Contextualizing coolness (Gaming)

by cheapLEY , Monday, December 10, 2018, 17:39 (2179 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

This isn't necessarily a direct reply to you, Cruel. But your post sparked something in my mind, which is related to a conversation Korny and I had yesterday, and something that was discussed in the forum somewhere recently.

I will start by addressing some of the stuff you said, though, just because it's there. (:

Or "2 Scarabs. You heard me. 2 of them"

The weird thing about that is that the Scarabs in that fight aren't particularly interesting in what they do, but it's still undeniably cool because it felt unique. The area for that fight is relatively tiny (even compared to the area of the single Scarab fight earlier in the game on Earth). The Scarabs are smashed into a small area and can't move. They literally just stand in one spot and rotate. They don't have any interesting behavior. But there is enough chaos there with two Scarabs shooting at you, Banshees flying around shooting at you, some Ghosts zipping around, friendly Warthogs zooming about. The Scarabs themselves are only interesting because of their size and the fact that it feels nearly inevitable that they're going to step on you or a friendly Warthog at some point.

Destiny's many patrol spaces look different in superficial terms, but very few of them offer a unique gameplay experience compared to the other zones. You're usually doing the exact same thing over and over with a different skybox in the background

All that said, I do think things are improving on that end. The Dreaming City alone is a really special achievement, I think.

This is getting at what Korny and I talked about a bit yesterday.

The Dreaming City is the best thing that's every happened in Destiny. I'm not even sure that's a debate, for me. The way it evolves and continues to feel fresh, the secrets, the Shattered Throne, the Raid, the way all that is connected--it's damn near perfect, in my mind. While I'm no loremaster, and have undoubtedly missed a lot of important things that were revealed, the context we got every week when something new opened up is a large part of why that all felt so cool. Obviously, the fact that it's all strong in terms of gameplay loop really helps, and maybe that's ultimately why it's successful, but without that context, it undoubtedly wouldn't have been nearly as effective.

That's why the Black Armory stuff, while absolutely fun (I think), hasn't felt as cool. We're given basically zero context for any of it, to the point where I'm still not sure why we should even give a shit about these Forges. The few weapons I've obtained so far are fun and cool, but they're not anything that the Vanguard weapons aren't--they sure don't feel like they were made in some super secret Forge that Guardians have never accessed before. Which, that's fine, they can't be ridiculous because of gameplay reasons, but the game doesn't give us any context for any of this or why it matters, and it's not like the gear speaks for itself and makes that immediately evident.

I'm really curious to see how this season (and this year) will unfold. Gameplay trumps everything, and, ultimately, if it's all fun, it will be successful, but I worry a bit about getting a bunch of random activities that don't feel like they add much to the universe of Destiny. Forsaken was so strong because of the way it was built and the context it added to everything we did. It gave a definitive shape to the world of Destiny that I think it's been sorely lacking, at least since The Taken King.

I said previously that I wouldn't miss the smaller campaigns if it meant we got more fun, meaningful content. That's still true, I think, but the Black Armory rollout has shown that I actually will miss those campaigns, if only because they gave me some story elements to latch onto (even when they were mostly paper-thin).

I still want to see what Destiny looks like if the devs at Bungie are given freedom to experiment. The Whisper mission was made by a small team, just a few people, and it's some of the coolest content in the game still. What does Destiny look like if they break up into tens of those small teams and all just design one-off things that are cool? What if we could get a Whisper mission every month? That sounds appealing, but how do that contextualize that content and make it "fit" within the Destiny universe and further the story elements of the game? Forsaken (and the Dreaming City specifically) made me care about that aspect of Destiny in a way that I never have before, so I want them to lean into that now. But the idea of getting a year of support of smaller teams trying cool ideas and making neat things sounds really appealing between Forsaken style releases. I was hopeful for that when they talked about the Annual Pass initially, and I'm still very hopeful and optimistic that there will be some cool surprises along the way, but I'm not convinced that's what we're really getting.