Maybe this is why Bungie hates story-telling now?

<ducks> Purposefully inflammatory subject line :)

I recently read this oral history of the making of the Halo 2 E3 Demo. Quotes from Bungie employees were used to reconstruct the history of its production and the aftermath.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=985145

I found this quote by Shi Kai Wang (from 2010) interesting:

Shi Kai Wang (from 2010): The New Mombasa e3 trailer was such a hack that we felt horrible after we came back from the show. It just showed us that we had nothing, and the amount of work that we had to make ahead of us was astounding. Everything from boarding, double wielding, jackals offense formation, insertion pods. Most of those were all done for the trailer, none of them were really implemented in the engine. With clever hackery it was IN the engine, just not Implemented.

The high from the trailer died down real quick and led to the monumental task that we had ahead of us, a story that we didn’t understand, and gameplay features that we weren’t 100% sure of.

That's interesting for many reasons, but "A story they didn't understand?" really stuck out. The way the quote reads it almost sounds like trying to implement a detailed, potentially complicated story actually influenced the production schedule, and the implementation of features in Halo 2. It could be that story problems ate into (or bled into) other aspects of the game which affected the final product. Since making a fun game is the primary goal, it seems like an obvious solution is to start making stories less complex (if the story complexity is affecting the fun). I disagree with this decision, and would point to a lot of other games that have successfully implemented great stories, but I can nevertheless understand why this might have been decided at the time.

If this type of thinking started to happen at Bungie during and after the production of Halo 2, then maybe Claude Errera and I were on to something in the last episode of Guardian Radio (Guardian Radio Episode 97) where we talked about how Bungie story telling has been on a downward slide since somewhere around the release of Halo, give or take a game.

Anyway, this isn't meant to be a flame starter. We all love Bungie. I'm sure they're working on improving the story-telling in Destiny, but I thought maybe this piece on neogaf might have shed a little bit of light on why they started to de-emphasize story in their games.

Or not... who knows? Maybe I just want another Marathon. Or maybe I should just go play Last of Us again. What do you guys think? Or maybe you disagree with Claude and I? Discuss.

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I felt like the story-telling in The Dark Below was a step in the right direction. Eris's story was much more coherent and I liked how everything tied together (like the strike). It makes me hopeful that they will continue to improve the story telling with The House of Wolves expansion.

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I love Destiny, so I don't want to come off sounding overly negative, but the storytelling in the Dark Below is terrible. Yes, the missions actually connect to each other, following a cohesive arch. But as I said on my podcast a couple months ago, isn't that what we would usually consider the absolute bare minimum from any other game? The fact that the missions actually have a connected story does not in any way mean the story is good, or well told. It just shows by comparison that the story in the main game is even worse.

Eris is a complete waste of a character. She has such a powerful backstory, having her relegated to the role of "tower vendor" is a real shame. Where is the introductory cutscene that shows her arrival at the tower? Where is the introduction between her and our Guardians? Why is there no actual conversation between her, our characters, our ghosts, the speaker, or ANYONE ELSE? Why is there no cutscene after completing her story arch?

I fear that Bungie may have a bit of tunnel vision when it comes to the storytelling in their own game. For all the talk in the lead up to the Dark Below about improving the storytelling in Destiny, I was a bit shocked to play the expansion and witness first hand what they consider to be "an improvement".

I just wish Bungie would be more realistic when they address the storytelling in Destiny. If they don't want to dive much in to traditional storytelling, that's fine. I can (and do) enjoy Destiny for what it is (although I personally would love more depth from the in-game storytelling). I just wish they wouldn't tell us that they're working on telling a better story if more of the same is all we're going to get.

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I don't really think it was more of the same at all. Also, you have to keep in mind that Bungie had only a limited amount of time to make changes for the new story. It seems to me like what they did was try to improve the story while not making drastic changes to the game engine which would take more time then they had. In theory, since they have had more time for The House of Wolves I would expect to see the story improved further even if they can't make drastic game engine changes to get the story to where we would all like it to be. You can't really expect an entire new game three months after the game was released.

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I don't really think it was more of the same at all. Also, you have to keep in mind that Bungie had only a limited amount of time to make changes for the new story. It seems to me like what they did was try to improve the story while not making drastic changes to the game engine which would take more time then they had. In theory, since they have had more time for The House of Wolves I would expect to see the story improved further even if they can't make drastic game engine changes to get the story to where we would all like it to be. You can't really expect an entire new game three months after the game was released.

I didn't expect a new game, I expected better storytelling because Bungie specifically stated that was one of their goals. I will repeat: the fact that the Dark below actually has a connected story does not mean that it is any good. I have a tough time thinking of it as much of an improvement over the base game, because it makes all the same mistakes. For $20, I think it is absolutely fair to expect a few cutscenes, and new voice work (from more than just the 1 new character).

I did enjoy the extra little side-quest-line that involved exploring the open world and finding specific targets. That was interesting game design, but you can't tell anyone with a straight face that is was "good storytelling".

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I think you're taking the word "improvement" to mean "is as good as anything could possibly be." No one's saying The Dark Below's storytelling is perfect, or even especially good. Just that it's a step in the right direction as compared to the base game.

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I think it's going to take a lot more significant changes to the game itself to allow them to make the story much better. The Dark Below feels like the best they could do with the current constraints of the game.

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I think it's going to take a lot more significant changes to the game itself to allow them to make the story much better. The Dark Below feels like the best they could do with the current constraints of the game.

What about the nature of Destiny prevented them from adding even a simple introductory cutscene?

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I think you're taking the word "improvement" to mean "is as good as anything could possibly be." No one's saying The Dark Below's storytelling is perfect, or even especially good. Just that it's a step in the right direction as compared to the base game.

I'm not sure what I said to give the impression that I expect perfection. I expected an improvement (again, only because Bungie told us to expect an improvement), and I'm not convinced the Dark Below qualifies as an improvement in terms of storytelling. I think there is *more* story present in the DLC than there is in the base game, but I don't think the storytelling itself is any better.

