Narrative (no spoilers) (Destiny)

by Avateur , Wednesday, September 10, 2014, 11:13 (3734 days ago) @ Leviathan

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.

Eh, I'd argue that Halo 1 actually had an extremely well defined story that doesn't compare to Destiny in that it seems straight forward at first but builds into significance and urgency as far as there being the Covenant after us and thus we need to survive, round up survivors, and find the Captain, but there's this big mystery about the random ring world, why the Covenant want it, is it a weapon that can turn the tide of this decades-long war, and oh my gosh the Flood. The narrative and overall writing for H1 was absolutely solid.

Destiny lacks almost all of this, but it appears to be working thus far. I only just got to Venus last night, but it seems like all story bits from Earth got completely dropped at this point. The Moon's story seems to be leading us somewhere real, which is why we're going to Venus. I assume things will pick up. The dropping of plot elements makes me furious in general, but I'm willing to be very patient in this case. Expansion in December, another later on. There's that huge bunker in the Grottos. Earth isn't over yet. Destiny 2 or whatever they have coming could absolutely tie back to a lot of this stuff, too.

At the moment, this game has not taken anything in-game from the story and dropped it to fit something convenient. We don't need many cutscenes at the moment. There's plenty of fun and action to be had, and right now things are building. I agree with how you say it's a slow build with minimum intrusion, and it has allowed each mission to stay fruitful and flexible (especially when playing with friends).