You're as inconsistent as ever. (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Friday, July 10, 2015, 21:00 (3661 days ago) @ Avateur

Personally, I think Destiny was made in large part to tell a bigger, more epic story and things like development delays forced them to ship a game that worked instead of a game that came with a fully realized story. I'll cite the talk that we got to see a few months ago where the Bungie employee that was talking mentioned it took them something like two years longer than they had expected to build the Destiny engine out from the Reach engine. They were happy with the engine they eventually ended up with, but it sounded like things like really building and implementing missions might have gotten held up which would lead to the great backstory, decent bones of a front story, but horrid implementation of that frontstory.

I think The Dark Below basically rolled out as is with maybe the patrol quests added in as a desperate measure to breath some more story into the game and that the House of Wolves did a much better job with story and set pieces (all the missions are just better designed and implemented, know what I mean?) but even still there wasn't a lot of time or budget to add in cutscenes and more than the planned Petra / Variks back and forth.

I have two big problems with what you've been arguing. (Not problems with you, problems with the arguments you are making):

1. You are wrongly diminishing and dismissing what story is in game. There's not much, not enough, but there are the bones of a good story. Even in the base game a set of plot points does progress logically forward where finding the Hive in the Cosmodrome leads to attacking them on the moon which leads you to be noticed by the Exo Stranger which leads to the Awoken which leads to Mars which leads to the Black Garden and The Darkness harming The Traveler. Is it well fleshed out? Are there a ton of great cutscenes or great mission dialogue? No. But I absolutely see the story as being there and as being more than kill things because we were told to.

2. You are treating Destiny's story as something that can only happen within the game. You're going so far as to talk about erasing the Grimoire from everyone's minds. When I talk to people seriously about Halo's story or Mass Effect's story or any game's story I would never limit myself to just the stuff that happened in game. Especially when the company that made the game at the same time made a fantastic resource that shipped with the game and was there to fill in the gaps for those that wanted to know more. Then, when anyone points out that the game actually does speak to the same plot points, just not in as much (or enough) detail, you say that all that happened in Destiny is people told us to do stuff for no reason.

We all agree that Destiny's storytelling was not up to par. But to say there is no story is never going to sit right with me because I can throw out the Grimoire and still make almost all the links and connections I argue for. And throwing out the Grimoire doesn't sit right with me because to me it is part of Destiny's story. Right now it is having to do perhaps double duty filling in for the game's initial poor storytellling and building the universe but I think that won't always be the case and that it's far more reasonable to speak of the game and Grimoire together than it is to separate them. If the Grimoire was merely stories of Destiny past that did not directly link to the present I'd say you have a point. But events in the Grimoire are referenced all the time and the Grimoire elaborates about events in game all the time. And because of that I strongly disagree that they should ever be separated.

(And like you, I intend no offense or insult. Just honest opinion of what I think happened and... uh... why I think you're wrong)