I think a lot of people are making the argument that "more stuff happens, and it is connected" is equal to "better storytelling". I don't feel that's the case. Do we care more about the characters in the Dark Below? To we feel the motivation behind our own actions? Is there character development of any kind, whatsoever?

These are not hallmarks of "perfect storytelling". As I said before, these elements are the bare minimum to telling a story. The Dark Below has a series of events, but it barely tells a "story" of any kind.

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The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it's about and why you're doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience.
-Neil Gaiman

One of the weird things about writing a story is a lot of times, it writes itself; it's not easy to explain if you don't write a lot, but I know when I start to write a story, it ends up going to very different places than maybe I originally planned. And a lot of the time, that new place is a better place, but I have to work through that process organically.

I think this is why movie adaptations of books are often so different: the director understands the story differently, and sometimes that leads the director to different places than it lead the original author. When you're making a video game, that sounds like a nightmare, especially if the author and the programmer are different people, and are trying to put the story together at the same time. Suddenly the programmer is trying to creatively express someone else's organic storytelling, and none of the progression or mechanics are organically developing from the programmer's own creative process.

So I think it makes perfect sense when someone who isn't telling the story, but instead is trying to present someone else's story that doesn't make sense to them, says they hate storytelling.

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So I think it makes perfect sense when someone who isn't telling the story, but instead is trying to present someone else's story that doesn't make sense to them, says they hate storytelling.

I disagree. Someone who says they hate storytelling has no business telling stories, period. Give their job to someone else.

Let me explain:

I'm a professional Editor, and my job is to tell someone else's story in a more cohesive way than they can. Very often, the way the story is presented to me doesn't make sense at all. But I love storytelling. LOVE it. Distilling that confused mess down is a skill, to be sure, but it isn't an inherently challenging or obtuse process. It's all about breaking the narrative down to the key points, separating the wheat from the chaff, and then building that narrative back up to really highlight the key elements.

The video on the front page at DBO is a *great* example of someone doing just that. In fact, he's telling the Dark Below's story in a dramatically better way than Bungie did, using only the materials that Bungie has published. It's shocking to me how compelling the story is when told that way, and how bland and boring the story is when told the way that Bungie is telling it. There's a massive disconnect there. Whoever is in charge of the narrative in Destiny needs to be given a lot more power and resources, giving them the benefit of the doubt on their ability to actually tell a story, given their druthers.

it's part of what's so frustrating about the game. The lore is there. The writing on the grimoire cards is compelling. But the actual in-game content is atrocious on all levels. It's laughable and shameful at the same time.

With video games, you kind of have to develop the game in a specific order in order for the story to be told well. First, you need an idea of the world you'll play in (space magic). Then you need to know what kind of game it is (FPS with RPG and MMO elements). At this point the coders can get to work on the engines that will run the game. Then you need to lay out the story. Right then and there, it needs to happen. This informs the artists about the game world they'll be creating. It lets the coders design scripting tools to set up specific, story driven encounters. It describes how the AI needs to work for each enemy type, how powerful the weapons in the player's and AI's arsenals are, and who the key figures of the plot are.

You can't re-write a story 9 years into development and expect it to be good without having another 9 years to change the entire game to match the new story.

And if your story sucks, you need to fix it before you dive headlong into development. There's no way Bungie "discovered" they had a bad story 9 years in. Most likely, they had an awesome story. But then they also had deadlines. And they weren't going to meet them because the story was too big. So they hacked apart the pieces that were done already and smashed them back together to get *something* to the public. This is all conjecture, but the facts fit.

Bungie probably is super sad that they weren't able to put out the game that they wanted to. But Activision's shareholders are thrilled, because they made a crapton of money, AND didn't have to pay the contract bonuses because the game wasn't as highly rated as the bonuses required. And money, my dear friends, is the name of all big games.

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Whoever is in charge of the narrative in Destiny needs to be given a lot more power and resources, giving them the benefit of the doubt on their ability to actually tell a story, given their druthers.

it's part of what's so frustrating about the game. The lore is there. The writing on the grimoire cards is compelling. But the actual in-game content is atrocious on all levels. It's laughable and shameful at the same time.

See, that's where I think the problem is. I don't think the process that Bungie has in place for developing thier games necessarily lends itself to good storytelling. And yeah, whoever is writing the narrative of destiny needs more power; but I think they also need to be more integral to the process. This felt like a game that had a story pasted on top of its mechanics, not a story that had a game where the mechanics grew from its story. Most of Bungie's games have felt that way; Marathon and later Halo titles both tried to tell large portions of their story through text, which doesn't necessarily lend itself well to the FPS medium.

With video games, you kind of have to develop the game in a specific order in order for the story to be told well. First, you need an idea of the world you'll play in (space magic). Then you need to know what kind of game it is (FPS with RPG and MMO elements). At this point the coders can get to work on the engines that will run the game. Then you need to lay out the story. Right then and there, it needs to happen. This informs the artists about the game world they'll be creating. It lets the coders design scripting tools to set up specific, story driven encounters. It describes how the AI needs to work for each enemy type, how powerful the weapons in the player's and AI's arsenals are, and who the key figures of the plot are.

You can't re-write a story 9 years into development and expect it to be good without having another 9 years to change the entire game to match the new story.

And if your story sucks, you need to fix it before you dive headlong into development. There's no way Bungie "discovered" they had a bad story 9 years in. Most likely, they had an awesome story. But then they also had deadlines.

I think this is where my initial argument was trying to go. The process here is ideal, and considering how the last few Bungie projects have gone, I don't think that this is necessarily the process they're actually following.

*Looking back, I think we may be talking about two different things; mostly I was speaking to that Halo 2 quote about 'a story we didn't understand', which I neglected to throw into my original post. Not that it changes much of what I said here, it's just we went about 90 degrees from where I was originally heading.

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Whoever is in charge of the narrative in Destiny needs to be given a lot more power and resources, giving them the benefit of the doubt on their ability to actually tell a story, given their druthers.

it's part of what's so frustrating about the game. The lore is there. The writing on the grimoire cards is compelling. But the actual in-game content is atrocious on all levels. It's laughable and shameful at the same time.

