TL;DR (Destiny)

by Avateur , Sunday, September 14, 2014, 16:41 (3869 days ago) @ Kermit
edited by Avateur, Sunday, September 14, 2014, 16:44

But you don't have friends in your Mass Effect lobby talking to you while you're digesting the Codex. I think that's why the Grimoire cares are not in-game. The real issue is the minimal story in the game, which is not what we've come to expect.

You're spot on. Unfortunately, it's a huge trade-off as far as in-game inclusion goes, but its inclusion and convenience absolutely trumps making you go elsewhere. I don't have friends on 24/7. When on alone, I'm usually filling my time randomly in the Tower or on Patrol. It'd be lovely to just chill in the Tower or wherever and read the Grimoire until some people get on. But yes, the real issue is minimal story.

You can dislike the choices they made, but I think your rhetoric is over the top. And, as I said in the other thread, it wasn't 343's choice--the videos weren't included at least at first because of development constraints. Maybe that's the case with Bungie. We don't know.

I understand that. I also understand that H1A managed to have its Terminals in-game, whereas the big blockbuster H4 didn't. H4 is also a disaster (in my opinion), and it's just another strike against it. Over the top rhetoric and all.

There's a long history of out-of-game game content, and Grimoire cards, from what I've read of them, seem like they are part of that tradition. Again, the issue is we're starving for narrative in the game.

I feel like you're completely spot on. The other side of it is that, while using the Halo 4 comparison, the Terminals are relatively short. The Grimoire is huge, and even if Destiny had a narrative in-game, something that huge and substantive is bound to be problematic when kept strictly outside of the game itself (edited this part, made no sense before, sorry).

And one more time, I think there's something dumb about having your character walk up to a screen in-game to unlock something, so that you can watch a movie on another screen later. Our characters don't actually find Grimoire cards in the game world.

In Halo 3 the Terminals were there as if Master Chief was actually accessing them himself and reading them. Cortana even comments on them, and Mendicant Bias at one point even acknowledges seeing the Chief. In Reach the data pads are picked up and read by the character, though they're primarily just for you. In ODST, Sadie's Story is also something being checked out in-game and conveyed, and even ends up down in that frozen area. The fact that the Grimoire cards are even so disembodied from the over arching world itself in-game only helps to detract from the experience.