Some things that need to be improved (Destiny)
by scarab 
, Wednesday, October 22, 2014, 14:18 (3472 days ago)
We need context
- How are we helping the city? Really.
- We need to see the city - meet the habitants - experience an attack on the city and the toll.
- Find something, do something that has visible consequences for the better - if the expansions have new kit maybe something we do makes this possible
The tone is wrong
Bungie needs to explain what is so Dark about the Cabal and Fallen or shut up about the Darkness in relation to them.
All this talk about the darkness feels, almost racist, reminiscent of British Empire attitudes to the dark skinned foreigners. I don't mean literally a comment on skin colour - it's more the idea that foreigners have the wrong gods, obscene gods and ungodly practices. Just by being not us makes them less than human. (Yeh, technically they are not human but, hopefully you know what I mean.)
We slag off the Fallen as being stupid but, it appears that, they can build their own stuff. We keep our ships flying by stealing other people's stuff. We collect skin husks and bone marrow to keep our ships flying. Are they powered by dandruff? We steal hip replacement parts from Vex to ??? make our shit work. Are we going to steal the gold out of pensioners' mouths?
We are violent thugs, parasites who call everybody else dark and steal their scraps to keep us going.
We make no knowledge of our own.
The golden age looks a bit crap
It's not the decay. Overall the art direction is amazing. Well most things look very nice but the stuff we scan looks very commonplace or underwhelming. I've scanned:
- black boxes on the outside of a building that look like electricity meters.
- 1970's style computer cabinets
- A hot water system (immersion heaters?)
Have we sunk so low that this stuff impresses us?
How can this be improved?
Give us some amazing looking stuff to scan.
Lets see something that has improved since the golden age. Maybe our maths has advanced to the point where our cryptarchs can break stuff easily that had to be brute forced back in the day. So we have learned something for ourselves since the golden age. It had better NOT be something the traveller taught us (are we adults or children?).
The Destiny world is supposed to be a hopeful world - a place we want to visit. At the moment it feels: wrong, sickly, primitive-attituded, dependent intellectually as well as physically on the traveller. This world should have a renaissance - we should be making stuff of our own - making our own science - questioning reliance on the traveller.
Our enemies need to be more respected by Bungie and more worthy of respect by us. They also need to be more nuanced. I was interested when I saw that the Awoken had, what appeared to be, an alliance with the Fallen. But it turns out that the Fallen are like dogs. The Queen killed the pack leader and became the pack leader. We are figuratively fighting animals. Give us people to fight!
Some things that need to be improved
We are violent thugs, parasites who call everybody else dark and steal their scraps to keep us going.
We make no knowledge of our own.
As others have theorized, this might actually be the point.
Some things that need to be improved
by Ragashingo 
, Official DBO Cryptarch, Wednesday, October 22, 2014, 15:48 (3472 days ago) @ car15
We are violent thugs, parasites who call everybody else dark and steal their scraps to keep us going.
We make no knowledge of our own.
As others have theorized, this might actually be the point.
During the Golden Age we were certainly making knowledge of our own. The Clovis Bray tower we ascend on Mars was part of a much larger research complex as indicated by the subway maps showing several additional facilities along the route in addition to a mall and park. There's also the neat little advertisement (in the Grimoire I think) from Clovis Bray where they are trying to recruit the best and brightest minds by basically offering them unlimited resources to work on their mad experiments. The Ishtar Academy on Venus was also a major source of knowledge. They seemed to have been, among other things, studying the remnants of the Vex and eventually got in over their heads with it. Beyond that, we were mining the asteroid belt and gas giants during the Golden Age and were using the Moon to slingshot cargo cheaply into the outer solar system.
In the modern day of The City Age we are almost certainly making less, innovating less, and mostly relying on The Traveler for protection and the successes of our past for advancement, but as far as we know right now we never invaded another race's solar system or picked through the remains of their dead cities. The City is said to have industries and factories and is said in game (through weapon descriptions and such) to be relearning how to build things as well as we could during our Golden Age. It's understandable that we aren't advancing as fast though. We were once a race of billions, now we are one city under siege that might be home to a mere 10 million. (There's no data for The City's population that I'm aware of so I'm just estimating based its apparent size as viewed from the Tower.)
Some things that need to be improved
by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Wednesday, October 22, 2014, 15:18 (3472 days ago) @ scarab
We need context
- How are we helping the city? Really.
- We need to see the city - meet the habitants - experience an attack on the city and the toll.