See, that's where I think the problem is. I don't think the process that Bungie has in place for developing thier games necessarily lends itself to good storytelling. And yeah, whoever is writing the narrative of destiny needs more power; but I think they also need to be more integral to the process. This felt like a game that had a story pasted on top of its mechanics, not a story that had a game where the mechanics grew from its story. Most of Bungie's games have felt that way; Marathon and later Halo titles both tried to tell large portions of their story through text, which doesn't necessarily lend itself well to the FPS medium.

With video games, you kind of have to develop the game in a specific order in order for the story to be told well. First, you need an idea of the world you'll play in (space magic). Then you need to know what kind of game it is (FPS with RPG and MMO elements). At this point the coders can get to work on the engines that will run the game. Then you need to lay out the story. Right then and there, it needs to happen. This informs the artists about the game world they'll be creating. It lets the coders design scripting tools to set up specific, story driven encounters. It describes how the AI needs to work for each enemy type, how powerful the weapons in the player's and AI's arsenals are, and who the key figures of the plot are.

You can't re-write a story 9 years into development and expect it to be good without having another 9 years to change the entire game to match the new story.

And if your story sucks, you need to fix it before you dive headlong into development. There's no way Bungie "discovered" they had a bad story 9 years in. Most likely, they had an awesome story. But then they also had deadlines.

I think this is where my initial argument was trying to go. The process here is ideal, and considering how the last few Bungie projects have gone, I don't think that this is necessarily the process they're actually following.

*Looking back, I think we may be talking about two different things; mostly I was speaking to that Halo 2 quote about 'a story we didn't understand', which I neglected to throw into my original post. Not that it changes much of what I said here, it's just we went about 90 degrees from where I was originally heading.

I see what you're saying now. Yes, I agree with that. Story drives narrative drives action drives gameplay, imo. "I can shoot a guy" is not as compelling as "I should shoot that guy" is not as compelling as "I need to shoot that guy to save the world" is not as compelling as "The evil Doctor van Burger has developed a neutrino ray that will cause the magma core at the center of the world to explode, forcing lava to the surface and effectively boiling the planet like an egg. It will kill everyone on Earth, unless you can shoot him RIGHT NOW."

Likewise, text is not as compelling and VO is not as compelling as cutscenes is not as compelling as actual events during live gameplay.

Bungie, unfortunately, has only one actual event during gameplay (warsat dish opening) which has zero impact on the real game. They have cutscenes that are long and nonsensical, offering more frustration than plot. The VO sucks balls. Sorry Dinklebot, but the game would be better without you. Where's Sam Jacksonbot? Or AnyoneElseBot? And the text... It reeks of 1980s indie RPG. Which is a genre I love, but which has no place in a AAA title. Why does literally everyone in the Tower have VO for conversations no one cares about, while the bounties are just text text text? It's a complete miss on where to spend the game's resources.

But yeah, it's pretty clear that their development process is a shambles when it comes to story integration, and likely it's the result of letting the tail wag the dog as far as design goes. "We can do X." "Great! The plot of the game is now about X!" What?

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But yeah, it's pretty clear that their development process is a shambles when it comes to story integration, and likely it's the result of letting the tail wag the dog as far as design goes. "We can do X." "Great! The plot of the game is now about X!" What?

I don't know how people feel about it here, but that game was such a brilliant execution of an idea from top to bottom. It had artistic, philosophical, and narrative reasons for its design choices (3rd person with fist-fights actually looks like a damn comic book), and it executed those choices (fights playing out actually made you feel like you were in a damn comic book)...

I only ever played the game and never really got into its design history, but I still feel it was their best artistic endeavor, even if it was at times difficult to play.

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Bungie has been telling fascinating stories up until Destiny. It's the first game that fails with that regard, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, maybe Minotaur had a sketchy plot? I didn't play that one. But Pathways was great, Marathon was inspired, and Halo was an obsession. Destiny is a flop. On the one hand, they can't all be winners, but on the other hand, Bungie seems to have lost track of what has, up until 2014, made their games stand out.

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Bungie has been telling fascinating stories up until Destiny. It's the first game that fails with that regard, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, maybe Minotaur had a sketchy plot? I didn't play that one. But Pathways was great, Marathon was inspired, and Halo was an obsession. Destiny is a flop. On the one hand, they can't all be winners, but on the other hand, Bungie seems to have lost track of what has, up until 2014, made their games stand out.

It was the design execution where Oni stood out to me. It feels so unlike their other games. Marathon had a terrific story, but you spent a lot of time reading, and that messed with the flow of the action I thought. Oni's pacing, its structure and story arc, its visual design and its conceptual tributes, were all married so well. It just clicked with me. Halo CE comes close for me, but it still feels like the other titles in their wheelhouse.

I guess I was trying to say that Oni is just so left-field for them. Almost like a different studio.

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Bungie has been telling fascinating stories up until Destiny. It's the first game that fails with that regard, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, maybe Minotaur had a sketchy plot? I didn't play that one. But Pathways was great, Marathon was inspired, and Halo was an obsession. Destiny is a flop. On the one hand, they can't all be winners, but on the other hand, Bungie seems to have lost track of what has, up until 2014, made their games stand out.

It was the design execution where Oni stood out to me. It feels so unlike their other games. Marathon had a terrific story, but you spent a lot of time reading, and that messed with the flow of the action I thought. Oni's pacing, its structure and story arc, its visual design and its conceptual tributes, were all married so well. It just clicked with me. Halo CE comes close for me, but it still feels like the other titles in their wheelhouse.

I guess I was trying to say that Oni is just so left-field for them. Almost like a different studio.

Nah, some of those bits are still there. There are little touches of gameplay that remind me of Oni, for sure. Way more than I felt with Halo. The way the supers are handled really fleshes out the feeling of fighting in that space; but other things have grown into the DNA as well. A company is an organism.

I pointed out to the group I was playing with recently that the Axion Bolt is a lot like the screamer cannon from Oni. (Honestly, I wish they'd scream as they closed in on my targets. That would be great.)

