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

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Saturday, January 06, 2018, 17:11 (2591 days ago) @ Ragashingo

Not because of anything Bungie has done. From story, to characters, to gameplay, you’ve been so negative and even preemptively negative on so many parts of Destiny 2 that you’re either kidding us or kidding yourself about Bungie losing you as a customer.

I’ve gotta challenge you on the “preemptively negative” part. I’ve talked about my likes and dislikes, parts of the game I’ve enjoyed and the parts I haven’t. But I cannot remember a single time when I’ve been preemptively negative about something... certainly not without due cause (I think it is 100% reasonable to say, at this point today, that the chances of the story being great in the next expansion are slim. But I would also express my HOPE that Bungie turns that trend around).

Heh. Ok...

Let me say up front that my reaction to this is purely theoretical, and I of course will do my best to keep an open mind when I actually play the game. That said...

I thought the little intro story featuring Zavala was good... exactly the kind of thing we needed in D1. I only have 1 problem with it, and that's Zavala. I don't like him. Or Ikora, or Cayde, or Amanda... all the characters from D1 are just paper-cutouts in my mind. Skin-deep caricatures. The idea of spending more time with these characters is a turn off for me.

I found myself wishing I was watching a cast of new characters in these cutscenes. I would have no preexisting attachment to new characters, but in the case of Destiny's cast, D2 is actually starting at a negative.

I'm just wondering out loud: would a new cast of characters help me jump into Des2ny without bringing as much baggage from D1 with me.

As a Destiny player, I have totally made peace with what Destiny is (and what it isn't). As I already said, I no longer expect any form of satisfaction from Destiny's story or characters. And I'm ok with the that.

I think it’s pretty fair to say you were preemptively negative on story and characters, at least. But, fair is fair, so in the continuing interest of fairness, you also posted this:

I won't say anything with regards to plot or gameplay specifics, but I just wanted to jump in real quick and say how much I loved the campaign. Fantastic in its own right, and a huge step above anything that from D1 or the expansions IMO. Lots of diversity in terms of gameplay set pieces, environments, and objectives. Without giving anything away, they do some stuff with some of the missions that feels like it should have been there all along.
Felt like the perfect overall length for me, too (about 9-10 hours). I didn't "power through", but split my time between story missions and patrol activities. I haven't done any strikes or PvP yet, and I still have plenty more to do on patrol. Most importantly, the game feels vibrant and full of stuff to do in a way that D1 never quite managed.
Oh, and it might be tied for my favourite Bungie soundtrack. I put it right up there with ODST. The music is absolutely spectacular.

Story wise, it is definitely a huge step above D1. I still struggled to care much about it, but that's largely because I have such a firmly planted dislike for all of Destiny's characters. But that's not so much the fault of D2, and to the game's credit, they use the characters far better than they've been used previously.

All in all, I really love it. Can't wait to get some co-op action happening :)

So... consider your challenge both partially accepted and met, but also my reasoning, at least about your not liking the gameplay, retracted. :)

Eh... the above sentence never quite read like it was suppose to and I’m tired of trying to tweak it to get the intended friendly tone to shine through. Here’s what it meant.

1. I stand by my claim that you have been preemptively negative about Destiny 2. You were very down the Vanguard to be sure and stated multiple times you were going to let your feelings about them in D1 affect how you felt about D2.
2. That said, I was wrong about your negativity towards gameplay specifically, and also more generally I overreached in my characterization of your negativity.

I can always count on you to do your homework ;)

So I must ask; given what you define as “preemptively negative” (within the context of my quotes that you referenced), is that any different than simply calibrating my own expectations? I know that for me, the storytelling in Destiny has ranged from abysmal to fair across the 2 main games and several expansions. If I went into any future content expecting anything better in the storytelling department, wouldn’t that be foolish of me? Wouldn’t that just be another case of allowing unrealistic expectations to taint my experience with future content? I’m not being baselessly negative, I just know what I like and what I don’t like, and I try to calibrate my expectations towards Destiny accordingly.

I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t expect Destiny to suddenly succeed in an area where it has failed every. single. time... but I am also happy to enjoy the game nonetheless, because there are other elements of the game that I greatly enjoy. And I’ve made that very clear all along, or so I thought. Which is why CoO is such a blow to the game for me. It failed (for me) in several areas where Destiny normally succeeds, without improving the areas I already found lacking. The ground has shifted, so to speak. And the state of the game *right now* is such that I question whether or not I can continue to expect the things I usually enjoy from Destiny.