Post "Lightfall Reveal" Rant (Destiny)

by INSANEdrive, ಥ_ಥ | f(ಠ‿↼)z | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ| ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, Wednesday, September 07, 2022, 20:15 (805 days ago) @ cheapLEY

I’ll certainly read your thoughts, though. Maybe you’ll highlight something interesting I missed.

Indeed. That and... a little more.

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I tried.

I really. Really really did.

But, apparently, my passion is measured by degrees of power, amplified by the force of whatever convictions this noggin of mine has made. Woe on to me, as to be so aware and yet for such awareness to be ever so, apparently, irrelevant.

Joe Blackburn, the Game Director for Destiny 2, who, at his own admission, finds himself surrounded by humans smarter than himself (a common misconception), has been doing some rounds of interviews.

I should not have read them, but, I always was going to. As I, ever longing for intelligible discussion among producers and developers about what (for me, for now) is ultimately a past-time, can never seem to get more then these always far-foggier lenses for which we have to read. (The "far-foggier lenses" being such as the articles linked in the root of this post). They are merely a jest, a mere description of what makes up the many minds behind the curtain. But yet, here I sit and waste my passion more still, triggered by mere residue. (The blurbs we get. Very easy to misconstrue.)

SO! What is it this time? Aw, you know. Some old, some new... though maybe not so new since Game of Thrones and Star Wars went through this sheer nonsense too, so, whatever. At least one thing you can learn from history is how folks don't learn from history, right? (Though in fairness, there a quite a lot of it.)

Let's start with the first one from PC Gamer.

It has some interesting enough information, I admit. Little tidbits in the creation of Strand, and indeed admitting they have an over abundance of ideas for new subclasses. Thoughts about folks getting "Out of Bounds" with Strand. The word "cyberpunk" is mentioned at one point, but by whom? Oh, mystery! Talk about "Tormentors", the "end to sunsetting" (again), and even... oh. oh no ._.

Joe Blackburn talked about my Destiny pet peeve.

So, uh... fun fact. This part right here was going to be a post on its own before I, TRIED, to get some far more level heads into the mix. But alas, all I seem to have is cheapLEY. ;D ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well, lets start with some scrap of a former introduction to the very post you are reading now (with the title being the big words there above). The start I expressed at the top (and now elsewhere). It started big...

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.......................................................ok, so look.

*strong sigh*

• #1 The Vault and all its time-sucking ills is a symptom. Not the disease.
  
• #2 You have the answer already, Bungie. You've even impoved on the basis of the answer (#3), and yet still didn't use it.
  
• #3 Crafting is potentially the best thing to happen to Destiny the Game, ever. (But it shouldn't be.)

HI THERE! :D

I'm INSANEdrive, and I make long posts nobody reads on a fourm nobody visits. AND WHY DO I DO THIS YOU ASK!?

... I uh, um.... LOOK! PUPPIES!

Awwww.

...like that see. Classic INSANEdrive. But get this! I somehow managed to make it smaller and smaller and smaller until I condensed my Destiny pet peeve angst into a repurposed comic.

It's... reprehensibly frustrating how, so very clearly I can see the end-to-end conceptual design which is already laid out throughout Destines very bones, and even interconnected throughout the API though D.I.M and even Bungies own App... and yet, it seems all for not. aaaaaAAAAAaaaa. It's why I made the post with the crazy-esk bit, since... goodness how much and how long have I been rambling about this!? Man Alive!

I'm tired. ...lol.

And that was the post... but, oh no. There is more. There's some other stuff in the PC article too. "Playlist activity and subclass refresh thoughts", Exotic armor thoughts, "Weapon perk discourse", so on so on. Its a solid all rounder.

Then we get to...

Might be some new tidbits and colorful language in here for folks. I only use curse words to make PR nervous. https://t.co/NstmN6LlIi

— Joe Blackburn (@joegoroth) September 1, 2022

https://www.gamesradar.com/destiny-2-leads-on-lightfalls-story-fixing-power-levels-sunset-expansions-and-helping-new-...

