So what's happening? *Lore* *Spoils* (Destiny)

by squidnh3, Friday, September 10, 2021, 10:41 (1174 days ago) @ Cody Miller

So I caught myself up. How much of all this is actually in narrative vs in grimoire? Also the nine are dark matter entities? Uhhhh okay… Between this, all the crazy Hive shit, Callus being whatever he is, and wish dragons it’s seems were are more magic than space these days. Not that that’s a bad thing. But is this a compelling narrative? Genuinely asking how all this is presented and played.

They are definitely leaning pretty hard into the "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" SF trope. There are rules though - probably the biggest "rule" driving the overarching plot right now is that Hive Sword Logic, powerful though it is, has a huge downside in that it requires an ever-increasing amount of tribute (violence), otherwise the symbiotic/parasitic worm gods will destroy their hosts. Savathun is ostensibly enlisting Mara's (and our) help to avoid that fate.

My threshold for compelling narrative is certainly different than yours, but I can definitely say that I am increasingly excited to log in each Tuesday to experience the new story beats. The way this and the previous 2 seasons have worked, is that each reset day, you are given a small bit of story right off the bat, asked to do an activity (usually the 3-to-6-person seasonal ritual activity), you get another small bit of story, are asked to do another activity (usually a default-solo mission that has some more complex mechanics), then you get a final bit of story for the week. During the missions there is usually character voiceover that helps frame the purpose of the activity, or provides additional context to other events, or simply just fleshes out what is going on with the characters. For instance, a lot of the Osiris voiceovers last season were certainly hinting that he was not who he seemed to be. There may also be other content that provides additional information - during season of the Chosen the Presage mission was released, which provided much of the information about what was going on with Calus outside of the main story beats.

While this may sound like a frustratingly halting or slow way of telling a story, it has had the effect of making Destiny seem like a world where things are actually happening, rather than a disconnected series of dioramas. As a note, if you miss a week you can easily catch up by just doing those sequences of things multiple times.