You're as inconsistent as ever. (Destiny)

by Avateur , Friday, July 10, 2015, 15:33 (3661 days ago) @ Ragashingo

They did fine with text? What choice did the Marathon Security Officer ever make ever? Did Marathon have a narrative? It was just AI's giving you orders and talking to each other, right? Halo was great? What choices did the Master Chief ever make that affected the story? He took the initiative to give the Covenant back their bomb... That was it. Did ODST have a story? The Rookie never even spoke, he just found evidence that his team had been in the city earlier then helped them complete Dare's mission, right? How about Reach? Noble Six barely speaks and just followed orders until he covers for Captain Keyes at the very end. And even that is following Carter's order to see the Cortana fragment safely to the Autumn, right?

Yes, Marathon has a narrative. Part of that narrative is you literally being a puppet, but there's something quite special about you in the sense that you somehow keep surviving. Master Chief's in-battle decisions are what won the war. The narrative works because you're in the military, and you do follow orders and go places, but he's the best warrior for the job. The best laid plans in a military mission can go straight to hell the moment the boots hit the ground. The story also goes beyond Master Chief. There's an overall narrative to H1, H2, and even H3. There's a world where actual things are taking place, can be understood, and there is a general sense of urgency. Things matter. I've also horribly simplified the narrative for this post's purposes. Please don't use that against me, since I think you agree with all of this but were just trying to make a larger point to Cody.

ODST gets tricky. The Rookie is nothing more than a plot device. He really doesn't matter until he meets up with everyone. His only purpose is to find random items that then allow you to play as the other ODSTs who have actually been doing something in this tale.

As for Reach, well, haloreachisnotcanonetc. :P

Fact is, our characters in Bungie games have never had much agency on their own. From Marathon to Reach we've mainly been the one person who could accomplish the impossible task and usually did so without question. Mai and Thel are the only two characters we ever played that didn't stick to their orders! That doesn't mean stories weren't told and narratives didn't happen. Bungie has given us some truly great stories over the decades despite the very limited agency shown by the player's character. Usually they used memorable secondary characters from Durandal to Cortana to Noble Team to drive the story along. And it appears maybe that's the way they are heading with The Taken King.

And now here's the difference, and why Cody isn't being inconsistent. Destiny has no narrative at all. No one around you, nothing. The problem isn't that we're constantly being told to go to stuff without any actual decision making abilities of our own. The problem is that there's no reason for any of it. At all. None. No story. No plot. No narrative. There's just a bad guy here and he needs to die! Because I said so! Why? Our Tower stands. It's been standing. No one has even tried to assault it. The last city is totally good to go. I haven't seen a single civilian at all die... or a single civilian at all, period. But doom's coming our way if we don't do this! Or not. Who knows. There's no story.

So, your character isn't a pawn like in Marathon. You're just literally being told to go places and do things for no reason at all. You're not Durandal's puppet. You're not some means to an end. You're just doing whatever because the game says so. You're not Master Chief surrounded by interesting characters following orders on missions that steadily grow more urgent as time goes on (give or take H3). You're not the Rookie who is being used as a way to show and tell a story of other characters. You're just here listening to people and doing things, and oh boy could they tell you some things but they don't even have time to tell you why they don't have time to tell you things!

And in a game that's been marketed as building your Legend, and about how important the GUARDIANS are to saving the world, these Guardians have zero motivation, zero context, and zero authority because there is seriously nothing going on in-game to justify anything beyond, "Someone said to do this, so go do it. Then, after you've done it, whether you actually really accomplished something means nothing because who knows what you really did or didn't do or if it mattered."

Anyhow, like you said, Taken King might actually truly start presenting some sort of plot or narrative or stakes or something that matters in this universe. We'll see. Either way, there have been no consequences to this point. Someone on Earth has to die. The Tower has to fall. Half that city has to be blown up. Something has to actually happen to show that we're in such dire times for there to be any true impact or meaning from a narrative standpoint. Time will tell.