But the Grimoire cards aren't in the game (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Wednesday, November 05, 2014, 14:19 (3470 days ago) @ Kermit

And that's really a huge issue that I have with this. The bulk of story for Destiny is in the grimoire cards, in press releases, in interviews with the developers, and just is fundamentally not an actual part of what's in the game. I love that there's all of this mythos being conceived of, but it needs to be in the game!

With regards to scaling, I think you're right. I'd guess the publishers gave some hard deadlines, deep cuts had to be made, and the whole game was stitched together from the remaining pieces. Unfortunately, no one logic-proofed the dialogue or narrative that was left over, or they decided that a compelling story was not a thing the game needed. It's not an ideal situation, but as a developer you need to be able to adjust to these things. Other big budget games have been made with coherent narratives and compelling characters under similar circumstances, and this isn't Bungie's first rodeo with a major release, so any statements that the alleged 2013 shake-up is to blame for the poor writing just feel like cop-outs (do we even have actual proof that the shake-up happened outside of that possibly fake reddit thread?).

IMO, they were wrong to short-shrift the story. Story is what makes games stand out in their genre. It's a central thing. There will always be games that are mechanics-only, but those games aren't $60 games to me. They're iPhone games I play while pooping.

And, frankly, I've come to expect great writing from Bungie over the years. I've been playing their games since Pathways into Darkness, and Destiny is the first one that disappointed me. It's unfortunate that it was such a massive disappointment with such glaring errors and omissions, too. Someone at the top needed to die on this hill to save the story, and maybe that's what led Joe Staten to leaving; maybe he did die on that hill. But we don't know.

What we do know is that some guy is beaming with pride at having delivered a terrible script. And we know that I like to make fun of that guy.

In all likelihood, Bungie bit off more than they could chew here. Cross-platform development takes longer. The many promises made during development meant the dev team was constantly feeling like they weren't living up to expectations (plot and scale-wise, they didn't). There were obviously major internal issues given the departure of such important figures as Joe and Marty. Hell, even the fact that the Destiny website was all about pre-order sales for MONTHS before launch should have been a red flag. But I had faith in Bungie and, sadly, that faith was misplaced. The "game" elements are good. Good engine, good gameplay, good audio. The story elements suck balls. And the future looks bleak.

Everything I'm seeing says more of the same. The dev team is focusing on stopping exploits instead of fixing the bugs that make the exploits feel necessary. The xpacs look like more strikes, more boring "story" missions, and more bounties, without providing an improved experience. I look forward to the additional raids, but I'm tempering my expectations for these so-called "quests". They just sound like opt-in exotic bounties so far. Lots of text, little real content. I'm still waiting to hear a single legend in this game, and I'm still waiting to find out how, exactly, I "become legend."

The game is deeply flawed, and nothing I'm hearing from Bungie makes it sound like that's on their radar.

What's more, the game started with weekend events the first two weekends, and has had nothing at all since then. What gives? Is this game being supported or are the $20 per xpac add-ons all we can expect at this point? What happened to daily updates and an ever expanding universe?