- Find something, do something that has visible consequences for the better - if the expansions have new kit maybe something we do makes this possible
The tone is wrong
Bungie needs to explain what is so Dark about the Cabal and Fallen or shut up about the Darkness in relation to them.
Right, some clarification there would be nice. We think we've seen The Darkness in the form of the heart of the Black Garden, but the term is also used to refer to powerful groups and individuals of our four enemies. It might be that The Darkness is more than just a race. Multiple Grimoire cards consider the concept of The Darkness being more of a force of nature kind of thing rather than just a fifth enemy. It might be that The Darkness really is influencing the other races' actions.
Also, the Fallen and Cabal seem to be smart enough to not fight against us and yet they do. The Fallen have, in the past, mounted an all out attack on The City. The Cabal have taken over what was once one of our most important cities and fire on us any time we stop by. If extinction is coming and these two races are actively fighting us they certainly aren't allied with The Light now are they? And when the continued existance of your race is on the line a "you're either with us or against us" mentality seems appropriate...
We slag off the Fallen as being stupid but, it appears that, they can build their own stuff. We keep our ships flying by stealing other people's stuff. We collect skin husks and bone marrow to keep our ships flying. Are they powered by dandruff? We steal hip replacement parts from Vex to ??? make our shit work. Are we going to steal the gold out of pensioners' mouths?
Um, yes actually. One of the Mars patrol missions is to harvest Cabal enamel caps or some such thing. :)
We are violent thugs, parasites who call everybody else dark and steal their scraps to keep us going.We make no knowledge of our own.
Nah. Too extreme. We had a Golden Age of innovation. Maybe we're sometimes patching ships together using enemy resources, but they were ships we originally built. The Exotic guns we use are often the result of our past research and innovations. And what do you think the Fallen are doing? They attacked and burned London after the collapse. They have literally told us they are claiming all the worlds that used to be ours. Heck, they have piles of what appear to be human bones scattered about their lairs. And they scavenge and steal wherever they go. The Cabal too are picking through Freehold looking for things from our past. Not exactly noble there...
The golden age looks a bit crapIt's not the decay. Overall the art direction is amazing. Well most things look very nice but the stuff we scan looks very commonplace or underwhelming. I've scanned:
- black boxes on the outside of a building that look like electricity meters.
- 1970's style computer cabinets
- A hot water system (immersion heaters?)
Have we sunk so low that this stuff impresses us?
How can this be improved?
Give us some amazing looking stuff to scan.
Lets see something that has improved since the golden age. Maybe our maths has advanced to the point where our cryptarchs can break stuff easily that had to be brute forced back in the day. So we have learned something for ourselves since the golden age. It had better NOT be something the traveller taught us (are we adults or children?).
The Destiny world is supposed to be a hopeful world - a place we want to visit. At the moment it feels: wrong, sickly, primitive-attituded, dependent intellectually as well as physically on the traveller. This world should have a renaissance - we should be making stuff of our own - making our own science - questioning reliance on the traveller.
We are one small city under siege by four hostile races, two of which we know have overtaken countless worlds. The continents around us are swarming with Fallen. The moon above us is filled with Hive. The two planets closest to us are strongholds for the Cabal and Vex. And oh yeah, the force that was able to crush us when we were much more powerful is on its way back.
Our enemies need to be more respected by Bungie and more worthy of respect by us. They also need to be more nuanced. I was interested when I saw that the Awoken had, what appeared to be, an alliance with the Fallen. But it turns out that the Fallen are like dogs. The Queen killed the pack leader and became the pack leader. We are figuratively fighting animals. Give us people to fight!
I'd certainly love to learn more about each race. Fortunately, each race already seems to have showings of depth that the original Covenant back in Halo 1 did not. Using only Halo 1 knowledge, who were the Elites or Jackals or Grunts or Hunters? I can tell you all about the Fallen or Hive or Cabal or Vex. Not as much as I'd like certainly, but each are more than "tall aliens that wear colored armor."
Why do people forget Fall of Reach released BEFORE Halo 1?
You can't even say that we didn't have information on the Covenant races before Halo 1, because we clearly did. Arguably about as much as we do about these Destiny races. Easily the equivalent of a couple of paragraphs here and there.
Why do people forget Fall of Reach released BEFORE Halo 1?
by uberfoop , Seattle-ish, Thursday, October 23, 2014, 00:12 (3471 days ago) @ Riceamike
Why do people forget Fall of Reach released BEFORE Halo 1?