I have to say that video really sewed the entire expansion together in a way that was more satisfying than the expansion "storyline" felt to me. And it threw into relief how the Hive and the Vex would be in ontological competition with each other. A war for existence itself.

That's the kind of hook I was looking for all along.

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I pointed out to the group I was playing with recently that the Axion Bolt is a lot like the screamer cannon from Oni. (Honestly, I wish they'd scream as they closed in on my targets. That would be great.)

GODDAMN THAT WOULD BE AWESOME.

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I pointed out to the group I was playing with recently that the Axion Bolt is a lot like the screamer cannon from Oni. (Honestly, I wish they'd scream as they closed in on my targets. That would be great.)

GODDAMN THAT WOULD BE AWESOME.

While we're at it, Gjallahorn needs a nice tubey-wolfhowl type of sound when it fires.

AROOOOOOoooooooo.....BOOM-boom-bitty-boom-boom boom.

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I pointed out to the group I was playing with recently that the Axion Bolt is a lot like the screamer cannon from Oni. (Honestly, I wish they'd scream as they closed in on my targets. That would be great.)

GODDAMN THAT WOULD BE AWESOME.

Did you notice that the Shanks are basically M.A.Ds from Marathon?

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I pointed out to the group I was playing with recently that the Axion Bolt is a lot like the screamer cannon from Oni. (Honestly, I wish they'd scream as they closed in on my targets. That would be great.)

GODDAMN THAT WOULD BE AWESOME.

Did you notice that the Shanks are basically M.A.Ds from Marathon?

Yes.

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- No text -

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I guess I was trying to say that Oni is just so left-field for them. Almost like a different studio.

It WAS a different studio. It was Bungie West, a group of people who weren't integrated into Bungie until AFTER Oni. (Some of those people are still there and still very influential - Dave Dunn, Lorraine McLees, etc - but they didn't come from Chicago, and they weren't involved in pre-Oni Bungie projects.)

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Oni was made by Bungie West technically. I think that game actually had more promise than Halo, but it got rushed out the door. If only it had multiplayer combat. Supposedly the game itself was also significantly shortened from the original design. Maybe that's a good thing, and maybe not.

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I don't know how people feel about it here, but that game was such a brilliant execution of an idea from top to bottom. It had artistic, philosophical, and narrative reasons for its design choices (3rd person with fist-fights actually looks like a damn comic book), and it executed those choices (fights playing out actually made you feel like you were in a damn comic book)...

In my opinion Oni was flawed in a ton of ways. I guess you can give it a pass because most of the problems have been worked out since in other similar games and it was before that time, but the level design was bland, the gunplay was poor, and a lot of the moves were useless. Like, the crescent moon kick is supposed to knock enemies out of the air, but if the enemy is jumping at you are you really going to have time to press back-back-forwards-kick?

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I don't know how people feel about it here, but that game was such a brilliant execution of an idea from top to bottom. It had artistic, philosophical, and narrative reasons for its design choices (3rd person with fist-fights actually looks like a damn comic book), and it executed those choices (fights playing out actually made you feel like you were in a damn comic book)...

In my opinion Oni was flawed in a ton of ways. I guess you can give it a pass because most of the problems have been worked out since in other similar games and it was before that time, but the level design was bland, the gunplay was poor, and a lot of the moves were useless. Like, the crescent moon kick is supposed to knock enemies out of the air, but if the enemy is jumping at you are you really going to have time to press back-back-forwards-kick?

Oh absolutely. My brother and I used to speed run the hell out of that game, and when you have it mastered, the whole thing plays out like a movie. I'll give you the gunplay being unintuitive but I got really, really good at it (sliding-countersniping is the best), and at the time I can't say I noticed the level design being an issue because when it came out it looked pretty good. It felt like reading a comic book or a manga: it looked like one, you had action set pieces similar to one, it had drama like one...mastering that game was a really enjoyable experience, and I still hold it up as one of the most memorable pieces of storytelling I've ever experienced.

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Which one?

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Which one?

Ha! I was pretty good at all of Muro's moves, but not really what I was talking about.

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See, that's where I think the problem is. I don't think the process that Bungie has in place for developing thier games necessarily lends itself to good storytelling.

Bungie just doesn't understand the difference between backstory / setting and narrative I guess.

The manual for the original Starcraft had about 40 pages of backstory. All of it similar to what Bungie has created with the Grimoire cards. You read it and were primed for the game. However, the game actually told a story about characters in that world. The backstory wasn't the focus or the thing drawing your interest, it was merely setting the stage for the game's story.

Bungie simply places too much emphasis on the backstory and setting. I'll bet they write it first, THEN find a narrative to put in it. That's backwards. You get your basic narrative, then you design backstory for the world and characters.

I'd bet money I've just pinpointed Bungie's main problem.

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See, that's where I think the problem is. I don't think the process that Bungie has in place for developing thier games necessarily lends itself to good storytelling.

Bungie just doesn't understand the difference between backstory / setting and narrative I guess.

The manual for the original Starcraft had about 40 pages of backstory. All of it similar to what Bungie has created with the Grimoire cards. You read it and were primed for the game. However, the game actually told a story about characters in that world. The backstory wasn't the focus or the thing drawing your interest, it was merely setting the stage for the game's story.

Bungie simply places too much emphasis on the backstory and setting. I'll bet they write it first, THEN find a narrative to put in it. That's backwards. You get your basic narrative, then you design backstory for the world and characters.

I'd bet money I've just pinpointed Bungie's main problem.

I fucking loved that manual. When we got Starcraft we actually couldn't fit it on our ancient HDD and we had to get our dad to buy a new one. So I spent a couple months waiting for that HDD to get ordered and shipped out to backwoods Vermont, and the whole time I read that manual over and over again.

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See, that's where I think the problem is. I don't think the process that Bungie has in place for developing thier games necessarily lends itself to good storytelling.

Bungie just doesn't understand the difference between backstory / setting and narrative I guess.

The manual for the original Starcraft had about 40 pages of backstory. All of it similar to what Bungie has created with the Grimoire cards. You read it and were primed for the game. However, the game actually told a story about characters in that world. The backstory wasn't the focus or the thing drawing your interest, it was merely setting the stage for the game's story.

