You're as inconsistent as ever. (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Friday, July 10, 2015, 19:05 (3661 days ago) @ Avateur

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

Yes, the Halos did a much better job than Destiny in getting their story and world and stakes across. We certainly agree there.

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.

You're just completely wrong here. Did Destiny do a pretty lame job of telling us why finding Rasputin mattered or that the Hive were about to resurrect their leader who had singlehandedly driven us from the moon or that the Vex were about to turn the garden world of Venus into a charred technological rock like they did to Mercury, or that The Darkness hiding in the Black Garden was actively preventing The Traveler from healing? Absolutely! But those real, important threats to The City are still touched on in the base game and are made more clear by the Grimoire and the later expansions.

Just take the events in the Cosmodrome. We are reforged in Light and make our escape. When we come back one of the first things we do is investigate a downed Jumpship who's audio log makes it clear they detected an active Warmind. We know from the Grimoire that Warminds were super smart, were in charge of our solar system's defenses, had arrays of orbital weapons powerful enough to easily swat aside Vex and Cabal forces, and even played a significant role in humanity's study and understanding of the Vex when one Warmind once had to rescue Ishtar Collective researchers and hundreds of perfectly simulated virtual copies from a Vex mind. Warminds were a big deal and so was finding one intact. From there we helped save that Warmind, who we found out to be Rasputin, from Fallen network attacks and we played a key role in Rasputin reconnecting to and spreading to our inner colonies. This is also a big deal because despite the fact that we saved him, Rasputin isn't talking to The City. And he isn't talking to us because it is very very likely that he watched his fellow Warminds die in the collapse, watched how strong The Darkness was by operating alone, and abandoned humanity letting billions die and possibly hit The Traveler with an antimatter weapon all so he could hide, survive, and win the whole game of galactic dominance at the expense of all other players, including us.

The entire first chunk of Destiny wasn't us going places for no reason, it was us finding and partially securing a hugely important ally for The City. And it was a set up for a classic Bungie AI rampancy story to come! What we did on the other planets similarly had hugely important links into what happened into the past and provided huge hooks and hints for things to come in the future.

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!

Without our actions the Fallen would have captured or destroyed Rasputin. Crota would have returned and killed The City's millions of inhabitance. The Vex would have destroyed Venus and would not have been stopped in their quest to control time itself. And The Darkness might have finished off The Traveler!

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.

A lot of those things already happened. The Fallen attacked The City's outward expansion at Twilight Gap, their walkers traded fire with The City's guns. Fallen warriors had to be driven from The City's walls. The Fallen would have won if the House of Wolves forces that numbered in the millions had not gotten tied up in a war the Queen of the Awoken initiated. Six powerful Guardians, Guardians who were legends and who knew things no one else knew, descended into the Hive's fortress on the moon in an attempt to kill Crota after he killed thousands of Guardians, and all but one of them were killed. Not just killed, they were tortured or smothered or screamed in agony in the darkness as their light was torn from them bit by bit. And there's more and more where that came from.

Does this stuff also need to happen in game? Yes! But I believe it is coming. There was a quote from Bungie a long while back about someone internally liking the Vex the most because of a character's moving death. I'm guessing that death will eventually be the death of the Exo Stranger who we now suspect to be that Ishtar Collective researcher, or a perfect virtual copy, who was once held captive by the Vex, and who is now using the Vex's ability to manipulate time in order to try and prevent the collapse. Eris, to my surprise, is still in play as a character and there's no way she is going to end well. The Queen of the Awoken has agreed to go after Oryx (at Eris' request... I think...) and is basically in a cold war with The Nine, who are mentioned often but have not yet been revealed. Her brother disagrees with her on many things and feels pretty shifty in general. I'd wager there will be a death in that family eventually. Just not sure who.

I think what's really happened is Destiny's story really is meant to play out over ten years and the lack of immediate payoff is intentional, though the poor storytelling in the first chapter (the base game) was not.