In terms of story, I think most people are on the same page in that what was presented in the game was extremely weak, and the grimoire didn't fill that gap, nor should it have been expected to. When people try to make the excuse that it's supposed to play out over ten years, that doesn't hold water. Each aspect and each 'episode' of the story needs to be good and substantial. If over the next ten years all you get each time is what we got with Destiny, or more likely less in each DLC, then it doesn't matter.

So much this. There is absolutely nothing wrong with introducing elements and arcs in your plot that you will flesh out over a planned series. However, if none of that can find itself contained within a standalone product then it doesn't need to be in the limelight. I don't want to hear about this or that unless it has a real significance on this story I'm invested in right now. So what if the Hive are planning on invading Earth? The story itself cared little about that past the Moon. That's a pretty big thing. It had little to do with what we experienced at the end.

Similarly, the stuff with the Exo stranger onward is also confusion as to exactly how it fits into thing. Why exactly is the traveler doomed if the heart isn't destroyed? Why if that's the case doesn't the speaker send an army of guardians to destroy it? Why is the Queen and her brother being mysterious for no fucking reason? So much is just not contextualized correctly, that the disconnect is as wide as the Hellmouth.

Pretty much. It assumes that we know what's going on, and worse, that we'll want to be invested in how all these things play out in the long run. If Bungie was banking on convincing a person who only wanted to play this game to stick with the series, they failed.

All parts of this game feel like tiny little self contained places, as opposed to a big connected universe. The reef exists literally only as a throne room. Small pieces that don't feel connected. Individual threads not woven together to make a tapestry. That is how Destiny feels.

Cosmodrome seemed like a long ass tutorial for Destiny. Little of it seemed to have any bearing on the rest of the story besides getting you a jumpship, a warpdrive, and showing how pervy the Stranger is.

What we had for free in the past, we have to waste time for now. Halo let you choose your difficulty from the start, but Destiny gives mission difficulties levels, and doesn't even let you play until you are within a few levels of the requirement. If you want to play on hard, you have to grind away to get up to level 26-28. Going from 28-30 is literally impossible without gear from the raid, seeing as how those pieces have more defense (and thus light) upgrades. All the modifiers and skulls from Halo you had access to are gone. No longer can you choose what challenge to take on yourself by flipping on a combination of skulls, but are instead relegated to what Bungie gives you in the weekly and nightfall strikes. The raid itself, which is a blast, has a huge barrier to entry beyond simply finding 5 other good people. Even just upgrading your Legendary weapons to be formidable in the raid is incredibly tedious, with common and rare resource collection.

My biggest frustration is that I can't play story missions with whomever I want because of a difference in our levels. A friend of mine and I had to stop playing through the story the other night because he'd gotten too far ahead of me. Another friend had to go out of town for a few days, and now he's too far behind. I understand why it's the way it is, but I'll be glad when I catch up with most folks on my friends list.

There is also a bug apparently where Ascendant Motes are not in the game, making FWC armor impossible to fully upgrade. I imagine this will be fixed, or their upgrades changed to require ascendant shards instead.

In terms of story, I think most people are on the same page in that what was presented in the game was extremely weak, and the grimoire didn't fill that gap, nor should it have been expected to. When people try to make the excuse that it's supposed to play out over ten years, that doesn't hold water. Each aspect and each 'episode' of the story needs to be good and substantial. If over the next ten years all you get each time is what we got with Destiny, or more likely less in each DLC, then it doesn't matter.

I agree. I hope that the DLC is meatier, and does a better job of completing this game before the inevitable sequel. (I'm assumptive about the "end" of the game. I still haven't gone to the Black Garden--the shame!)

It's fine to have mysterious elements and some mystery in your story, but it's not okay to do what Bungie did. One of the big problems is that very little felt connected to other things. Cosmodrome and the moon felt like completely different dimensions. We go from disconnected mission to disconnected mission, often with seemingly important information that is then promptly forgotten about - Raspitin, what the hive are doing on the moon, who this doctor the AI thinks you are, etc. There is a severe case of amnesia in the story, and when we run missions they should be critical, and more importantly propulsive of the story. One should move us to the next aspect of the story because of the actions of our character. Like Halo 1. Instead, we select a mission knowing nothing about it, a blurb comes up explaining that intelligence found blah blah whatever.

