From my perspective, there is a lot that doesn’t make sense (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Friday, January 05, 2018, 18:57 (2592 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

But with CoO it was great. The Strikes were the story and it worked wonderfully. Yes, there needs to be more content as well, but the integration was nearly perfect. To the point that multiple hardcore Destiny players that you know from DBO did not realize they'd even played the Strikes after they beat the CoO storyline.

That’s because they were just story missions that got reused as Strikes. It was a lazy trick and it doesn’t work well at all. You don’t realize you “just played a strike” when you first go through them because they’re labeled as story missions and you go through them Solo. Why would it ever occur to anyone to think “hey, did I just play a Strike?”

Then, when you jump into the strike playlist, you get Osiris saying “oh, hey... that thing you already did? Yeah, I need you to do it again... for science...” and then you play through the exact same mission, but with 2 other guardians along for the ride.

I’m sorry, that is not good narrative integration. That is lazy re-use of content with barely any attempt to disguise the fact that Bungie was willfully misleading with their advertising of CoO. You (Bungie... not YOU, Raga) don’t get to say “X new story missions and Y new strikes” when the missions and strikes ARE THE SAME MISSIONS. I’ve had plenty of criticisms of Destiny over the years, but this is the closest I’ve ever come to being legitimately angry at Bungie, because at this point they’re just being insulting.

Willfully misleading. No. That is 100% wrong. We were told in advance that the two new Strikes were also directly integrated as part of the story. At the very least Bungie did this in one of the livestreams. I can’t imagine there wasn’t also reporting of this fact far and wide after that. Even if someone didn’t know about the integration when they played the campaign, the accusation that Bungie even came anywhere close to trying to mislead is, at best, a misinformed, disrespectful fit of unfounded name calling.

I also completely disagree on your characterization of the reuse. I thought the Strikes were extremely well used within the campaign and the reuse in the Strike playlist with beefed up encounters and alternate dialogue that fit the characters and fit the story was Destiny at its best. I prefer the variant of that Strike where a new Vex Mind managed to restart the simulation on its own. Yeah, Osiris sometimes tinkers too far and gets in over his head, but the totally in game Lore makes is completely clear that without his constant meddling in the Infinite Forest the Vex will rediscover the right sequence of actions that leads to their ultimate victory. Really, it goes further than that. Not just they might or will rediscover it, but they in fact have rediscovered it since our Guaridan helped Osiris and that Osiris evidently destroyed that knowledge yet again without our help.

I thought similarly about the reuse of Strikes in Destiny 1. Omnigul repeatedly undoing her death. Sepiks Prime coming back as Sepiks Perfected, the Nexus on Venus being turned into a mini VoG Templar battle, the multiple variants of the Undying Mind, and the Shadow Theif being reanimated Frankenstein style via SIVA were all terrific reuses of content in a way that made sense. I think they all would have been better if they’d actually been a part of the campaigns, like Destiny 2 did with CoO, but I thought the reuse with new dialogue and encounters was, again, terrific. Having villains such as Omnigul, Sepiks, and now the Vex who can reappear and be redefeated without becoming a story contradiction is, to me, a wonderfully clever use of dialogue and reuse of content.

In the end, I think you are extremely off the mark with this one, and that the integration we saw in Curse of Osiris is something that should be encouraged instead of something anyone gets angry over.