I mean, you're not wrong. (Destiny)

by Avateur , Friday, September 23, 2016, 16:02 (2982 days ago) @ Kermit

My writing mentor used to say, "The nature of literature is ambiguity," and I think that's what you mean when you say obfuscation is a one of the fundamentals of writing. I wouldn't call it obfuscation as much as letting readers connect the dots (readers enjoy doing that).

I get the feeling that Kahzgul is mainly talking about how Bungie talks about the story, although there is some of this in-game ("There are stories I could tell you.") And I guess the Grimoire does some overpromising. See how great this story is that happened way back when? A present-tense story just as good is coming any time now!

But that's severely disappointing. At this point, we would have been better off playing in Destiny's world of the past where things were going down back in the day as described in the Grimoire. It would have been horribly tragic, and we may have been playing in a game with quite the losing battle. Could you imagine how awesome it would have been to show us beating up on some of these aliens and doing cool things to save the world, only to totally succeed...until the next expansion, where our victory was literally nothing but a tiny glimmer of hope that completely failed?

Consequences, failures, actual things at stake, and what appears to be no way out. All leading to a potential change where we finally overcome. But no, that would require actual writing ability and story planning. We didn't get that. We've been playing two years and haven't gotten that in the "present" story. The story thus far is "THERE IS A BAD THING OVER THERE, GO KILL IT NOW" multiple times, and we do that. Oh no, a God appeared at Saturn. Some God, he's dead. So's his son. That was tough.

I don't think Kahzgul is mainly talking about how Bungie talks about the story at all. I think that's a part of it, but I think it's about how the universe talks about the story as well when there's nothing there. It's smoke and mirrors. There's a taste of a little of something there since Taken King, and Rise of Iron sorta kinda adds a bit to that as far as what this means for the Fallen going forward (and maybe a bit of Rasputin, assuming his motivations haven't changed since we've been saving his ass left and right), but that's about it.

The nature of literature IS ambiguity. With Destiny, it's not a matter of literature or ambiguity or connecting dots. They don't have anything except for a brilliant backstory, no matter how hard they want to pretend that they do. Even Rise of Iron is mostly backstory and letting us know about the past. Only a fraction of this expansion gives us a present story with potential future consequences.