Because as far as most people are concerned, EU content is (or, when it's not, should be) irrelevant.
(At any rate, my bigger qualm is the suggestion that Halo 1 actually needed to flesh out the Covenant. Having an expansive why of the Covenant really isn't that important to its narrative; Destiny has a problem because there's really not much driving force to anything, period. That we supposedly "know more" about Destiny's enemies yet the game still lacks drive around them is suggestive at how amount of lore details isn't the issue here.)
Why do people forget Fall of Reach released BEFORE Halo 1?
by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Thursday, October 23, 2014, 05:10 (3471 days ago) @ Riceamike
You can't even say that we didn't have information on the Covenant races before Halo 1, because we clearly did. Arguably about as much as we do about these Destiny races. Easily the equivalent of a couple of paragraphs here and there.
Fall of Reach only gave us two things about the Covenant that the game didn't:
1. Our destruction was the will of their gods.
2. A basic understanding of their hierarchy in the form of showing the expendability of lower classes.
Everything else was vague, or didn't flesh out anything that a quick glance in the game didn't. That's what made them truly alien. You have way more info on each race and their motivations in Destiny...
Some things that need to be improved
We slag off the Fallen as being stupid but, it appears that, they can build their own stuff.
Our enemies need to be more respected by Bungie and more worthy of respect by us. They also need to be more nuanced. I was interested when I saw that the Awoken had, what appeared to be, an alliance with the Fallen. But it turns out that the Fallen are like dogs. The Queen killed the pack leader and became the pack leader. We are figuratively fighting animals. Give us people to fight!
Yeah, this bugs me. Particularly when Ghost exclaims in the Devil's lair strike "The Fallen are getting smarter. It's like the entire system is wired to a..." *An alarm sounds.* I mean, the Fallen are a race capable interstellar space travel; so I'd assume they know how to use alarm systems.
Beyond this, indeed it appears there is a mismatch between some of the races and their supposed capabilities and with what we experience when facing up against them in the field. The vex, for instance, have the ability to manipulate space and time; yet are apparently struggling against the Cabal on Mars. And the Sword of Crota is just bizarre; supposedly it is this mighty weapon that has laid waste to countless Guardians. I was hoping for it to be a metaphore; like a giant ship or power or something. But nope, it's a literally a knight's sword that I can pick up and play whack-a-mole with for 5 minutes.
Some things that need to be improved
by RaichuKFM , Northeastern Ohio, Wednesday, October 22, 2014, 17:06 (3472 days ago) @ Blue_Blazer_NZ
I took the "..wired to a- I'll work faster." as referring to how the whole thing is wired to Sepiks Prime, and the Ghost realizing he's being silly by "deducing" something we already knew.
I assmumed he meant the system was wired to a servitor
by Spec ops Grunt , Broklahoma, Wednesday, October 22, 2014, 18:16 (3472 days ago) @ Blue_Blazer_NZ
Or Sepiks Prime himself, slowing down Ghost's hacking.
Edit: Raichu beat me to it.
Also regarding the sword, it seems to me that its not at full strength without being wedded to Crota himself. I theorize that Crota and the Sword are linked like Sauron and the Ring are linked.
Destiny isn't a Science Fiction universe, its Science Fantasy.
I hate the term science-fantasy.
- No text -
How about Mythic SciFi? :p
But seriously, I think its an accurate description of a (fairly niche) sub-genre. Science Fiction mechanics and setting with Fantasy tropes and/or narrative.
How about Mythic SciFi? :p
How can it be niche if it includes Star Wars?
How about Mythic SciFi? :p
Different kind of niche. I'm talking evolutionary niche (what with genres constantly expanding and evolving) rather than niche audience.
E.g Cows fill a niche, but there are lots of cows, and lots of people consume them.
How about Mythic SciFi? :p
by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Thursday, October 23, 2014, 22:36 (3471 days ago) @ someotherguy
Cows fill a niche, but there are lots of cows, and lots of people consume them.
That makes so little sense, that my ability to process things that do make sense has now been diminished by a significant degree.
And for that, I thank you.
You hate a lot of things.
by Claude Errera , Thursday, October 23, 2014, 09:27 (3471 days ago) @ Riceamike
- No text -
When you assmume you make an ass of mu and me
by RaichuKFM , Northeastern Ohio, Thursday, October 23, 2014, 12:53 (3471 days ago) @ Spec ops Grunt
μ :P