There's also a lack of questions. Someone here mentioned they found it odd that your guardian never asks what the hell is going on. This is true. You've been dead for 300 years, and even your ghost says "You're going to see things you won't understand". A lot of times stories with strange unfamiliar settings have characters who are out of their element, since other characters explaining how things work to another character is a believable way for them to convey to the audience what's going on. That's why in Inception you have Ariadne, so that Cobb can explain the rules of dream infiltration to her since she is new, and by extension the audience. So when you have a guardian long dead, that's the perfect way to get the exposition out of the way naturally. Instead, the speaker tells you that he COULD tell you all these tales, but he won't.

Yeah, Guardian school. Military schools teach history. They don't just do drills. The Grimoire cards are pretty awesome, though.

Similarly, the stuff with the Exo stranger onward is also confusion as to exactly how it fits into thing. Why exactly is the traveler doomed if the heart isn't destroyed? Why if that's the case doesn't the speaker send an army of guardians to destroy it? Why is the Queen and her brother being mysterious for no fucking reason? So much is just not contextualized correctly, that the disconnect is as wide as the Hellmouth.

Another problem with the story is that the world is not set up well. I think I made the comparison to it being like the Wizard of Oz if Dorothy just stepped right out of her house into the Emerald City instead of making the journey. We need to see this world, not just be told about it. I get that everything is supposed to be dead after the collapse, but we never see the city as contrast. The very thing we are fighting o protect, you don;t get to experience. All parts of this game feel like tiny little self contained places, as opposed to a big connected universe. The reef exists literally only as a throne room. Small pieces that don't feel connected. Individual threads not woven together to make a tapestry. That is how Destiny feels.

Level design is hugely important in an FPS, and I've already talked about why Destiny has lackluster level design, and how to make strikes more replayable. The raid in particular exposed how the game could be throwing much more interesting stuff at you. I'm not saying everything should be like the raid, because it's hugely demanding and having the entire game require 6 player co-op at all times is unfeasible, but I feel like there should be some middle ground. There should be some 3 player missions that require a little bit of teamwork and outside the box thinking, as should there be a more diverse experience if you are playing alone. The jokes about how Destiny is a game where you go to a place, hack it with your ghost, then defend it are really mostly true. You also sometimes kill a boss. There's so much that could have been done with the game beyond what was there, that it's just a shame whoever designed the raid didn't also create some cool story mission objectives and scenarios.

They're reading this, I'm sure. Let's hope the mission objectives become more interesting. Even for patrol, when I first played the beta, I assumed when someone from the Tower asked me to do something, that there would be some follow up with that person next time I went there. This is something I hope they improve.

We are at the point where I can finally stop grinding, and I play destiny for fun again, albeit infrequently. It shouldn't have come to that though - that should have been the experience from the get go. Literally the only reason I'm going to buy the DLC is because I'm told there is a new raid with every pack. Otherwise, I'm not sure I'd rush out.

Overall a very bad good game, and Bungie's worst since Oni.

I liked Oni.

Many excellent points, Cody.

+1 to everything you said, Cody. I'd also like to weigh in on why I think the story is such a disappointment.

The wonderfully artistic environments in Destiny almost write a story of their own and yet Bungie still wasn't able to make what they wrote feel connected to the world in any sort of cohesive manner. Or even connected to the story, itself.

When I first saw the E3 demo of going into/through the wall, I imagined that this was further into the game and was going to have significant meaning to the player. Like they would have been weak and desperate while outside the wall in the first bit of gameplay and that it was really going to be conveyed to the player how much destruction humanity had faced. I thought you'd be able to see the Traveler off in the distance (and almost always in front of you), as well as the massive wall protecting the city, and really get to feel the story.

