THE MINI POST:: Do Light Events Create Lasting Impact? (Fan Creations)

by INSANEdrive, ಥ_ಥ | f(ಠ‿↼)z | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ| ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, Monday, October 23, 2017, 09:00 (2586 days ago) @ INSANEdrive

(A.k.A – Quantity Vs Quality)

I feel guilty. I am about to sit here and preach scripture on how to write a story. I don’t know anything about that! Well, at least I don’t consider myself with having that knowledge. Believe it or not I have never written an epic story before. Weird, right! I’ve never connected words on a page with a heart and a soul that will write themselves into a world I shall only expectedly meet in the collective imagination of metaphor, warning, or shear thrill of escape. Maybe someday I will, but for now all I have to show is my dinky little fan fiction. My fun little attempt at speculating the gaps for my three class of characters between my time in Destiny 1 and the potential of Destiny 2.

Starting with the less then obvious, there was indeed a story in Destiny 1, be it vanilla or expansion. Problem was (and I am simplifying here) that the Destiny 1 Story had about as much impact as a space fart from a lone, world-less star, with only its bent space time for company. Destiny 1 was the story of supporting stories, and not main ones. Pillars, not doors. They supported the world, instead of progressing the world. The Black Garden, Oryx, The Taken King, SIVA. All pillars of the world, things that “exist”, but have no impact. Things happened, THEN we “pushed back”, THEN things stopped happening, THEN Things happened, THEN we “pushed back”, THEN things stopped happening… and THAT is why things tended to be so BORING! “THEN” kills a story. In the end, the story in Destiny 1 was, among all the puffery, nothing more but a mental footnote. Don’t get me wrong, it will be referenced and retconned to give it some sort of purpose, it would be stupid not too. There are gems in those rocks.

Just… intill then. It doesn’t matter. Nothing in any of the Destiny story matters! . . .

. . . And then came the Red Legion and Guul. How, Where, When, Why? I don’t know! It may have been nice to at least have something to work off of, something to care about, as what we got was just some known unknown coming out of nowhere, blowing up all our stuff, and to the stuff they didn’t blow up they tried to take from us. All said, at minimum, the actions have impact. We experienced a loss of a home, our light, and learned to fight from those who know no such grace. So that’s it right? YAY Story! All is fine and dandy right? To quote a certain other mush faced foe, “Were it so easy”.

Impact is a very important step, but each step you take in story is important, and vanilla Destiny 2 stumbled, squandered and even skipped a number of it’s steps. If this was a dance competition, then Destiny 2 started well, tripped, fell, got back up, and while embarrassed tried to make up the difference in the end. An amicable effort, but a loss all the same. Bungie - You can do better. I mean, look, Bungie, I know you already know that. Such is the mantra of every artist ever, but I still feel it needed to be said. You can do better. Just try to not self destruct in the process, eh?

Before I could flush this text out, Cody Miller posted some points about the story and its numerous flaws. Most of it is basically on point with my thoughts as well, so if you want more detail, give it and the collective thread a look. It’s actually pretty good for once. Maybe Cody should be banned more often! ;)

I’m taking the lazy out on this one, I know!

That said I do have a few words to add, briefly mentioned by Cody (See “Tell, don’t show“), simply because of how deeply frustrating this was. There was NO build up. NO hints. Just OMG THERE IS A SUN DEVASTATOR AND THAT’S THE PLOT NOW!?!?!?

…

"Wait…” I thought. “I thought Guul was the plot point. Where… were did this come from!?" So we have this build up and then it gets redirected and you lose SO MUCH story momentum. You sidelined YOUR MAIN BADDIE! So then, when we did focus BACK on GUUL, it’s all just squandered. I don't CARE! I mean, yes... bad guy. Stop. You...won't getaway with this. And. Stuff.

Way to kill your own story BUNGLE!

I am not the only one who has said this. Nor Cody. I’ve seen it mentioned numerous times across the web. And We ALL missed something. Honestly, this seems to be Destiny twos biggest flaw. NO - not the story, us missing stuff. It’s all there (probably) but we just MISS that WHATEVER is there! I digress. Remember on Titan where we are decrypting the “transmissions” with the CPU we took from the center of the Titan City?

That is where this information comes from. I missed this detail the first two times of gameplay, but the third time – It *Clicked*.

That is a MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR story point that simply got glossed over by basically everyone as far as I can tell. The way things were structured didn’t really bring it home.

Ahhh... The power of editing and story structure.

The story also lacks emotional content. I still am not invested in any character. There IS blatantly character with in these characters, sure but – WHY DO I CARE? TO that examples effect, Mass Effect.

Behold! At the end of the day Mass Effect got people to care about their characters. THERE WAS SACRIFICE and PURPOSE! LEAD WITH IT! WORK WITH SOMETHING!...oh and… DON’T SPIRIT CHILD FOR YOUR ENDING! :P

At the end of day, Mass Effect IS one of GAMEINGS UNDEFEATED MASTER CLASS IN CREATING A CHARACTER WORTH CARING ABOUT!

Right now you have characters without hearts. Robots emulating emotion. For example, Asher Mir. The quintessential collage professor asshole. For all intents and purposes, he lost his arm. Well… he didn’t actually LOSE IT, just a part of him instantly became VEX, by some vexing vexy whodahada. There is a lot of underlying strife inside this character. WHY DIDN’T YOU USE IT! You simply dropped us off with an inscrutable sour asshole and didn't give us any storytastic character meat for the trouble. We know only surface amounts, just enough to be annoyed. So gee thanks, that is exactly what Destiny needed (/s). We can GUESS why he is such an asshole, but that's not what we should be doing, in all honesty. Or how 'bout your ever rebellious “uncomplicated” Suraya Hawthorne, who to be fair is one of the more flushed out of the new human characters. I get it, she grew up in the dog eat dog world with the lingering claws of death ever present as a teacher. The best way to live life without rules and so forth. All we need now is some face paint (/s). BUT WE NEED MORE THEN THAT. ALL we have is surface details. We have eggshells for characters. Clichés and Shadows.

In retrospect, this sort of thing has never been Bungies strong suite. All Bungie characters, in all games, serve an archetype. No more, no less. Bungie, if you really want to make Destiny, “Starwars Grade”, you're going to need to match and beat the game that by far came the closest before is got squandered by raw unquestionable stupidity and mismanagement. Mass Effect. I can not think of any other critically acclaimed game RIGHT NOW, that has had the same character impact as Mass Effect, which is why I have bothered to bring it up.

Then there was the after thought that was the "Boss" Battle at the end, plus... whatever that ending was. I mean, it was cool, I think, but...

(This is one of the things I wanted to flesh out more on.)

...and everyone lived happily ever after! Right? That's... how these things work out right? RIGHT!?

(Also Ikora... by saying “I’m not used to being wrong”, you are now dead to me. Turn in your Warlock card, you have been voted off the island. There is no learning if there is no wrong.)