Wonder (Destiny)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Wednesday, June 14, 2017, 16:03 (2720 days ago) @ INSANEdrive

Is there a world in which we never find out who the Exo Stranger was talking to on the phone?

Yeah, I mean, there’s a world where you never find out anything else about the Exo Stranger, and there’s a world where the Exo Stranger is the star of—

Destiny 3?

[Laughs] Yeah, there’s a world where the Exo Stranger has a cartoon or a comic book series or whatever. With Destiny, we have so many cool opportunities to tell stories in and out of the game. And we have a bunch of characters who are interesting, but the Exo Stranger is one that always makes me chuckle a little bit. Because I feel that’s one character where we actually wrapped up the arc. She gave you a sweet gun and then dissolved, presumably off to do something else. So I feel like, of all of our characters we’ve introduced and exited, we actually exited her effectively. But she always comes up. She always comes up, so there’s obviously something to that character that piques people’s curiosity.

(Coloration my edit)

I actually find my self shocked about this. I audibly gasped. In so many words - Bro! You can't be this blind. I refuse! I refuse. I mean... you know what. "I don't even have time to explain why I don't have time to explain."

As a storyteller, you have to be thinking about why someone is still watching / reading / playing / listening to your story. Why. What is it they are hoping for? What do they want?

There's this idea of the Major Dramatic Question. It's the thing the audience is wondering that keeps them hooked. How will the Master Chief survive and get off Halo? Will Joel be able to get over his guilt by saving Ellie? How will Cloud stop Sephiroth? What happened to Laura Palmer Rachael Amber? If these questions aren't answered, you will be left with a bad feeling. It doesn't always have to be the 'right' answer. While watching Nightcrawler, you're thinking "How far will this slimeball go, and what will bring him down?" The answer is, very far, and nothing. In fact, he's rewarded in the end.

So, you have to craft your stories in such a way that you know what that question is and why the audience is there. This is usually established early on. If the audience doesn't have this question they want answered, why would they continue? So you usually put this out there very early, and the events of the story build upon that question. You can have subplots and things like that, but they usually tie back into that first big question somehow.

I think Destiny started off on a misstep. For me anyway, the wonder, the question, was always about the nature of the traveler and the darkness and the collapse, because that's the first fucking thing we see and are told. Then the speaker goes on and on about it. It's a super compelling premise that could carry a lot of emotional weight for the characters. It's not until much later in the game we learn the black heart is draining the traveler's light and must be stopped. Had that been established earlier, like perhaps in the second or third mission, where the traveler becomes weak and its protection starts to fade, then I would be concerned with restoring it. But, because there's really nothing else to go on, my sense of wonder lingered on the traveler and the darkness.

Perhaps that's wrong to be my question, but that's the fault of the way the story is presented. The setting of a story is not willy nilly, it's chosen because it facilitates the story. But I was not given anything else to care about right away. But now you throw the Exo Stranger in, and people are naturally going to wonder about that. How can you not? The plot was so incoherent, it was the one thing that you knew you wanted to know.

I'm not saying that we have to get all these answers right away, but as we get these other stories they need to feed back into that major question we have about the traveler and the darkness. You had a bazillion side stories in Battlestar Galactica, but they all led back one way or another to "How is humanity going to survive"? That's how you make your subplots work rather than just exist.

I'm sure we will all care about taking down the Cabal, but what about the questions we really have? Move us father along with that. Throw us a curveball maybe. But don't just drop shit never to hear about it again or have it matter. That… makes people want to stop caring.