Then you'd get to the wall and see how massive it is and then go inside and see how massive it is from that perspective, too (that one part where your ghost turns on the lights for the first time felt like it was just the beginning to the massiveness you'd get to see). And you'd work really hard to get through the wall and lay eyes on the city for the first time and see the tower and know that's where you want to go.

And this would have been just the very beginning of great game and a great, 10-year experience. I imagined many more things like this, based just on the concept art and initial tidbits Bungie fed us. I thought the story was going to help showcase the fantastic art and, in turn, the environments would help fuel a story of discovery and wonderment. I though it was going to a really good job of standing as its own game setting the franchise up for some great games/DLC/etc in the future. (I think some people are still in this "it's going to be so good over the next 10 years" phase because they haven't let the actuality of the released game set in yet.)

I never once even considered how disconnected the story, let alone the environments, would feel. It's so disconnected that it's easy for me to say that Destiny is one of the least immersive games I've ever played. And that's quite an impressive accomplishment, considering how much immersion the art alone provides, not to mention the FPS mechanics.

The game I hoped Destiny to be—the game Bungie advertised Destiny to be—had so much potential. It still wouldn't have been considered a good game if they hadn't over-advertised it, but at least the reality of Destiny would have been much more palatable. Such a disappointment.

Absolutely agree with all of this.

A lot of what we do in the game; be it story or whatever, feels like it has little purpose or meaning.
Seriously, I was more engaged in the Battlefield 3 and 4 stories than this and those were both terrible campaigns.

Good post, Cody. You've expressed what I was not able to concerning the story. When it ended, I was not impressed with what I experienced.

Having said that, I'm still having a ton of fun with the game. I'll be playing this for a while, methinks.

- CC

Good thoughts, I agree with a lot of this and have enjoyed the game thoroughly. Once the grind is over, the game is a lot more fun.

I do wish they had more unique content (or locations) for high level players that is separate or new...

What comes with the DLC will REALLY matter if Bungie really wants to redeem the not so stellar launch. Sadly, I'm not expecting much.

When was the last time people so unanimously agreed with Cody? We've already given him too much power.

Great post. Hard to disagree with anything. The greatest discord for me is the "the game begins at level 20" statement. As you have mentioned before, this is grossly untrue.

I'd put forth the game ends at level 20. The rest is rinse, repeat.

Now, in and of itself, I do enjoy hopping in and playing a bit with my friends. Really, this is the best part. But I will not grind by myself, will not grind (endure?) Crucible, will not grind to make it into an event (i.e. VoG) - regardless of how cool.

It might be interesting to get new gear if (IF!) there were uncharted horizons to see, or wonders to uncover, or enemies/sections I just couldn't clear. I should grind a ton to get more gear to level up and then....grind a ton to get more gear?

The Vanguard raids are the closest thing to single-player content I'm still interested in. They're quick, efficient, and do a good job of creating positive experiences for online randoms.

It's pretty, it's fun, but it's so shallow. Again I ask: where did all the effort go? I'm asking seriously. Multi-platforms? Character creation? Investment? Graphics?

Pretty pieces here and there.

I would be interested to see some of this asked in a Bungie weekly mail sack. I think a lot of us are legitimately confused as to why Bungie made some of the decisions they did. We should try to come up with a list of questions, phrased in a non insulting way, to figure out what their thinking was. Something like:

• "What motivated the decision to keep the story narrative light?"
  
• "Will Rasputin or other characters play larger roles in later games, or should we expect the same level of character involvement?"
  
• "Was it ever planned to have new content (missions) open up after reaching level 20?"
  
• "Are we going to see more of what Guardians are fighting to protect (City/people) in future expansions?"
  
• "In what way does limiting gametypes to weekends enhance the game?"
  
• "Are custom PvP matches coming the the future?" (I want to know if they don't want to support it anymore)
  
• "Why can't I bring my low-leveled friends on harder missions?"
  
• "Do you plan to allow more customization of missions in the future, such as adding modifiers/skulls?"

I don't think many of these would be selected for a mail sack . . . but still, might be worth a try.

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