In it we get talk of "long-term promises"and how "broad the universe" is. More information about Strand (such as where the grappling hook lives in the controls), "Helping people get into Destiny 2", and ...OOOOOoOoo... Power level and the leveling experience?

That last paragraph is particularly good, and if I was a community manager I'd be writing this down. It gives...

• Not only Confirmation, but the size of Bungies intent in how much change they may want to make towards a long talked about community gripe. ("We would still like to make major changes to the Power system")
  
• A potential implication to why it's been this way for so long. ("We looked at crafting as a scary thing to add to Destiny, and Power is that times 10.")
  
• Weighed thoughts, even though they are maximally broad. ("There's some good stuff that Power does for the game, and there's some really bad stuff that Power is doing to Destiny right now.")
  • I am of the impression that Bungie can never go wrong in admitting the extensive considerations that are required in making this balloon of a game. It's always interesting, and everyone is potentially smarter from the exercise. Jargon aside, everyone wins.
• ...and finally, the roughest of outlines in how long it might take to implement, and why that is.
  (Some of which being "I think what you're gonna see us do is some experiments that are helping us understand if we're making the right long-term plays for Power and helping us dial that in. If we're gonna do this overhaul, can we have some good data before we get there?")

Do y'all see how GOOD that paragraph is!? In the sentence at the end, it's even outright expressed that Lightfall may see some "weird experiments", and with this context here... there's your why! This paragraph I'm pointing out here has to be the best paragraph I've ever seen come from a Bungie representative. There is no misconstruing information here, me thinks.

And so, with that praise said... naturally, it's all up in flames with the next one.

When Bungie dropped the Lightfall trailer, it was wholly different from what I expected from something called "Lightfall." So I asked @joegoroth and @DJMcAuliffe about the mood and tone of the next Destiny expansion and they cited some exciting influences. https://t.co/K5IwIwVRem

— Phil Hornshaw (@philhornshaw) September 1, 2022

"Bungie Wants Destiny 2: Lightfall To Feel Like Blade Runner Meets Independence Day"

This next one, from Gamespot, is the 2nd reason you have to thank for this immense splooge of boondoggle buffoonery. My babbling mass of blah blah blah. Also, I'm going to presume that everyone has read my post HERE, as it's context for a fair amount of my...um, why I say as I do.

I mentioned Game of Thrones & Starwars, yes? Well, I'll get to that here.

TL;DR of this portion is; Consistency is hard, and prolonged Consistency is harder, but that is no excuse to simply go "fuck it, I want a pony" when you're a scientist in the middle of Antarctica who's supposed to be studying ice core samples.

(After writing note: ...well, maybe. That's kind the TL;DR of what I wanted to say, but then I started ranting so, yeah. You'll see.)

So then, let's get this over with. It's easy to format a response to quotes, thus... quote #1.

"When that Beyond Light showcase was coming out and had Witch Queen, Lightfall, and The Final Shape, I think in that moment, we knew narratively where we needed to be," Destiny 2 director Joe Blackburn said in an interview with GameSpot. "We knew that, in Beyond Light, we're going to start teasing the Darkness. In Witch Queen, we have got to put the Witness on the chessboard for real. We knew where we needed to be in The Final Shape, and we knew a few beats that needed to happen in between those, narratively.

So far, so good.

"I think it was really when we started planning The Witch Queen and we started looking at the surrounding seasons, we said, 'Okay, with Witch Queen, we really like True Detective, we really want to go swampy and moody.' Then we looked at Shadowkeep and Beyond Light, how they shaped up, and how the seasons were shaping up, and we said, 'Okay, we know the mood The Final Shape needs to be.' And we were like, 'Oh, my gosh, is this going to be the heaviest five years of Destiny that we've ever made? Are we going to fill one note throughout this whole thing?'"

"We know the mood The Final Shape needs to be" eh? Hint hint, wink wink, and yet... you call this!?-planning!

