Narrative (no spoilers) (Destiny)

by Leviathan , Hotel Zanzibar, Wednesday, September 10, 2014, 08:42 (3526 days ago) @ Monochron

It seems to me that one of Bungie's major goals is to ensure that you are playing Destiny with friends and so they have optimized around that experience as much as possible. That's why I'm loving the story so far, it gives me something really fun to do with my friends where we have very little to interrupt our conversation.

It kind of sounds like you are saying that Bungie is trying to ensure you are playing with friends by removing part of what makes games fun for a single player (cut-scenes / story exposition).

I don't feel that way at all and Im still only playing through solo first. Like I've said, it feels like Halo CE - short bursts of story that provide a framework to your own personally-created narrative while slowly pulling you through different aspects of the universe. It's not removing something, it's keeping a movie-like cutscene experience at a minimum to allow the story to be told in a different way: the game itself. The actions I do, the details I find, the ambience I overhear. And yes this also leaves space enough to allow multiple people to fight through the story without being bogged down by too many interludes but it also allows for solo replayability as well. The short story prompts get you into a mission and going and that's where different, sometimes new, things will happen as you continue to play and play, as opposed to making you relive long cutscenes over and over. Some games have an intense eight hour campaign full of five minute cutscenes every twenty minutes and that be amazing. Destiny isn't attempting that approach. It feels like a slow build, minimum intrusion to allow each mission to stay fruitful and flexible for extended replayability and a much longer adventure down the road.