Bungie simply places too much emphasis on the backstory and setting. I'll bet they write it first, THEN find a narrative to put in it. That's backwards. You get your basic narrative, then you design backstory for the world and characters.

I'd bet money I've just pinpointed Bungie's main problem.

I fucking loved that manual. When we got Starcraft we actually couldn't fit it on our ancient HDD and we had to get our dad to buy a new one. So I spent a couple months waiting for that HDD to get ordered and shipped out to backwoods Vermont, and the whole time I read that manual over and over again.

They really packed those things full back in the day, didn't they? Warcraft 2 had a really good one as well.

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...and raise you the manual to Homeworld. That book had everything, from descriptions of Kushan tribes that don't even appear in-game to the story of how the Hyperspace Core was found to arguments between fleet officers about how useful strike craft will be in space engagements.

All so the destruction of Kharak would hit you like a rocket-powered gut punch.

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I knew before I opened this post that it'd be the Homeworld manual.

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The Marathon manual was also really good if I recall. Maybe not quite as in depth...

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That's exactly what happened, I would bet my job on it. Not to mention, all my of my amateur attempts at novel writing lead me to agree with your assessment whole heartedly.

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Good post, but I take issue with this.

You can't re-write a story 9 years into development and expect it to be good without having another 9 years to change the entire game to match the new story.

Call it luck or happenstance or something else, but some great stories in games had different narratives until late, at least so far as some narrative decisions that made all the difference were made late. I know this happens with my own writing. I have some nice pieces of writing but the story isn't working. I re-arrange, I change the focus, maybe I just include a new scene or lines of dialogue and suddenly everything gels, the story is bigger and better than it was.

You're right that game development doesn't provide the same flexibility and luxury to change things that you have in, say, fiction, but small changes can make a big difference, and oftentimes cutting big chunks of content makes a big difference, too.

What's so good that it seems obvious and inevitable in a story isn't always apparent when you're in the thick of creating it, and sometimes the line between evocative and not enough is hard to discern. The latter is part of what I think happened with Destiny.

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Sorry, I think I wasn't clear: You can totally re-write a story 9 years into development and have it be good. No doubt.

You can't do that 9 years into developement of a video game and have the game be good without enough time to re-write all of the core game components to suit the new story. That's what I meant to say.

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Sorry, I think I wasn't clear: You can totally re-write a story 9 years into development and have it be good. No doubt.

You can't do that 9 years into developement of a video game and have the game be good without enough time to re-write all of the core game components to suit the new story. That's what I meant to say.

What I'm saying is that a story can come together late. What I agree with is that it's more difficult to change course with a video game, but content can be discarded and the problem is it's just more expensive to do that with video games. I think that's what happened with Irrational and BioShock Infinite. On the other hand, content can be repurposed.

I don't even know if we disagree, except I'd say that if a game is taking 9 years to develop, it's probably because they have changed course a few times, and you seem to be saying that late changes aren't feasible when I think they are, and late changes have resulted in good stories.

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I don't think we're disagreeing.

When I worked in games, 2 years was considered "rushed" for development from scratch, and acceptable for installments in a franchise. Most annual games are really the same game engine used for 2 or 3 years in a row, just with different content and assets and story and such. Madden is a great example of a game that adds one new feature every year, but only gets a new game engine every 3 years or so.

9 years of development is a crazy long time, but often ideas germinate for a while before you're officially "making" the game. The trick is, large elements like cutscenes, boss fights, etc... all can take a lot of work to pull off. That final year is all testing, bug hunting, and fine tuning. Making major changes in 1 year is a huge red flag (diablo 3 and destiny are two recent examples of games that had major overhauls in their final year of development, and both games have been hugely disappointing to me).

It's more like, I know that at least the final 2 months of that year are lost to manufacturing, and that the 8 months before that are major testing and bug fixing months. So really, the story overhauls were all done in 2 months. 4 if they pushed testing (they clearly did). And then they're set in stone so the bugs can be fixed. Any time you change major plots in a game, you're resetting the clock on testing, and pushing your product 8-10 more months down the line.

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If this type of thinking started to happen at Bungie during and after the production of Halo 2, then maybe Claude Errera and I were on to something in the last episode of Guardian Radio (Guardian Radio Episode 97) where we talked about how Bungie story telling has been on a downward slide since somewhere around the release of Halo, give or take a game.

The more I think about it, the more I'm not sure that it's true. I think it's just that Bungie's form or preferred way of telling a story just doesn't work well in a visual medium. Marathon was terminals. Myth was with narrated text scrolls. These games are generally praised for their story.

And look at Destiny. What aspect of the story was praised? The grimoire cards.

Text.

The deficiencies of video games with regards to visual narrative helped Bungie in the early days I think, but now it doesn't do them any favors when those limitations are gone.

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The *true* story of the Didact and Librarian and Medicant and Offensive Bias in Halo 3 was also text and was fantastic. That said, the Halos had good storytelling in cutscene form. The problem with Destiny is the story was not told either in text or cutscene. It feels like they have a great story but have not gotten around to telling enough of it to us yet... It's too split up... too teasing... and in some cases just plain too incomplete...

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The *true* story of the Didact and Librarian and Medicant and Offensive Bias in Halo 3 was also text and was fantastic. That said, the Halos had good storytelling in cutscene form. The problem with Destiny is the story was not told either in text or cutscene. It feels like they have a great story but have not gotten around to telling enough of it to us yet... It's too split up... too teasing... and in some cases just plain too incomplete...

I'd be curious as to how much story-telling cut-scenes (and whatever other media is included) costs. Not just $$$ for the CGI or scripting, but what it means in terms of other features reduced or cut out.

I say this because the more I've played Destiny, the more I've read the Grimoire cards, the more fan-created story elements I've watched...the less I feel the need for a traditional, fully-fleshed story in Destiny.

My point is...is it worth it? At this point, do I want Bungie to start adding/maintaining/supporting story-telling mechanisms, or do I want more content. More Strikes, more Raids, more patrols, etc.