THIS WHOLESALE (advertised) TONAL SHIFT... you, you call that planning!? Fools, this (almost total) left field non-sense is -||- this close to "Somehow Palpatine has returned" in pure story-that-no-doubt-shall-be-filled-in-later nonsense. It might not technically be a MacGuffin, but right now, BOY does it feel like it where I sit. But the real kicker that gnaws at my geeking out, is...

'Oh, my gosh, is this going to be the heaviest five years of Destiny that we've ever made? Are we going to fill one note throughout this whole thing?'"

FUK-ING! YES! THAT WAS THE WHOLE, FLIPP'N, SELL. ... >_< grrrr... look LOOK, let me show you something I made ALLLL the way back in the 2013 "Look at this new Bungie game called Destiny" days.

https://destiny.bungie.org/forum/index.php?mode=entry&id=8419

Look at that, so funny. Ha ha. But look at what I'm referencing for comical effect? You know what that is? That is THE sell. The root story point for the WHOLE of this big blasted thing.

Full Quote;

The stories tell of a golden age long ago, when our civilization spanned the system. It was a bright and hopeful time. But it didn't last.

Something hit us. Knocked us down and tried to stamp us out. No one knows exactly what, but we do know this: very few of us survived, and those that did owe their lives to the The Traveler. Legends say The Traveler sacrificed itself to save us. The mysterious sphere still hangs where it made its last stand, low above the Earth, keeping silent watch.

The years that followed the collapse of the golden age were hard, but slowly we joined together to build a city beneath The Traveler. And now we've begun to venture back into the wild, only to find that we're not alone.

Strange and deadly creatures have occupied our old worlds. And they're pressing hard against The City, probing for a weakness, trying to stamp us out for good.

Your story begins at this moment of great adventure and peril. You are a Guardian of The City; a soldier able to wield some of The Traveler's incredible power. If you can find a way to save The City - to reclaim all that we have lost - you will become legend. If you fail, the last light of civilization will go out!

So then, since that point we've, slowly... sometimes VERY VERY slowly, progressed from this point in both lore and play. So when I see...

'Oh, my gosh, is this going to be the heaviest five years of Destiny that we've ever made? Are we going to fill one note throughout this whole thing?'"

The ANSWER is YES! BUT IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT DARKNESS! YOU COULD HAVE MADE THIS YOUR VERY OWN LORD OF THE RINGS, AND YOU DROPPED THE GOSH DARN BALL! OH MY GOODNESS!

How in even the darkest of times, little actions of good (or light) can have larger impacts against the foreboding dark. How the power of a community (WHAT IS DESTINY THE GAME AGAIN? YEAH!?) can counter even the largest overpowering things.

...and you fucking dropped it. This may end up being TOTALLY WRONG, but the tone I see right now? You fucking dropped it, you fucking idiots. It's not going to effect your money cow, but it makes me so SO very sad to what could have been without being scrambled about like an egg.

And then... oh shit. He continues.

Blackburn said the team started looking at how it could avoid making its expansions feel too tonally similar, while still maintaining the story it had set out. The Light and Darkness saga is headed toward a climax in which players will finally face an ultimate villain that's been teased since the original story of Destiny 1. The threat is enormous--Destiny already takes place in a post-apocalyptic future world, and it was that villain, the Witness, who caused the apocalypse to begin with. The Witness is returning to finish the job it started with that apocalypse, which is known as the Collapse, so Bungie also needs to make sure the story carries the proper gravity to befit something so dire.

Oh, so mildly what I just said (I don't pre-read*, so my comments here are basically a textual "Let's React"). Well then, do continue.

*I read it before, but I forgot some parts, so I read it again to finish what I started.

"As we started getting towards Lightfall, we said, 'Hey, how can we keep the stakes high but change the mood for a release?'" Blackburn continued. "We looked at things like The Empire Strikes Back, that has a feeling of, oh, my gosh, [the heroes] lose, but the movie doesn't feel like they lose the whole time. We started to look at, okay, what are things with really high stakes that have a different tone to them? I think we got really attracted to sort of blockbuster action movies.

