Very true (Destiny)

by General Vagueness , The Vault of Sass, Wednesday, February 17, 2016, 20:03 (3201 days ago) @ Kahzgul
edited by General Vagueness, Wednesday, February 17, 2016, 20:24

He says "Are you sure this is a good idea?", which I'm not sure is supposed to be a joke, it might be given that it's too late to not open it when he says that. Still, great to see you know a lot about what you're criticizing so heavily.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.

I'm not. I think you really dislike the game's original story but haven't looked at the details much (like how to spell "Zavala"), so some of what you dislike isn't just subjective, it doesn't mesh with the reality of how the game is.

But let's analyze the quote as you stated it:

"Are you sure this is a good idea?"

It's a bad line that is totally worthless in the game and serves literally no purpose. If it's supposed to be a joke, it's not funny, so it fails.

It's not funny to you.

If it's supposed to call back to something earlier, there was no something earlier where you had an idea, ever, in any mission in the game, let alone specifically about the prison of elders, so it fails. If it's supposed to be the ghost suddenly doubting the entire plan of the mission, why is it asking you if you think it's a good idea when it should be saying something "I'm not sure this is such a good idea. Zevala sure has a lot of faith in you," or something to that effect, which would show that there's some conflict (however minor) between zevala and your ghost, and would also show that you have faith in yourself as well (which, it would be implied, your ghost doesn't have), in which case the line would add something to the story. But it doesn't do that. As it stands there's no reason to have this line in the game, and the game would be the same game without it as it is with it.

The purpose it serves to me is mostly to let me give a snarky response to it (like "Why do you ask?" or "You wait until now to say this?" or "No, why?"). Maybe that was intended, maybe it wasn't, but I don't see anything wrong with it (in my obviously subjective view).

It doesn't serve the story, the action, or the character development of the game and as a result I'd have cut it.

If you want to get into story and character, it reinforces that our Ghost is kind of timid, which you can see elsewhere (the cutscenes before and during your first entry of the Reef come to mind). It's not a revelation or anything so it's not essential but good characterization is a lot of little moments, not one event saying "hey my personality is like this".

To be clear, I think there were a lot of missed or messed up opportunities in the writing of the base game, but I wouldn't say that's one of them.