The mythic part and the sci-fi part. (Destiny)

by Leviathan , Hotel Zanzibar, Tuesday, December 02, 2014, 20:20 (3441 days ago) @ scarab

I've read a lot of science fiction and I've read a lot of fantasy. To be honest, a lot of the difference between the two is often just the setting and the color of the curtains. Still, a minority in both tackle important and meaningful ideas, emotions and experiences, by mixing what we know with what we can imagine, whether that's backwards or forwards, or even sideways. Destiny is sort of forward and off to the left a bit, heh. :)

I think the narrative of Destiny needs to be more present (or if not, many more missions of the current style to enable the world to feel more dynamic and extensive), but the universe they've created is very strong and alluring to me. It's far more interesting than Halo's was at CE's release and has the potential to go all kinds of places and do all kinds of things without breaking it.

What you call plot-holes, I call spaces for speculation. Where you feel you can't reason, I can imagine and don't even feel the need to reason. A lot of it comes from your opinion and experiences with the game. I've had a lot of fun with the game and reading the Grimoire so instead of looking the unknowns as a negative, I look at them with a fun speculation. It's like any book or movie, really. If the writer can catch your interest, it doesn't have to explain every little thing to be fulfilling. I think these debates often just boil down to varying personal experiences, and not the work itself.

Reason, logic, they are but one of our mental facilities, and when taken to the extreme, they can turn thoughts to redundant absurdity. Even the best works of science fiction have holes in it and can be picked apart to nonsense if the reader is in the mood. Because both sci-fi and fantasy require leaps to exist. If they could be fully explained, Arthur C. Clarke would be only a scientist with a proven thesis, not a conjurer and forward-thinker. A fitting phrase for this sort of continual deconstruction is "turtles all the way down"...

Which is funny/interesting as that's a myth (turtle carrying the world upon its shoulders) and yet we've used it to help explain an issue we experience. It's like... fantasy, man!

Instead of Star Trek's often fantasy-technobable, we have a more mythological vocabulary with Destiny. They seem barely different to me. And both can be convincing. You look at Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories and you see the two vocabularies morph into one - technology taken to extreme speculation where it has becomes magic and powerful aliens become gods.

I think we need more mixing of the pot, more entries in the vague spaces between genres. Destiny's universe and style feels fresh to me in this way, and I'm hoping Bungie can craft some fulfilling narratives with the tools they've built. I know I've got some fun comics already in my head with the Crucible factions stabbing each other in the back, Exo manipulations, Fallen origin stories. If only I had a time machine. Or a wand. Or both. :)