Mythic Sci-Fi: does it work for you? RNA (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Sunday, November 30, 2014, 12:51 (3882 days ago) @ scarab

Was the story a damp squib because the writer's were incompetent? Or was the subject matter/ genre the problem?

Or, perhaps none of the above. Destiny lacks the long front facing story we got used to in the Halo games, but the background details are both fairly detailed and worthy of discussion.

Glimmer

It sounds like Glimmer is more of a man made substance or a substance all highly advanced races eventually invent. The Glimmer that The City runs on is said to come from breaking down Golden Age finds or from supplies that were created back in the Golden Age. Presumably, the Fallen's Glimmer Drill is a device or the first stage of a process that can create Glimmer from appropriate buried resources. Perhaps Glimmer ultimately starts off as some type of rock shared between Earth and the moon since we see Fallen mining in both of those places.

Mining for Glimmer might be easy if you have the equipment, but it is made clear that The City converts most of the found Glimmer into tangible items necessary for continued defense or industry or standard of living and so a constant inbound supply is needed.

I think getting Glimmer from killing enemies and opening chests is just a gameplay mechanic in the same way the Master Chief didn't actually die x number of times during the course of the Halo series.

Deals with the Fallen

I'd love to see some communication between us and our enemies. We know Fallen are intelligent and willing to work with us if absolutely necessary as shown in Cayde-6's battle against a hive onslaught along side a female Fallen Captain. But we also know that they raided smaller towns like Palamon where Shin Malphur, the last known owner of The Last Word, lived as a child. His parents were killed by Fallen. We also know that Fallen mounted larger scale attacks. One of the Tower reps mentions being there when the Fallen burned London. And we also know that it was the combined forces of the Fallen houses that crushed The City's outward expansion and killed a lot of Guardians in the battle of Twilight Gap.

Diplomacy is nice, and I would like to know how much diplomacy was attempted, but right now Humanity seems to shoot Fallen on sight and for good reason.

The names! God the names. Nigel the knickerless, Morag the unlovable. Can you imagine having to come up with that lot? A story for every exotic weapon, "there was an elf who lived in a shoe and he??? made a weapon that does stuff. I think he made it out of bones or something" I couldn't do it. I would be so depressed if that was my job.

The stories for the Exotics are some of Destiny's best background bits. The intertwined fate of Thorn vs The Last Word is probably my favorite. The shorter weapon descriptions aren't as involved but they are creative and sometimes delightfully amusing. The names are mostly from the Hive who have an odd dark Knights of the Round Table type thing going on. It's part of their theme but perhaps not for everyone.

Personally, I'd love the job of crafting backstory!

Do you remember the presentation where Joe Staten said that we tried to come up with a real-world based explanation for why souls shoot out of Fallen when you headshot them. I think in the end he just gave up and went with it: souls fly out of Fallen when you shoot them.

Not true. Fallen seem to breath Ether instead of good old oxygen. It is established that Servitors create and distribute Ether to Fallen units. There is a Grimoire card that actually questions whether it is their souls escaping or just the Ether they breath. I'm inclined to believe it's both given that I'm playing as a previously dead Golden Age hero...

How do we reason about machines that feed off souls? What is a soul? Is it energy? Can you grow a new one?

In Halo 1 we had no idea what the Halo Effect really did. In the first Star Wars we had no idea how a light saber worked. You're asking the questions but seem... I don't know... too jaded to think about possible answers that fit. I remember when someone came up with the idea that the Halo Effect destroyed Calicum and argued it made sense since Hunters didn't have bones and Flood couldn't infect Hunters. We would have never gotten there if we'd all throw our hands up and said, "WTF does a Halo do?"

Cabal

Yeah, the Cabal are probably the most understandable, but you're missing a bit of information. Based on a few bits, I think they lost their homeworld to The Darkness. At one point a Ghost discovers a hologram of one of their worlds broken and shattered. I believe it's the same Ghost who notices and speculates that while the Cabal are an impressive and competent military force, they also seem to be running scared.

As for blocking Vex teleportation, I think the Cabal do have that capability based on their ability to prevent us from obtaining our Sparrow.

Anyway, just wanted to talk story and world. Just wanted to share. Thank you for your time. Refunds not available ;-)

Just remember, major key points of the Halo universe (Cortana's origin, the existance of more Spartans, Dr. Halsey, etc) were not acknowledged in game until Halo 3. And we had a ton of brilliant speculation long before that. Destiny's narrative was a letdown in a couple of ways, but I think its backstory and universe is far better thought out and detailed than Halo's was at a similar point in its life.