Dragon Age Inquisition has wonderful, cinematic presentation of story moment. Skyrim had nothing like that. I love both games. Bungie has chosen not to put it's eggs in that basket, and maybe I don't care so much?

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The *true* story of the Didact and Librarian and Medicant and Offensive Bias in Halo 3 was also text and was fantastic. That said, the Halos had good storytelling in cutscene form. The problem with Destiny is the story was not told either in text or cutscene. It feels like they have a great story but have not gotten around to telling enough of it to us yet... It's too split up... too teasing... and in some cases just plain too incomplete...

I'd be curious as to how much story-telling cut-scenes (and whatever other media is included) costs. Not just $$$ for the CGI or scripting, but what it means in terms of other features reduced or cut out.

I say this because the more I've played Destiny, the more I've read the Grimoire cards, the more fan-created story elements I've watched...the less I feel the need for a traditional, fully-fleshed story in Destiny.

My point is...is it worth it? At this point, do I want Bungie to start adding/maintaining/supporting story-telling mechanisms, or do I want more content. More Strikes, more Raids, more patrols, etc.

Dragon Age Inquisition has wonderful, cinematic presentation of story moment. Skyrim had nothing like that. I love both games. Bungie has chosen not to put it's eggs in that basket, and maybe I don't care so much?

Right. I think to some extent the connect the dots style of storytelling was intended and would even still exist if Destiny also had a strong, Halo style cutscene centric story.

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The more I think about it, the more I'm not sure that it's true. I think it's just that Bungie's form or preferred way of telling a story just doesn't work well in a visual medium. Marathon was terminals. Myth was with narrated text scrolls. These games are generally praised for their story.

And look at Destiny. What aspect of the story was praised? The grimoire cards.

Text.

The deficiencies of video games with regards to visual narrative helped Bungie in the early days I think, but now it doesn't do them any favors when those limitations are gone.

You're right. And they apparently don't like audio diaries either, which worked great in Bioshock imo. Personally, I'm fine with text as long as it's in the game somewhere and not on an external website.

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You're right. And they apparently don't like audio diaries either, which worked great in Bioshock imo.

But they did it really well in ODST...

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You're right. And they apparently don't like audio diaries either, which worked great in Bioshock imo.

But they did it really well in ODST...

Agreed, however, Bungie outsourced the development of the audio diaries in ODST to Fourth Wall Studios. http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Sadie%27s_Story

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Thanks, I didn't remember/know that.

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In a lot of ways I don't think a story is really understood until it is finished. Same goes for a video game as a whole. One of my favorite looks at game making recently was the Final Hours of Tomb Raider, a Geoff Keighley app you can get for iPad. Tomb Raider (2013) is fairly high up there on my favorite games of all time. Somewhere in top ten or twenty maybe. All the gameplay and story elements, which not the most complex ever, all sorta came together and just work sorta in the same way that Halo 1 just works. But getting an inside look at the development process... Tomb Raider was really screwed up and wacko for a large portion of its development! There were spirit ghost monsters, and little kid sidekicks, and all sorts of strange things that would probably have been awful. They had team leaders go on emergency medical leave and financing problems and almost had the project cancelled at least once... and then at some point near the end of development the combat system finally clicked and the rest of the gameplay and story quickly formed up around it leading to a surprisingly good game.

Similarly, go read the history of Toy Story and A Bug's Life. For Toy Story, Pixar was a group of very very smart computer graphics nerds with fairly little story telling experience so they trusted Disney to provide feedback. Disney's feedback was awful and nearly doomed the project. Toy Story was in fact cancelled but Pixar did a miraculous quick turnaround where they trusted themselves, undid many of the changes Disney had wanted, and ended up producing one of the best films ever made. Likewise, with A Bug's Life, they were riding high on the success of Toy Story and decided to go bigger and bolder and... similar to Bungie and Halo 2... their reach for even greater success nearly wrecked the company. People got burned out. Friendships were damaged. By the end the leaders of Pixar apologized to the company and promised that they would never make a movie in that stressful damaging way again. And yet, A Bug's Life is also now a classic film!

What happened to Destiny? I don't know. Surely some of its story problems come from splitting its narrative across a year or more of DLC releases. Might Destiny's story be more forgiven and feel more substantial if on day one we were able to save The Traveler from the Vex, prevent Crota's invasion of Earth, and stop whatever plans are being implemented by the House of Wolves? Maybe. But maybe not. Because I think some of Destiny's story is meant to be mysterious and teasing like the Exo Stranger's cutscene. Most see that as bad storytelling but I see it as the opposite... a short intriguing cutscene that hinted at bigger world that we were only a part of. I think it needed more of an immediate pay off and a new, more specific tease of things to come in the ending cutscene, but for the most part I like the feel of Destiny in those two cutscenes.

Likewise, the story of Rasputin is being handed out very slowly... probably too slowly and too scattered across Grimoire and cutscenes and missions dialogue and strikes that half the population can't play, but it seems to be a classic Marathon-y, Bungie-y story of an AI who has gone rampant. It's just a bit too hard for most to put together the pieces and a bit frustrating because even if you do get them together you still don't have the end of his story and might not for months or perhaps even years!

To me the most frustrating thing is I don't have a sense of what Bungie wants to do now. Do they want to keep filling in pieces until Destiny becomes a fantastic whole? Are we going to keep getting largely self contained story bits like The Dark Below that don't really tie the greater world together? Will we see a comet release with huge swaths of new interconnected story and play spaces? Or will big new stuff wait until Destiny 2 on a platform I don't own? It's almost like Destiny is caught in the bad space between episodic storytelling and Halo-y large chunk story telling and Bungie's classic secrecy means I don't know which was intended or which they will try and bend the game towards...

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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.

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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...

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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.

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I know it is not people's favorite level. But it worked for me because

The gameplay reinforced how you were supposed to feel. Confused, fighting wave after wave of an enemy with seemingly limitless resources. Your are supposed to get exhausted of it because that is how Master Chief is supposed to feel at that point in the plot of the story.
At the same time, you have this blue ball of light giving you hints to a backstory much bigger than what is fleshed out. This teasing works to invest you in the larger world, and helps replay value.
But, you do have a clear objective in all of this and that objective has clear implications for the overall arch of the main story. You need this to feel like you've accomplished something.

