Something’s Missing: Defeats (Criticism)

by Robot Chickens, Thursday, January 25, 2018, 10:47 (2528 days ago) @ cheapLEY

[*]Taeko-3 sacrifices herself to stop the Hive deep beneath the Titan Archology

This is my favorite strike in destiny purely because I actually felt like I was helping someone and that there might actually be urgency. It is also the first time I actually felt loss.

They need more of this. It doesn't even have to be someone super important either!

I completely agree, but I also still find that story to be underwhelming. We "meet" Taeko-3 and "see" her die within the span of five minutes. These are the kind of stories I'd like to see more, and I'd like to see them done well. I feel like this story could have been interwoven more into what the Hive are doing on Titan, and could have spanned several adventures, culminating in the strike we see now.

That's the vision of Destiny I keep seeing in my head. I can see a game that is much more like TTK was structured. Adventures could be used to tell the story of what's currently happening on the planet, building an actual cohesive narrative that culminations in a strike to take out a big bad, which maybe opens up another set adventures.

I agree totally. Narrative tie in's that paid off with smaller arcs would be great.

Destiny 2 still feels like less than the sum of its parts, sometimes. They have all the elements there, but it seems like every activity is too partitioned and self-contained. They need to all work together as a single experience, rather than just being a checklist of activities to do, which is what I feel we have now. Some of the adventures are sort of related to others on the same destination, but not enough, and I think the game would benefit by making them more like story arcs rather than just opening them all up at once.

Yeah, they do that a little now, but it's not quite as deep as I'd like. The Savathûn's return thread is intriguing and the adventures forecast the strike (and DLC?) plot well. I also appreciated the Nessus hints at the Leviathan's entrance in the adventures. Those helped the world feel more integrated, but I want to care a bit more about my NPC's.

One CoO plot thread that was super-disappointing to me was the direction of Brother Vance. Perhaps we didn't really know him in D1, but his shift from D1 to D2 felt almost as jarring as Truth's change from H2 to H3. Oddly, I felt more affinity towards him when I knew less about him. This is kind of true for Osiris as well, but I'm not quite as disappointed as others. As Cruel has argued well, I just want more compelling writing.