What’s it like currently? (Destiny)

by Robot Chickens, Tuesday, July 09, 2024, 15:45 (60 days ago) @ cheapLEY

I meant to watch a Final Shape play through but never made time to do so. I presume we defeated the Witness. So what’s it like now? What are the narrative stakes of the current season? I’m genuinely curious. The gameplay used to be enough for me, but I found myself only really playing seasons that were both narratively compelling and with a fun seasonal loop (the one with the Leviathan remains my favorite) over the last year or so that I played.

The current season storyline has stalled at the end of a first act. Apparently there’s 3 of them this season. Honestly? Not that inspiring but it wasn’t terrible.

I took a little time off because of life after we beat the witness. They really made a great ending that tied in lots of different lore from the story and had some novel gameplay to boot.

Now, I’m still running around the Pale Heart location following up on loose post-campaign quests and activities. There’s a lot there and there’s a lot of different types of things to do there. Narratively, it feels like they are seeding the world with various plot threads they plan to explore later. It’s just a bunch of little mysteries. Honestly, the closest correlation I can make is the start of D1 where there’s references to Rasputin, Crota and Oryx, an Awoken society, etc. These were things that weren’t explored at the beginning so we didn’t have context to understand them. Also, we didn’t know Bungie’s content pipeline so they felt like loose ends at the time. Now, many of them feel like things that were paid off IMHO. Given that, I’m happy they are putting in new threads to pull in the universe. In many ways it feels like a fresh start. I like it a lot.

In terms of content, the systems you interact with, and the tools you can use in gameplay, it feels really good. I can understand why they don’t want to let this version of destiny end. A new game would be good, but there’s a lot of reasons to keep it around after having gotten it to this place after 10 years of iterations. On the other hand, I’m not sure anybody new is coming on board until there’s a 3 at the end of the title.

At some point, I want to make a post about how the story of Destiny’s light and dark saga should have been told in 5 years/content expansions. 10 years is just too long to hold an audience on an unresolved plot over different hardware requirements and life stages for people. Only the very dedicated get to see the payoff, and they’re mostly burned out at various stages by the end. I think it worked out pretty well considering, but a better focus on an overarching narrative would have served their pacing better and it would have made the villains make a little more sense at various points.

All that to say, I’m currently having fun. I’m not sure if I’ll stick around for anything beyond the next year, but I may be pulled back in if they start telling shorter stories that pay off sooner.