=II.The Stories (and Videos) of My Gameplay= (Fan Creations)

by INSANEdrive, ಥ_ಥ | f(ಠ‿↼)z | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ| ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, Sunday, April 03, 2022, 15:19 (975 days ago) @ INSANEdrive

De nobis fabula narratur.

~ About us is the story told.

(Approx. 2255 Words | +/- 19.5 min. read | About: Gameplay Impresstions.)

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At this point in the life of Destiny, a new expansion means one thing; we're getting a new raid. Oh, and I suppose there's that whole campaign thing too and what not but... all the focus in those two-ish weeks or so is making sure, for those whom -even just might- be blind raiding, there is a readiness for the unknown. On the same coin, a new season means a new artifact. Every season, the first thing I'm thinking about is... how soon can I get the artifact? This is for obvious reasons; I want that XP to go towards unlocking the artifact perks as soon as possible.

And so... for the entirety of these parts here...

Alt title; Where Artifact

"Where Artifact?" "Where Artifact?" "Where Artifact?"

This question is also what brings about an interruption in my play. This first level is... quite long. It all felt like a wasted chance to start building the artifact XP up. I kept thinking... did I go too far? Did I miss something? Oh no, am I wasting time? THE ENTIRE TIME, I was just holding my breath. "Where Artifact?"

This is why I stopped almost at the end of the first level (which I didn't know at the time). I thought I did something wrong, or missed something. "Where Artifact?"

After going to the tower, and finding nothing indicating where the artifact was, I decided "well, I'll just jump back in".

HEY UI TEAM. THIS NEXT PART IS IMPORTANT!

Part of the reason I stopped is because of my presumption that it would be a place where there would be a checkpoint. It was a WHOLESALE gamble. A presumption that I also felt like it really shouldn't be. Right? After all... Bungie wouldn't be THAT dumb and not have a checkpoint for a level SO LONG, right? RIGHT!?

SO folks, let's get on this emotional roller coaster. Here's the video below, followed by my textual descriptions of what you can't see.

SO in the first part of this clip here, I'm seeing...

• NO Checkpoint Icon.
  
  
• NO Difficulty Screen
  
  
• The Intro Cinematic
  

...and in this entire time, I'm growing an apple in my throat. My heart is sinking. OH. MY GOODNESS. Bungie, don't you... you're not this dumb. I was growing quite shocked. Looking to leaders for answers, INDEED! AND THEN...

• Difficulty Screen
  

WHY WOULD THERE BE A DIFFICULTY SCREEN IF THERE IS ALREADY A CHECK POINT?!... was my logic at that moment. Retrospect, that's kind of silly, of course you have to say if you still want the same difficulty, but unfortunately what I had seen before had wound me up and my brow begin to furrow. I'm still holding out on disbelief that Bungie, which has seemed to be turning a new leaf in competence, would do something so dumb. I'm hoping this is merely a lack of UI testing. I back out. I want to be sure I didn't miss something. After jumping around the menus and finding nothing, I decided to commit. It's going to be, what it's going to be. I jump through all the hoops and!...

One Minute and Fifty Three Seconds later... I finally see the screen that I was expecting to see.There is the checkpoint. And I continue with a sigh of relief. I Beat the level, and explore the new void system menu and Mars home base. Done.

---

Speaking of MARS, I want to tangent real quick. I'm SO HYPED! I am... SO SO EXCITED about the... I'm going to call it "the reveal" of telling stories about the past visually. The "temporal instabilities", a "window into the golden age." Bungie has brought into the game one of my FAVORITE concepts, which I know from originally because of BioShock Infinite, and brought it into Destiny. I'm SO HYPED. For the longest freek'n time, I've been wondering how Bungie was going to pull it off. Yeah, we had a moment with Saint-14, AND THAT WAS COOL! 

(...BRING BACK Season of Dawn GUNS YOU COWARDS!...)

 But, that was too hero-based a solution. To tell a story of an age, it isn't just about HUGE battles, and glory, and all that dreck. It's simpler stuff, even as little as what we can see in the background, such as a building on fire. Or, say, and I'm making this up, imagine walking through some buildings in ruins, then suddenly walking into what was once a room to eat in. And in the middle of that dilapidation, a "temporal instability" with an apple and a ham and pickle sandwich. Or, whatever. And how odd that there is a button here. It's a face, a green face with a sharp pointed toothy smile. How odd. I wonder what faction this was?

It's all about environmental storytelling, which I've said before, I'm all for. That kind of stuff is my JAM! 

Anyway, the creator in me LOVES LOVES LOVES this "temporal instability" solution. It is a marvelous idea. And I await, with bated breath, every instance of this trick. All I want to know is... when do we get to see Titan again. :D !!! :D 

Oh, and for those of you in PvP, one side "temporal," one side not? Right? RIGHT! ... though let's not get carried away. It's still Destiny. Good luck getting that second new map in another "two and a half years", or whatever.

----

Returning to game play, I did as the rest of everyone here did, I constructed my glaive, looked over the artifact, and so forth. I'm just trying to make sense of all this newness. Which brings us to the next point of interest. I'm wondering if I'm alone in my initial comment when I saw...

Holy crap! When did we join the empire!? :P

That's what I said, first eyes on. I mean, it's obviously not 1-to-1, because lawyers, but look! Between the color scheme and the starburst in the center, boy did I double take for a quick second. 

Kit like this is why my vault is forever 499.