There is more to this quote (another paragraph) involving movies. And I can't totally besmirch this, we find inspiration where we find inspiration. That said, I do suspect that there may have been too much external inspiration, and not enough internal (lore) exploration to bring about what we see today.

Lots more text after that until we get to...

"I'll say just straight up, this is a big development challenge for us, because we're not Naughty Dog. We don't build these kinds of lived-in cities a thousand times," he explained. "How do you do that in a Destiny way? How do you make something feel familiar to players, but also have that little bit of that Destiny spin? Yeah, that's been a fun challenge."

I have to admit here, to being a touch shocked at this admission. I'm not going to bother with the why here, just that I'm shocked.

... heh, then... here friends comes the Coup de grâce that brought forth ALL OF THIS. This is the straw.

Finding ways to subvert player expectations is...

Did this guy... just say... subvert. player. ex-pect-tay-tioooooooooons! AAAAAAAAAAAA!!

GAME OF THRONES S8 PSTD TRIGGER

STAR WARS SEQUEL PSTD TRIGGER

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

THERE IS NEVER A GOOD REASON FOR THIS PHRASE IN ENTERTAINMENT! Do not go FULL M. Night! NEVER GO FULL SHYAMALAN! Holy Halberd BATMAN! How is it there are still folks who have not learned this fucking lesson about mature lasting story structure!

FOLLOW THE RULES. FOLLOW THE TONE.

THERE IS NO ONE THAT... then again, geeze... whatever, keep rolling...GOES TO A Wes Anderson film, who would be DELIGHTED if it suddenly went Cronenberg to "subvert expectations". PART OF YOUR JOB, when you have reign to a franchise is... YOU HONOR THE (maximum presumably) INTELLIGENCE OF YOUR AUDIENCE!

THEY ARE THERE FOR A REASON! GIVE THEM WHAT THEY CAME TO SEE! (And don't be a huge ego dick in the process and think your vision is bigger then the whole of a franchise, only to be buoyed by folks whom only often casually comprehend the franchise, resulting in a net poison to the fan base.)

When folks went to watch Game of Thrones, they expected SHARP writing, motions of power though either word or action, and a logical process in each move of the game. Also, it helps if you can see the video. That's what folks were a fan of, THAT's why they kept coming back (at least). SO, naturally it makes a bunch of sense to "subvert expectations" and not do that. OH! SO CLEVER! I wonder how people reacted to that!

FOR STARWARS THEY... actually... nah, if you know you know.

Unless you're well versed in the story techniques of Rod Serling and/or Jordan Peele (not to say there aren't others), BROTHER... GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE with that fucking story excuse bullshit. It's feigned intelligence, a pretense of many sorts, and I fucking loath it. FUuuCK!

(Breathless) Oh... my goodness. fuck. Ok... let's try this again.

Finding ways to subvert player expectations is essential to making Destiny 2 work overall, Blackburn explained. ...

MOTHER. Fuh---aaaaa... I know I'm formatting this... you know... you know, I disagree VEHEMENTLY, and moving on.

...He said the studio spends a lot of time thinking about the game and franchise as a whole, and that longview can push expansions in specific directions. The trick is meeting the needs of the game, like including specific types of enemies at certain destinations, while also making sure new Destiny 2 content still feels fresh.

UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH... so then, remember that REQUIRED ASSUMPTION I mentioned at the top. The post I presume everyone has seen. HERE I FLIPPEN' GO AGAIN FOLKS! AHEM! AGAIN, AGAIN!

...He said the studio spends a lot of time thinking about the game and franchise as a whole, and that longview can push expansions in specific directions. The trick is meeting the needs of the game, like including specific types of enemies at certain destinations, while also making sure new Destiny 2 content still feels fresh.

Mr.Blackburn SIR?! ARE YOU FOR FUCKING REAL!