If any of these pieces had not been present, the level would not have been as compelling.

As it is, Destiny has great gameplay, but I'm rarely sure about how it connects to the plot how I'm supposed to be feeling. There are lots of hints about a great backstory (The Stranger is a good example), but I have to leave the game to delve in deep and I just can't bring myself to do it. I don't think that is me being lazy, I think it is a reasonable expectation. As for feeling accomplished when I beat a mission? Eh, sometimes I do when I beat something challenging with a group of people, but it is never because I felt like I knew what I was doing for the people in the tower or whatever.

I do love Destiny, but I'm still left scratching my head when Bungie has done it so well in the past. I miss Staton...

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Cody was right about that. A persistent world is a static one. Events can't happen. Think about the two times you play through Truth and Reconciliation in Halo CE. You aren't going to see transformations like that in a persistent world game.

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Cody was right about that. A persistent world is a static one. Events can't happen. Think about the two times you play through Truth and Reconciliation in Halo CE. You aren't going to see transformations like that in a persistent world game.

Sure that's true on Patrol. But some of those levels use specific instances of the shared world. I'm thinking right now of the first Dark Below level. That was a great reuse of space that had a different feel and I think there is room for growth in that direction.

However, point taken. Things in the tower are not going to reflect your accomplishments. Then again, Eris has gotten a lot more friendly/creepy with me in her passing comments since defeating Crota... Having instanced dialogue could go a long way.

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Having instanced dialogue could go a long way.

They definitely didn't do enough of that.

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...is that Destiny has time-traveling enemies built into the game (the Vex), so explaining being able to re-play a strike would be incredibly simple.

"We know from the defeat of the Vex at the Vault of Glass that there are millions of versions of the timestream. The battle here is bigger than just our Universe, Guardian. It's for all Universes. That's right. Plural. So we're using the vex technology to send you into combat in another dimension. It's a familiar fight for you by now: Find and kill Sepiks Prime. Help the humans in that timestream, and they may one day help us in return. Good luck, Guardian."

Bam. Persistent world explained.

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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.

I think there's a lot of work they're going to have to do to hammer out better ways to deliver story in the future; regardless of the scale of the story they're telling (whether it's about a beef between factions in the Tower, or that for some reason the Cabal and the Fallen have decided to join forces). I think more cutscenes, even just brief dialogue and environment shots, would go a long way.

And I'm realizing there's more in common with the Raids than I had thought. Aren't Crota and the Vex after the same sort of thing? A dimensional advantage? I think we're still dealing with a 50/50 meat-to-bones balance in terms of the storytelling we're actually getting via the chosen method of presentation. But the thought that they would be in competition with each other in that way is really compelling.

PS - There needs to be some real dialogue between Rasputin and somebody, that we are privy to. Maybe an expansion or a faction that crops up around him.

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I think there's a lot of work they're going to have to do to hammer out better ways to deliver story in the future; regardless of the scale of the story they're telling (whether it's about a beef between factions in the Tower, or that for some reason the Cabal and the Fallen have decided to join forces). I think more cutscenes, even just brief dialogue and environment shots, would go a long way.

There is no sense in that unless you have INTERESTING CHARACTERS to put in the cutscenes. Destiny's huge problem is that the world feels dead because there are no characters. The entire game needed characters interacting with you like the Queen and her brother do.

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There is no sense in that unless you have INTERESTING CHARACTERS to put in the cutscenes. Destiny's huge problem is that the world feels dead because there are no characters. The entire game needed characters interacting with you like the Queen and her brother do.

I think the problem isn't that there aren't interesting characters, it's that you don't really interact with them. They are only off in the background where you overhear them or they give out a general missions etc. They are all trapped in the tower and relegated to just acting as vendors. Some of them have really interesting backstories in the grimoire but it's barely connected to what we find in the tower.

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<ducks> Purposefully inflammatory subject line :)

I recently read this oral history of the making of the Halo 2 E3 Demo. Quotes from Bungie employees were used to reconstruct the history of its production and the aftermath.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=985145

I found this quote by Shi Kai Wang (from 2010) interesting:

Shi Kai Wang (from 2010): The New Mombasa e3 trailer was such a hack that we felt horrible after we came back from the show. It just showed us that we had nothing, and the amount of work that we had to make ahead of us was astounding. Everything from boarding, double wielding, jackals offense formation, insertion pods. Most of those were all done for the trailer, none of them were really implemented in the engine. With clever hackery it was IN the engine, just not Implemented.

The high from the trailer died down real quick and led to the monumental task that we had ahead of us, a story that we didn’t understand, and gameplay features that we weren’t 100% sure of.

That's interesting for many reasons, but "A story they didn't understand?" really stuck out. The way the quote reads it almost sounds like trying to implement a detailed, potentially complicated story actually influenced the production schedule, and the implementation of features in Halo 2. It could be that story problems ate into (or bled into) other aspects of the game which affected the final product. Since making a fun game is the primary goal, it seems like an obvious solution is to start making stories less complex (if the story complexity is affecting the fun). I disagree with this decision, and would point to a lot of other games that have successfully implemented great stories, but I can nevertheless understand why this might have been decided at the time.

If this type of thinking started to happen at Bungie during and after the production of Halo 2, then maybe Claude Errera and I were on to something in the last episode of Guardian Radio (Guardian Radio Episode 97) where we talked about how Bungie story telling has been on a downward slide since somewhere around the release of Halo, give or take a game.

Anyway, this isn't meant to be a flame starter. We all love Bungie. I'm sure they're working on improving the story-telling in Destiny, but I thought maybe this piece on neogaf might have shed a little bit of light on why they started to de-emphasize story in their games.

Or not... who knows? Maybe I just want another Marathon. Or maybe I should just go play Last of Us again. What do you guys think? Or maybe you disagree with Claude and I? Discuss.

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.