Being able to have the right tool at the right time is a lovely thing. On this topic, note that not only here but in the entirety of these "essays", I say little about the new "weapon crafting" system. It's not because I don't have something to say about them, but instead it's because most of what I would have said has already been said. (Why do guns we can craft drop in the world?) The only thing I have to add is that, for an extra fee, I'd like to double or even triple the perks, should the framework allow. That would REALLY help with the vault space. It really is SO HELPFUL, having guns that are condensed together. Since the only thing that frees up space in my vault at this point (short of an emergency purge here and there) is if stuff can meet or exceed what I already have, if I could BUILD what I need to free up some space, that would be HUGE.

 It might not be 1-to-1, but close enough works too.

I play the game some more, learn schemes... so on so on... and then I get to...

THAT PART. One of the parts that everyone was going all Spoilers!! Spoilers!! for. THAT PART.

Hmmm. Gonna' need a bigger gun and some new pants. 

"HHHMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM" I went. "Well... that, could be a problem." But then, folks, then... my brain decided to TWIST THE KNIFE! AND Said... "Man, I'm about to one-man Riven "again", AND I STILL DON'T HAVE One Thousand Voices!!!""

I didn't have the kit for this kind of fight, so I switched my kit, sacrificed for a flag, and went to work...

At the end here, I thought I was about to wipe. More words than I care to put here, but... this was interesting.

I can put more words here. As I say, I did think I was about to wipe. I thought that this last part was a one-man do or die final stage. The burst of adrenaline on this one was nuts, and man... could I feel the delay on the controls. Of course, it wasn't a wipe, just one last trick. No wonder Savathûn (or would it be Sathona), added this magic to her worm.

Overall, this was a fantastic use of existing assets, not only for folks who are unable to raid, but for those of us who have raided multiple times. This part, without question, elevated the whole campaign from mundane to... memorable! This was a "story moment!" Not so much a TRUE story moment, as it by and large doesn't mean anything, but in the whole of experiencing the campaign and its story, this is a moment of note. And, for future campaigns, we need more of that. If we had more of that sort of thing in this campaign, maybe I wouldn't have just called the story good. Maybe it could have been great.

THIS is a moment I will remember.

---

In my lone wolf playthrough of the Legendary Campaign, I rarely encountered any problems. That's not to say I did it all flawlessly, or that I didn't get my butt kicked here and again, but... by and large, after two or three times at my worst, I could brush myself off and say, "Here is what I did wrong." Then, I'd go X, Y, Z, and get it done. In the level "The Last Chance", there is a portion called "The Apothecary." It's fairly pretty and has a part with a bunch of waterfalls which you can also get to in free roam. It's kind of nice. But then there's this FLIPP'n BRIDGE.

This one part here, in ALL THREE of my play thoroughs. THIS ONE PART KICKED MY BUTT AGAIN, AND AGAIN. I don't know why, but this part was apparently cursed. If it could go wrong, it DID. EVERY SINGLE TIME.

And the embodiment, which is now funny in retrospect, of all of that is in this clip here. 

I must have done that portion 20+ times per character. Just brutal. The rest of these are not so much failures as moments I had while trying to get this part done. 

And then... we get to the heart of the campaign. THE BIG STORY STUFF.

...We learn the trick, we have a team meeting, and then we learn about the dark, and its tricks...

These are all HUGE HUGE GINORMOUS moments. Huge story beats that reverberate into the future of Destiny.

But for me, they kind of fell solidly on their edge. And I don't know exactly why. It's not flat, as... I mean... WOAH, but I'm not too thrilled with it either. It just feels like, "oh, another trick." Maybe it's just fatigue at this point, the result of being part of this game for so long, but... so what? There's always some trick, or catastrophe, or blah blah... all because of two gods and their $1 wager on all reality. 

Assholes.

Anyway, on the last level, we get a Big 'Ol Skybox, Ikora be'n a BAMF, and a A whole rigamarole to open a door until...

...and I get to the final ending cutscenes, which I'll be talking about momentarily in The Ending, Once Upon a Time. 

I then fly to Mars, and chat with Ikora...

...where then it occurs to me as I briefly mentioned in The Story of a Witch Queen...

I felt nothing. Just... ok, I did that. Now go do something else. I mean, duh! WHAT GOOD is attempting a PERFECT 10 if you don't STICK. THE. LANDING! It really is a strange sensation of apathetic enjoyment, where I had my fun and when it was good, IT WAS GOOD! But I find I don't care either. It's like... eating a candy bar. It was good while it was there, but I'm going to forget it in due time. 

So, what would fix this? What would had made this campaign "a meal" worth remembering instead of some candied snack? Well, let's look at history! I never felt this way whenever I found myself "finishing" a fight. Not in one Halo game by Bungie did I ever feel in such a way. Perhaps... this is the answer to why I feel as I do. "Destiny the Game" can never give any closure. There must always be some dammed thing to chase. The end is hardly an end, if it's ever an everlasting continuation. And, Destiny will never be as good as it can be if it can't allow us to just...

AHhhhhhh. That's what I miss. That is what can make my 7 into a little more. That's the game going "stand down soldier". It's not permanent, obviously. "And Halo was never played ever again" lul. Even the greatest warriors need to breath every now and again, there Bungo. Just chill. You don't need to sell us the next part of the story RIGHT THEN AND THERE. Fuck. The game is live, you have time. 

Just... Shut up, and let my Guardian grab a cola and bourbon or something! Hand out 'dem PARTY KEYS Y'ALL! 

Letz get CRUNK.

Or shoot! BRING BACK THE FARM and/or something relaxing like that space was. Let us chill and run around the FOOTBALL/SOCCER ARENA.

Y'all are just too serious for your own good, let alone the game you're making. We're building up to have some REALLY dark times, no pun intended, in Destiny.  But hey, make sure you don't forget the good things too. 

I have found that it is the small everyday deed of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love." ~ Gandalf (J. R. R. Tolkien ~ The Hobbit)