The one thing I didn't like... re:Pilot Episodes (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Sunday, August 14, 2016, 20:19 (3116 days ago) @ Korny

As I said before, a lot of the conversation was fun and energetic and insightful. But at one point they talked about how they kinda viewed Destiny 1 as a pilot episode and as a place where they could lay out all their characters so they could then focus on them in more detail later. I didn't like this line of thinking, because there's no reason for a pilot episode to be bad.

Firefly's two pilot episodes (Serenity, and The Train Job) were both excellent. The "pilot" for the new Battlestar Galatic (its four episode miniseries) was amazing. Even the pilot for Babylon 5 (The Gathering, which was clearly a bit woobly and budget constrained) had a lot of good story and world building. Keeping it in the realm of video games, Halo: CE's 2nd mission (Halo) was great. As were Halo 2's (Outskirts), Halo 3's (Crow's Nest), ODST's (Tayari Plaza) and Reach's (ONI: Sword Base).

Destiny's first mission was what we'd come to expect from Bungie, but it's 2nd (the one where you kill the archon to get your NLS Drive)... I was pretty dang disappointed when the ending timer came up only a couple minutes of gameplay all the way back during the beta. Yes, some missions, like taking out the House of Winter's Kell or activating the Vex spire deep within the Cabal base, or the Exo Stranger mysteriously not having time to explain were pretty good, too many of them were "go to place, shot thing, mission ends." I'm not nearly as down on the playability of Destiny's year 1 missions as some are, but I don't think they would have made Destiny a successful pilot. It was Destiny's incredibly strong core gameplay and sci-fi styling that kept it going, not its year one story...

Yes, there's now something of an established world for the writers to play in, but setting up that world in the fairly lackluster way that Bungie did isn't something to be played up, in my opinion. The Grimoire has been great all along. The story and missions within the game? They took a while, in my opinion...

That said, I do have a lot of Hope for the Future. (Because that joke never gets old!)