretty cool. There are bits that get built up and and explored upon in other places.

Destiny doesn't feel like that, and it doesn't have an instruction manual. You've gotta figure, the average consumer isn't checking Bungie.net for concept work. They're not checking the weekly updates. They're not going to gaming sites. All they know of Destiny is what they saw in the 30 second TV commercial, and maybe their game stop rep. You start the game and it's "Hey, you we're dead, now your not, we gotta go, I can't tell you why" and it never gets any better. Even when you'd THINK there'd be time, Destiny doesn't have time for you.

But you're supposed to have time for Destiny?

IDK. I don't mind the hunt of some information and plot lines. That's actually fun, theorizing and filling in gaps, letting your imagination go. How it is now, is no fun. There's not enough info, and not enough reason to care.

I keep up with Halo because I like the story.

I keep up with Destiny because it's just fun.

I expect things to get better though. I'm just surprised with this first entry.

On one had we can see the antagonists that Bungie has begun setting up for future confrontations. Crota and the Hive seem to be gearing up for a major offensive against The City. Rasputin is gathering power by taking over Golden Age facilities most notably the Clovis Bray archeology on Mars. The Fallen lost several leaders to us in the game and might be in danger of facing a total collapse of their house system. The Cabal also lost a couple of high ranking leaders and might be losing a war elsewhere. The Vex suffered three major defeats with the loss of their Venus Nexus, with the their defeat in the Black Garden, and with their defeat in the Vault of Glass. And there's always The Darkness that seems to be behind it all in one way or another.

On the other hand, understanding the relevance of the above paragraph took a lot more than playing the game. It took reading hard to unlock backstory and making some pretty big leaps with connecting the dots. To the average player, Destiny is probably more like a string of unrelated missions than an actual story. There are some neat jumping off points if you take the time to understand what actually happened, but how many players have done that. I fear Bungie now risks pulling a Halo 4 where they have to try to explain each villains' motivations but it comes out as long cutscenes that don't make a lot of sense.

Dang, I know why Destiny wasn't that satisfying story wise: we had no antagonist.

The original Halo had almost as few actual characters as Destiny, yet we had an antagonist in 343GS. Someone to struggle against, with clear motivations of his own. We don't want him to succeed, so we strive to beat him.

Destiny doesn't really have an antagonist. We don't know the motives of the Darkness or the Vex, but more troublesome is we don't know what is at stake. If 343GS fires the ring, we all die. We don't want that to happen, so we try to win. But what is the Black Heart doing? What will happen if we don't stop it? We don't even see any effect from it at all, so it's hard to know why to care.

The very least that could have been done is perhaps have the Traveler's protective shield start to shrink as the black heart drains its energy or whatever. The outskirts of the city could become vulnerable, and perhaps be overrun. At least we'd have some kind of tangible reason to fight the darkness.

When is Destiny 2 coming out again?

Part of the issue is there are so many things going on at once. Three different races to fight, with no clue about their motivations, and no leaders who seem to make decisions. A bunch of different settings, with no particular investment in them besides what happens to the Last City, which is far away from any actual gameplay. The Darkness, non-specific, and incorporeal as far as I can tell.

In contrast, the Halo series focused on one setting at a time, and had a number of single characters as villains. In addition to 343, the Overmind, Tartarus, and the Prophet of Truth. I always thought of the Flood as the main villain of the series, which had a very simple aim, and even a voice by the second game.

I guess they could be playing a long game, stretching out the story over multiple titles, but if that's the case, this first installment has definitely suffered as a result. And being able to fly around the solar system is cool and all, but the lack of a consistent setting makes the story even more unfocused. Seems to me like the Queen of the Reef and her brother are the only actual characters in the game, and I'm not even sure why they're necessary. Well, okay, there's also the time-traveling EXO, but she doesn't really do anything besides be mysterious. And when I say character, I mean someone who has a role in the story besides just handing out quests or delivering VO.

I would definitely like to see at least The Fallen get some proper villains at the helm, who actually have a role in the story, instead of just being strike bosses that I know nothing about (which makes it hard to care about killing them).

I think you are right, but I think there is even more going on. I got to thinking about why I felt tension in the Halo narratives and part of that was communicated via the world over time.

One of the strengths of the Halo games was that the environments of the world could help tell the story and reinforce your impact on the world over time. Think of the difference between the first have of Halo CE and the second half. Your actions in the world and the unfolding narrative allowed for the same geographic spaces to feel very different. The same can be said for the settings in Halo 2. High charity as the Arbiter is very different than High Charity as the Master Chief. Everything was moving forward towards a culmination and the environment helped reinforce this. In Halo 3, the whole skybox changed after I blew up that covenant gun. Even nostalgic visit to Alpha Halo II carried weight because of the narrative arc of these environments.

Destiny cannot do this. Every story in Destiny starts in the same geographic location, but people may be playing completely different moments of the narrative while occupying the same space. As such, the environment is crippled in its ability to tell stories about the events depicted in the game. Sure the environments can tell the story of the world before you showed up, but it cannot react at all to your actions. Your agency in the world feels a little bit empty. In Halo, when we replayed a level, we understood that it was linked to a particular time-frame in the narrative. There wasn't a disjointed feeling when we replayed it because the environment reflected that moment in time. In Destiny, when I replay a mission, I'm left feeling like I haven't really done anything.

A static game world is the biggest narrative challenge in my assessment. This feeds into the lack of an antagonist because, like player's character, they cannot affect change in the world. Sure, the grimoire alludes to the significance of our actions, but nothing is there telling me I saved the city. No one at the tower is greeting me as a champion. No one got threatened by the Darkness/Fallen/Vex/Hive.

This is sad because the encounters that are available as a result of their decision to have a shared world are amazing. I have so much fun in the environments they made. I love meeting strangers in the wild and I love the feeling it accomplishes. On the other hand, this comes at the cost of telling a story in which we have an impact or real agency in the world.

I'm trying to think of ways they could overcome this in the future. Maybe they could have different skyboxes and lighting depending upon when the missions are supposed to take place in the timeline so that a person doing a mission at the beginning of the game would see the world a little bit differently than someone who has already completed that portion. Keep the geometry the same, but instance the art. This is probably not technically possible but... one can hope.

I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on this. Are there any other creative ways to tell your story through the environment in a game like Destiny?