Left me wanting... *slight spoilers* (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Wednesday, September 21, 2016, 14:04 (2826 days ago) @ Ragashingo

More!

It was a great little short story, I was sad it was over so fast. I guess I wanted a novella.

So, the story missions could have been stretched out more, given more tasks to do, more things to investigate and learn. As it stands it was over super quick. I look forward to going back through the story missions with my other characters and taking more time while doing so.

Also, I'm excited to explore the progress book.

I was chatting with Cyber about the story a bit... I really liked it, and couldn't quite put my finger on "why". It's not that it was anything particularly deep or well developed.
As I think about it, I'm realizing the the thing that made me like it so much is the way they directly tied the history and lore with your current struggles together. Previous Destiny expansions or sub-plots have tried to do similar things in the past, but I've always found it to be one-sided. We learn a little bit about the history of Crota and the moon, as well as the Fireteam that "went down into the pit", but we never actually see anything tied to that fireteam. We just hear Eris talking about them non-stop.

I think RoI's story is very similar to the TTK mission where you go down into the Vault of Glass in search of Praedyth. None of Praedyth's story had been mentioned in the game previously, but we knew the name (thanks to the VoG weapons) which helped peak some interest as the missions starts and you first hear his name. As you work your way through, Praedyth's story is uncovered in a way that ties directly to the threat you are currently facing. You learn something about all factions involved, not just the bad guys or just the good guys. I find details like that help make the game-world feel more complete and fleshed out.

Indeed.

I think part of it is that the story of the Iron Lords, all of it is based on Earth and affected Humanity. The Hive? Their story rising form short lived prey to immortals rampaging across the galaxy destroying entire civilizations is awesome, but our Guardians are only affected by the very end of Crota and Oryx's story. Same thing with the Vex, and the Cabal. The Fallen are a little more closely linked to us because of the Awoken and Twilight Gap and their occupation of the Cosmodrome, but event still, they had their entire Golden Age and Whirlwind happen many years ago outside our view.

Maybe a lot of this could be solved with decent cutscenes. Letting every player see Oryx's forces smash civilization after civilization would have made his defeat much more impactful, for instance. Instead we got like one sentence from our Ghost alluding to them destroying thousands of world or whatever...

The Grimoire is great. I love the stories. But exposing those stories in game certainly makes a difference!

Your post just helped something click into place in my mind:

We learn a little about Crota's history in terms of his attack on the moon, but we never learn anything about who he is, how the Hive operate, what it takes to rise to power within their culture, etc (the Taken King takes a couple baby steps in this direction, but very little).

Same with the other factions: pretty much all the player ever learns about them is how they relate as a threat. In some stories, that's ok (Halo CE, for example). But if the enemies are treated as 2-dimensional threats, you really need compelling development on the Hero's side to make up for it; something Destiny clearly lacks.

As basic as it is, the story in RoI is the first time a piece of Destiny content has told a complete narrative. We understand the villains, we're given context through the history of the Iron Lords (which helps establish our own motives), and everything makes sense in the ways it needs to without digging into the grimoire to explain huge plot holes.