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

by Kahzgul, Friday, September 23, 2016, 20:23 (2982 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

Bungie's storytelling in year 1 was so vague, that I often get confused when they reference certain events later on simply because they reference them in ways that don't fit my understanding of what happened. For example, Ghost's very first line in the cinematic intro to TTK is "I was born the moment the Traveler died..." I heard that line and my first that was "wait... the Traveler is dead?". I thought we saved the traveler in year 1, when we freed the shard from the Hive on the moon. Something about "the Traveler can now begin to heal". Then there's the Undying Mind strike, where Ghost Ikora mentions something about "restoring the birthplace of the Vex", and my reaction was "... the Black Garden is the birth place of the vex?". If that's the case, then why did destroying the Black Garden suddenly cause light to begin to return to the Traveler, and how is THAT possible if the Traveler is actually dead... and so on.

So true.

The statements most of the characters in Destiny make are things that make sense in the moment if the only thing you knew was that one mission, but that make no sense at all given the totality of events. The motivations also don't make sense, and every plot thread so far has been abruptly dropped without a satisfactory conclusion (or even any discernable effect on the world).

Rasputin: We open some array, we establish contact with him, we reconnect him to something on Mars maybe, we salvage all of these warsats that he is somehow dropping for us, we save him from the omnigul and from the fallen shank in his bunker, and he gives us the sleeper simulant to help in the coming battle. But we don't know why we're bothering with him at all. Ghost says we should save him just because there are so few people left alive who appreciate classical music or something, but that's clearly a joke. The fact of the matter is that Rasputin ain't done shit to justify all this work on our part, and we don't know why everyone in the tower is so big on him. In ROI Saladin says Rasputin is basically not our friend, but then nothing we do about SIVA seems to matter to Ol' Raspy anyway, and we're still mindlessly salvaging warsats in the plaguelands like nothing changed.

The Fallen: There's sort of a story here, as the various Fallen factions are vying for, I guess, control over the other Fallen? Initially they're just kind of *there* but not actively doing anything. Then the Wolves kind of unite some Fallen, but we stopped them, and then the Devils are trying to use SIVA to (we guess) impress the other Fallen? But WHY? Who cares if they're united or not because they're all still our enemies and it does not matter one lick to use whether we're killing Wolves or Devils. They're all basically the same. On top of that, because they're always failing to unite, there's no actual change over the course of the game. They're still not united. From a storytelling standpoint this thread goes nowhere.

The Vex: The grimoire tells a great story about the vex and how the scientists freed copies of themselves and that is awesome. But in the actual game the Vex are dumb. "Evil so evil it despises other evil." Yeah right. Dumb so dumb that it can control time but not stop any of our actions. The ability to control time should trump all other technologies, and the Vex's use of that ability is, well, vexing because it basically doesn't do anything. And then when you stop someone like Aetheon, nothing changes. Zero effect. What was the point? Or this black garden thing, where the stranger told us to go, but that thread got dropped and we don't know why, and the whole garden seems to have not done anything anyway and we don't even know why we thought it would do something in the first place because we didn't think anything other than "why are we doing this?"

Cabal: They're on Mars for reasons unknown and then fighting the Hive for reasons unknown. Yup, that pretty much sums them up. "Stay out of sight" leads to immediately fighting them. Awful writing.

The Vanguard: Who are these people and why should we listen to them?

The Speaker: Same question, but singular.

Eris: The Vanguard and Speaker think she's a nutjob, so why don't we? Never explained. We do everything she says, but why? The hive are still everywhere, even though we're technically the kings of the sword realm now or whatever. Of course, throne realms and sword philosophies don't exist in the actual game of Destiny, and just in the grimoire, but damn. There appears to be something going on with Eris and the Awoken Queen, but RoI completely ignores that plot thread for some side quest shenanigans.

All of which brings us to The Hive, which is where we've spent the majority of our time in Destiny. Apparently we have killed their God-son who is the entire reason they were on the Moon, but they're still on the Moon. Then we went into their shadow realm and killed him for good, but they're still on the Moon. Then the God-son's God-Dad showed up at Saturn and started to invade the system, sort of, towards ends unknown, but we defeated him and then went into his throne realm and killed him, too, which - per the grimoire - should make us the kings of the Hive, but instead the Hive DGAF and are still in all the same places they used to be and are just as hostile.

Oh, there was one change. Shaxx calls me "Hivebane" now. Woooooooo.

sigh.