I haven't been to DBO in ages. You all know I'm a Halo fan first. Sorry if I'm just retreading what you guys probably went over like 2 weeks ago.

So destiny... It's fun(ish), it's Beautiful, and it has a really great sound track (Sets a wonderful tone, especially when fighting the Cabal)

That all said....

What the fuck did I just beat? I have zero fucking clue who these people are, what the traveler is, what the bad guy heart thing is (a vex of some kind?). What the fuck are the Vex, Fallen, Cabal, Hive etc?... I haven't read the grimoire cards yet so this might be partially my fault but I have no idea what is really happening. It felt incredibly Good=Light Bad=Dark the end.

It was entertaining enough I guess but it felt so rinse and repeat. No subtance. No variety. I found myself for the first time ever not giving two shits about a Bungie games story.

Halo always had some amazing gameplay mechanic, set piece, plot something that was so gripping... This just doesn't have what ever that Halo spark was in my opinion.

Everybody acknowledges that the story is much weaker than previous Bungie games. Reading the Grimoire helps and there is definitely a lot of material for them to build on, but what they have is mostly just a baseline to build on top of.

Late to the party on that particular observation too I'm afraid ;).

It appears, and this is only my personal theory (backed up somewhat by other sources including this rather telling post from Penny Arcade, specifically paragraphs 3 through 5), that the game underwent some rather dramatic revisions in the last 6-12 months of its development, and I think one of the casualties of that was any semblance of a coherent story being told within the game itself.

Also, it would appear they hooked up Peter Dinklage to an IV of tranquilizers and hallucinogens during recording, which unsurprisingly doesn't seem to have improved the quality of his work.

Also, it would appear they hooked up Peter Dinklage to an IV of tranquilizers and hallucinogens during recording, which unsurprisingly doesn't seem to have improved the quality of his work.

Hard to rag on Dinklage when the lines he is being given to read are all shockers.

I get the impression that he wasn't given much context for most of the lines, and that there weren't many re-takes. Maybe was rushed during the reading.

And the dozen+ other long time employees...

It was a really odd feeling I had at the pax Bungie party when the only Bungie employees I recognized were Urk, DeeJ, Luke Timmins and I wanna say I saw Harold Ryan there briefly but I must have been hallucinating

Now, I'm not saying any of this is proven, fact, or otherwise solid truth, but this thread on the Destiny Subreddit is interesting.

I'd like to think most of this is ridiculous...but then again, I'd like to think Bungie knows how to put together a coherent sci-fi story for a game that was in development for five years.

I wonder how much of it is due to the planned "post-processing" of his voice. If he was told to leave pauses for the digital effects perhaps that changed how his acting worked out?

I wouldn't say it's weaker. It's just not presented clearly. As you said sit down and read all the Grimoire cards. There is an interesting as hell story buried there. That's the problem though. It's buried on those cards and only hinted at in the game. It's a shame too because it actually is interesting.

Now, I'm not saying any of this is proven, fact, or otherwise solid truth, but this thread on the Destiny Subreddit is interesting.

I'd like to think most of this is ridiculous...but then again, I'd like to think Bungie knows how to put together a coherent sci-fi story for a game that was in development for five years.

I think they had put together a coherent story, and then for whatever reason it was gutted. Joe was probably like fuck this, I spent years of my life working on it, I'm out. A ridiculous replacement story that tries to draw from the original work but fails miserably is put into place. A few competent guys are hired last minute to put the Grimoire together because it becomes abundantly obvious that the story in its current incarnation is frail and weak. They do an admirable job of it, but the implementation is very poor being unlockables only viewable in a web browser and doesn't change the fact that the story being told in the game is rubbish.

Cody mentioned that he had heard some rumblings that Activision didn't want the story to demonize (or destroy, or whatever) the Traveler because they wanted to keep the Traveler an iconic part of the marketing for the game. Just a rumor, but lord have mercy if that's the reason the story was scrapped and Joe left the company.

It's kinda fun to speculate but short of Joe or someone else just coming out and telling us what went down, which will never happen, we will never know. Which makes me a little sad, the whole thing would probably make a great story all of its own.