Happy launch day thoughts! (Destiny)

by cheapLEY , Wednesday, March 01, 2023, 14:31 (414 days ago) @ bluerunner

It seems like they have narrative priorities backwards. All the good stuff goes into the lore books while the main narrative could barely be considered an actual story.

The people writing the lore books all seem like they're on the same page (or at least of a similar level of actual writing competence), while the people writing the supposed narrative for the video game we actually play don't have a clue what's supposed to be happening. I get that writing some short stories is on the whole much easier than writing the story that must fit gameplay constraints of a live service game, but, c'mon.

There are flashes of good storytelling in Destiny. Building our relationships and forming an alliance with the Cabal and the Eliksni is good stuff, if not particularly novel or brilliant. But it's solid and interesting. That's obvious forward progress in some sort of actual plot. But the Light and Dark saga hasn't moved forward at all in however many years. "The Darkness is here" has been a selling point for three or four years now, and it's only just now actually true, and in a way that doesn't actually mean anything.

Spoilers for Lightfall, I guess:

What did the Witness actually do? Did he kill the Traveler? Zavala and Ikora specifically state the Traveler is gone when you talk to them after the final cutscene, but it was still there in that cutscene. What actually happened? I get leaving a cliffhanger for further storytelling, but it's not really actually a cliffhanger when it's not even clear what happened or what the stakes are. As far as I can tell, the Witness opened a portal and just left. Problem solved! You can't try and sell me some high stakes narrative and then do absolutely nothing to actually build and make clear those stakes. It reeks of them just winging it and doing whatever they think seems cool in the moment and figuring out what it actually means later. It's like watching LOST again, only that was far more compelling moment to moment. That actually had characters I was at least somewhat invested in.

We still don't have any actual answers for just about anything. Why did the Traveler give the Light to Savathun and her Hive? I thought they might use the seasonal model to answer that question and follow on the actual main narrative thread, but instead we got to fight Ransaaks the punny pirate Servitor or what the fuck ever it was.

I don't know, I guess I'll shut up now. I don't want to be the guy that just hangs around here and bitches about the game, but this expansion seems extremely disappointing in basically every regard I can see, and that's a bummer. I watched a bunch of streams trying to convince myself that I should continue to play Destiny, but instead I walked away feeling completely justified in cancelling my preorder a week or two ago. This was supposed to be the beginning of the final confrontation and instead it felt like a diversion in a clown car.