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

Playing The Last of Us kind of resets your expectations, doesn't it? "Oh this is what good storytelling is actually like!" :)

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I thought ODST was fantastic from a story perspective.

I think ODST nails the aspect of having interesting believable characters, but is lacking in the plot department. It's more fun to watch interesting people do nothing than it is to watch boring people do something.

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I thought ODST was fantastic from a story perspective.

I think ODST nails the aspect of having interesting believable characters, but is lacking in the plot department. It's more fun to watch interesting people do nothing than it is to watch boring people do something.

IMO, the plot in ODST was in the audio diaries. Which were in the game (with their production outsourced to Fourth Wall Studios).

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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.

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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.

Yep. I give ODST story points because of the structure, which was cool as hell, and Sadie's Story, which was the first time Halo tried to present civilians. The intersection of the two storylines is still one of my favorite video game easter eggs if you want to call it that.

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The initial vision for Halo was a 3rd person free roaming game. You were going to be able to drive all the way around Halo nonstop and engage enemies and ambient wildlife.

After the sale to Microsoft there were huge changes to the game and much of that vision was lost. I believe there is a comment about halo 2 that they had a whiteboard up with a flaming plane on it, and out the back were crates being pushed out with labels indicating features no longer in the game.

The point is games do change during development. Halo changed drastically from it's inception, and overall I felt the storytelling was pretty good until parts of Reach. Even Reach is superior to 343's outing, mostly due to the focus on the Forerunner and the massive changes to Halsey and the ancient humans to support 343's endeavor.

Plot aside, the halo series had largely voice over interactions, but frequently had you encounter NPCs in the field. The human marines and their interactions, even for only short portions of a map really added to the feel of the game.

Destiny lacks any NPC interaction, especially in the field. They could really use some "frontier corps" you can encounter to add flavor and personality to the game.

Right now the world is too empty and your actions irrelevant to the greater scheme. I always felt good in Halo when I managed to save all the marines and they would say stuff.

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Plot aside, the halo series had largely voice over interactions, but frequently had you encounter NPCs in the field. The human marines and their interactions, even for only short portions of a map really added to the feel of the game.

Destiny lacks any NPC interaction, especially in the field. They could really use some "frontier corps" you can encounter to add flavor and personality to the game.

Right now the world is too empty and your actions irrelevant to the greater scheme. I always felt good in Halo when I managed to save all the marines and they would say stuff.

1000x this!

I would pray to meet the David Cross Marine every time I ran into a squad. I love that guy! Oh David Cross Marine, I'm so sorry I ran you over with the tank that one time!

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I always felt good in Halo when I managed to save all the marines and they would say stuff.

I always did this too. It felt good and it was another way to add a challenge to the game. I also would like to see more NPCs out in the Destiny, but the challenge comes when some random comes along and kills the guy you've been trying to protect the whole time.

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The initial vision for Halo was a 3rd person free roaming game.

Halo was actually an RTT like myth originally.

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I am pretty sure we have all missed the point here. We heard over and over in the literature leading up to the game release that this was going to be OUR STORY. I think that the lack of concrete narrative was intentional, to allow us, as the newest guardian, to write our own story from scratch. If you go back through the release videos and documents they constantly make reference creating our own destiny to "become legend". We were supposed to enhabit this world, MMO style, and interact with each other, and there by create our own legends. The whole concept of the raid (references to MMO's) notwithstanding) was to create an environment where we would be pushed, and therefore create memorible stories for ourselves.

They purposefully did not include a Master Chief type character in Destiny for the same reason that you never saw Master Chiefs face in Halo: to make your connection to the game avatar stronger. Instead they sought to create a world that had a huge backstory so it would feel like there was a setting on which you could play. In typical bungie fashon they hid much of this lore in hidden texts, so the more curious gamers could figure out the history as they desired, i.e. The librarian backstory.

The Halo games themselves followed a very similar story method, where there is a "front story" which is played out in real time. And a "hidden story" which was hidden in the terminals. The difference here is that We are supposed to be John.

What is interesting then is how well this has worked, and at the same time how poorly it has appealed to us. Every day on this forum I read pretty cool stories of someones "legend - wait for it - dary" game. That one time we all wiped just as The Archon Priest started melting. Or how someone finally got the Mythoclast. Or the team that killed Crota without firing a shot. Bungie executed their ideal perfectly, we just havent noticed its working because, lets face it, id rather be " the epic hero shooting the ultimate baddie who is going to end the world" then just being myself, but somewhere on mars, and with a cape, and space magic, and a gjallerhorn (oh wait, maybe that is pretty epic).

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I think you're right that Bungie delivered great gameplay. I also think you're right that it is Bungie's style to give us a game where we uncover and explore what remains of our past after a Golden Age and a subsequent Collapse. That same plot (more or less :p) was a major theme in Marathon, Myth, Oni, and Halo. The problem is that while Destiny does have some really neat backstory and scifi philosophy worthy of previous Bungie titles, it's front story did not hold up nearly as well. Halo got us used to great animated cutscenes and significant in-game chatter piecing the story together as we played...

...but Destiny has very few cutscenes of strong narrative value (landing at The Tower, then on the Moon, Venus, and Mars don't count, for instance) and even less input from our Ghost as we went along. Perhaps even worse is the way Destiny's missions didn't flow nearly as well. There is a connection between all the missions on Earth, or the Moon, or Venus, or Mars... but: 1. Most of the mission are too short and 2. What connections are there are generally buried in the Grimoire with little to no hints given to us while playing the game.

Speaking of terrible flow, the thing that shocked me the most the very first time I played Destiny was the way that missions end with two or three inconsequential sentences from our Ghost and then a countdown! "The City will appreciate this data... at some point in the future... that you may never see. 3...2...1... Stats Screen." is nowhere near as compelling as abandoning the Autumn and watching it rush past you before your escape pod crash lands on a beautiful and mysterious alien ringworld. That there's a short paragraph of text in the Grimoire from one of The Tower Vanguard saying "That data your provided us was indeed interesting" doesn't come close to making up for the lack of the easy to understand context and excitement that even the worst levels in Halo provided. :(

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