Destiny puzzles... cryptography, mystery, etc. (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Wednesday, May 13, 2015, 19:25 (3726 days ago) @ CyberKN

Imagine if instead of forcing you to go read everything from an external site, grimiore content was accessible throughout the game in the form of hidden terminals, interacting with Tower NPCs, or audio logs for the ghost fragments.

So I'm going to play Devil's Advocate a bit here...

For a traditional, linear campaign mode, there is no doubt that everything on that list would be a vast improvement. People who wanted a strong 12-14 hour campaign would be much happier.

But the more I think about it, the more I believe the complete lack of in-depth narrative and backstory in Destiny is 100% intentional (not just the result of some last-minute reshuffling). The first mission is often used as an example of what many feel Destiny should have been like throughout; more cinematic, more setpieces, lots more dialog. It's a great mission, no doubt. Once or twice. But think about how many times we've replayed most of the story missions in Destiny at this point.

Bungie has always been hyper-conscious of the disparity within their player base between people who enjoy narrative and people who actively dislike having a lot of story "in the way" of the action. For better or worse, I believe Bungie made the conscious decision to cut as much "out of the way" of the action as they possibly could with Destiny. I think most of us would agree that they went too far in that direction, but every now and then I imagine what it would be like to replay missions similar to that intro mission on a regular basis, and I realize what a drag it would be. Even missions like The World's Grave, which starts by having the player scan cracks in the moon's surface, feels like a drag because it take a few extra minutes to get in to the actual action.

All that to say, I can understand why someone at Bungie might have thought it best to get all of that stuff out of the game, and put it somewhere where players who care about it can easily find it and dig through it. Does it make for strong storytelling? Absolutely not. But it also means that we can replay these strikes and missions dozens, even hundreds of times, because they are almost all uninterrupted wall-to-wall action.

I do think there is a way to achieve this while still telling an interesting story, but I think it would require a far more complex approach. Perhaps different tiers of missions: "Story" missions that are far more narrative focused, but replayed much less, and "combat" missions similar to what we have now; little or no narrative, light objectives, lots of action and high-replayability.