A legit responce (Destiny)

by Earendil, Tuesday, June 07, 2016, 03:17 (3185 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

You're making tons of great points and interesting comments... I wish I had time to respond to them all, but I don't at the moment. So I'm just going to address 1 point in particular:

I don't think people are caring about the Destiny universe in the same way that they care about the three universes mentioned in the quote. They haven't really succeeded here. I've written about why I think this is the case. But to say people don't care about the Destiny universe at all is wrong. They clearly do. Just not in the manner they were aiming for.

Here is where I disagree. Strongly. Perhaps it's because I don't know Harry potter, but I have a feeling that I still know what makes Star Wars and TLOTRs great, and it's NOT the main story arc. It's really not. The main story arc is incredibly straight forward if not boring. The character development is bland, and the characters are near forgettable. No, what makes Star Wars and TLOTRs great is the universe that has been created around the story. This is particularly true in TLOTRs, which goes out of its way repeatedly to drop hints or clues as to bigger things, and give you NO conclusion. Tolkien posits way more questions and mystic than he ever bothers to explain to the reader, and THAT'S what makes it an interesting universe and world. To (a much lesser) extent this is what makes Star Wards great too. The FOrce? Wtf is that? Who knows, it just is, and we the viewer don't and can't understand it, which means it's allowed to surprise us. This is in part why the whole "midiclorians" (sp?) pissed so many people off. It'd be like if the Hobbit movie tried to answer the questions of who Tom Bombadil or who Beorn (not our Beorn, the Hobbit one that his name sake comes from) is. It'd be stupid because it would take the mystery out of the universe.

This is I feel completely differently than you do. For me to be remotely invested in the worlds of LotR, Star Wars, or any other fantasy/fiction/sci-fi/whatever, I need to care about the characters. I agree that the plots in many of the most celebrated franchises are nothing remotely special, but it is the characters themselves that pull me in and make me care. Without Gandalf and Aragorn, Han Solo and Darth Vader, these stories mean absolutely nothing to me. And that is where Destiny is truly lacking, IMO. Yes, Vanilla Destiny had a painfully undercooked plot. But for me, that isn't nearly as bad as the fact that I came out of the game not giving a damn about any of the characters. I can read grimoire cards and appreciate them to an extent (I think a lot of fascinating writing went into them), but they don't really help me care about Destiny. Not the way I would if there were a single character to latch on to.

Just my thoughts on it. Appreciate your post :)

And I appreciate you :)

I suppose I should clarify a tiny bit about the story. I do believe you need characters to care about, but I think the way TLOTR portrayed characters was a little bit as pawns in a bigger story, which I believe was a good thing. Let me explain. In TLOTR the thing we did not want to happen was for evil to get the ring. This isn't even like a lot of modern grey scale stories, where it's us vs the "enemy. In the case of TLOTR, the Dark Lord is pure evil, period. The point of armies dying, and the reason a character like Gandalf would give his life is because that was so important. What made the protagonist endearing was that he really wasn't all that special (like you and me). He was small, no magic, no real skills besides being undetectable, and generally had a strong anti-evil persona that helped him deal with the ring. We rooted for Hobbits because they were like us. But Frodo? Exactly what makes us want him to live otherwise? His family? His kids? He had a job or mission back home that wasn't complete? He's a boring guy from a boring village! He doesn't have so much as a picture of a girl-back-home to point to. I'd argue that the point of the character was to be simple and boring (again, not unlike the average reader) and yet still able to take on a grand adventure and conquer evil.

So I suppose what I mean when I say the characters are simple and straight forward is not to say they are unimportant. Gandalf is important, if only because he is mysterious and powerful. He's like a father figure that, if he dies you feel lost and the world feels even bigger and more terrifying than before, yet that choice adds a lot of weight to the job of destroying the ring. Hobbits are by their nature supposed to be us, and that is an important part of their role and character.

It works for Destiny too. We are simple nobodies raised from the dead. Why us? We don't know. We know Guardians can be great, and there are in fact amazing guardians that came before us. Guardians can't (or have a hard time) dying. So what would make the mythical amazing guardians risk and sometimes acquire death? What was their mission, their idea, their knowledge? Are they even dead?

I think, and I hope, that what Bungie has intentionally done is set themselves up for a sort of Simarillion story. The universe is there, all we need are the epic stories to fill in some (but not all!) of the history, complete some of the mysteries. Our own character never has to be amazing, never has to have a family to go home to. I don't need to survive so that I can go back to "what once was", instead I need to defeat evil, and for that, I will give my life.