Maybe this is why so many former employees left the company.

Joe Staten, Marcus Lehto, Jaime Griesemer, Brian Jarrard, Shishka...

that had grinding.

Want that piece of armor? Work for it!

The seeds of this started in reach (or was it the Recon helmet?).

But as to your question... I don't really have an answer but it was something that I've been asking myself.

I remember dmiller posting that his job was no longer level/encounter designer. His job title was world builder. I think the idea was that Bungie would build it and we would fill it with our creative community genius. Or that could just be a product of my poor memory.

Staten left awhile ago now. I have no idea, but get the impression he would have been the one to push for them being in game like the Terminals/Datapads.

My only other thought is maybe they thought it'd be too much reading potentially breaking up the action because of the high number of entries compared to the 1 or 2 per level from Halo, along with the fact that you can't really pause. But there is no excuse for them to not be a menu option. I just don't get the thought process leading to keeping them entirely separate.

It just begs the question: how did this come to be?

Like the answer to everything, I suspect it's the investment system.

Much of it revolves around offering daily heroic story missions. You'd run out fast if you did 10 big levels like Halo did, so that's why there's ~30 story missions that are short, and more or less self contained. This way it's easier to offer daily activities.

It just begs the question: how did this come to be?

Someone somewhere at Bungie must have voiced the concerns we all have. Right? Unless the studio's turned into some kind of vast echo chamber, which seems unlikely with 500 or so people there. It's just incongruent with their previous projects. Maybe they tried to change too much.

One thought: Maybe this is because Bungie went solo, in a manner of speaking. With Microsoft, they had someone to reign them in, to keep them focused, to say "This game is coming out on November 15th come hell or high water, so you need to narrow your vision and make the parts your can get done in time really freakin' good."

Halo 1 and Halo 2's campaigns and multiplayers came out of a Microsoft-imposed time crunch. Without that guidance, those games would have been very different -- and likely worse. Halo 1 would have been a game of open-world exploration instead of a quick, streamlined campaign. Halo 2 would have been a 64 person battle royale instead of a perfect arena shooter.

George Lucus and Paul McCartney are both creative geniuses know for being the absolute best at what they do. But they did their best work when they weren't given total artistic freedom, when someone could tell them "no."

Halo 1, 2, and 3 were Bungie's Star Wars OT. Destiny is what happens when Bungie decided to be the Director and Writer themselves.

How many times during the filming of The Phantom Menace do you think someone said "You can't give him notes! That's George Lucus, the God of Star Wars!"

What is the role of the Awoken in this solar system?

Not much is known, but they do seem to be more evolved humans that fled during the collapse of the Golden Age. Now they just live out in the Reef away from everybody else and their silly conflicts.

What is the historical relevance of the Endless Steps?

'S where the giant Vex portal is. The Gate Lord is in charge of it. Hence going there to fetch the metal lad's head. Admittedly there either wasn't much said about this, or I don't remember it.

What purpose drives the Vex, and indeed, what do the Awoken hope to learn?

The Vex just want to conquer everything. They turn entire planets into giant machines. They did it to Mercury already, and they want to do the same to Venus and Mars. The Awoken don't want to learn anything from the Vex, they just want you to die, so they sent you on an 'impossible' task. However it could also be seen as the Queen wanting to test your mettle.

Destiny was supposed to be so much more than that. The disappointment is why it's scoring so low.

I've actually seen a couple of reviews that explicitly stated this: "I feel like I was promised more - it's that lack of promise that's causing me to score this game low."

That's just plain stupid.

Rate the game in front of you, not the game you built up in your mind.