...you know, well, probably don't, in my actual every day life (or whatever this mildly sentient meat puppetry is) I don't really swear much. Even internet wise, I'm actually quite chill. But then my staggered disbelief to which I witness smashes into my casual geekdom... and suddenly, well...

DOES THIS GUY PLAY THIS FUK'N GAAAAAAAAAAAAAME!... pretty weird huh? Eh. Anyway... where was I, oh right...

You need something that meets the needs of the game, that including specific types of enemies at certain destinations, while also making sure new Destiny 2 content still feels fresh?

Hmmm... interesting.

Well, then...CHECK THIS SHIT OUT JACK!

including specific types of enemies at certain destinations

What did the pyramid ships do WITH THAT!?!?!? YEAH? What would happen if you mixed Calus-like ambition with, I'll presume, a hive worm? BOOM! Mix in some darkness shit with that, BA-BAM.

INTERNET BRAINSTORM Bay-bEE!

You need something that meets the needs of the game

So let me guess, large spaces for us to grapple around? Hmmm. I wonder where you could find that? Let's presume for a moment the first video above doesn't count.

WHAT IS ALL THAT! YOU HAVE ALREADY SHOWN IN THE SKY BOX THE SHEER SCALE OF ALL OF THIS! And that's just ONE example!

while also making sure new Destiny 2 content still feels fresh

OPEN UP a GOSH DARN timey wimey wibbly wobbly RIFT THINGY OF THIS! WHAT DOES THIS LOOK LIKE IN THE GOLDEN AGE! WHAT STORIES ARE HERE!!

It's... ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous how NEGLECTED this space as been. IT'S CRYING for attention, Shit, I'M CRYING for it's attention. YOU FUCKING HAVE THE ASSETS AT YOUR DISPOSAL ALREADY AND YOU JUST DON'T FUCKING USE IT AND I JUST DON'T FUCKING UNDERSTAND WHY. THIS ENTIRE SPACE should have had as much time given too it EXTRA as you've given to... ugh "Neomuna", which, oh hey by the way, really fucking original name there folks. How is it the studio that invented the phrase "hive soul fire" or whatever the fuck it was, can't pull a more creative City Name out of their ass than "Neon Moon", like fucking COME ON! Was a fucking proper name not in the budget, for fucks sake. Well, at least they didn't rip off Star Wars naming structures, right? You know, like sky walker. What are folks called again?

Ah, guess it's not important. ...uh, where was I. Oh, right... finishing up the gamespot article. Last bit.

"Even when you're planning out something like the Throne World [from The Witch Queen] or something like Neomuna, we have boards that talk about the colors of each destination," he said. "Then it's like, 'Oh, are we too blue? Are we too green? Are we too orange? Can we not add another orange planet to the game?' These are things that people talk about in a really serious way about the franchise, and all of that starts to form this constraint on, hey, these are the aliens that we need to see because of the narrative beat, but also because we haven't had a destination with them in a while. Suddenly you start to have this list of, hey, we need to hit these checkboxes, and then you start running different experiences through them and say, 'Can we make something exciting out of this?' We don't want Destiny just to feel like, yeah, they make things because of a series of constraints. It's a fun balance to be a part of, for sure."

*Sigh*

Art IS constraints, you dork. (OMG what is going on in my head right now... did I just call the lead a dork. Brain what?)

Constraints are not intrinsically bad. In fact, often, if wielded wisely, it's where brilliance comes from. EVERY INVENTION CAME, from constraints. Every style of art comes out from, constraints. So when I read what very much read like art lead considerations in the full of the paragraph, I can't help but feel some sort of magical, perhaps magnetic pull from the flat of my palm to the very point of my big dumb forehead.

We don't want Destiny just to feel like, yeah, they make things because of a series of constraints. It's a fun balance to be a part of, for sure."

AAHAH! I JUST CAN'T!!! OMG. TWO HANDS THIS TIME. AAAAAAAAAA! Please... no more... AH SHIT THERE'S MORE! ...oh wait, it's just a finishing paragraph.

Ugh. Whatever. I'm done.

Cheers folks.