It's in the expansions. (Destiny)

by narcogen , Andover, Massachusetts, Friday, July 31, 2015, 23:22 (3502 days ago) @ Funkmon

Man that was long. How many pages was that script? :P

4,300 words. Some got cut after it was recorded, as well. I use BBEdit for this sort of thing, and it doesn't paginate, so I don't know how many pages.

The main point was that the story of Destiny isn't complete. I think you're right, and I think you're also right that Bungie will elaborate on this in future games.

You didn't bring up the expansions very much, but they do tell a complete story. Find out hive are waking Crota under the control of Omnigul. You find some stuff out, go kill Crota's soul. Then you go kill Omnigul. Then you actually kill Crota. Find out the Fallen have gone rogue in the reef. Find out who's leading them. Figure shit out. Capture the dude. Then a side story in a strike and the POE.

I honestly don't think that's true, though, at least, not in the same sense that it's true of conclusions within the Halo series.

Part of it is that I never feel any emotional closure because none of these missions is ever done for good because all the activities recur, and unlike when you repeat a level in Halo, the world does not reset to its prior state. I kill Omnigul, get a neat new gun, and next week I can kill Omnigul with that gun. I can even kill Omnigul with that gun I got last week from killing Omnigul while talking to a fireteam member who helped me kill Omnigul last week. When we go back to the Tower and report to Eris, who do we say killed Omnigul, when, and with what gun?

The other part of it is that even when things do end they don't. Look at Skolas; he was in jail, he got out, we caught him, and he goes back to jail... where we can fight him again weekly. All of our effort was spent to restore the status quo (Skolas in jail) whereas most of the effort in Halo is spent disrupting the status quo.

The status quo in the Haloverse when we enter is:

Humanity and Covenant are at war
Covenant are looking for Halo installations to activate
The Flood are attempting to escape confinement and absorb all sentient life
Guilty Spark and other monitors are looking for a Reclaimer to activate the array

The nature and consequences of each of these is made clear at least at some point. We know about the war pretty early on in Halo 1, and the threat of the Flood by halfway.

By the time the series has ended, this has happened:

The Covenant breaks, as Elites join Humanity in fighting prophets/brutes
All three prophet hierarchs have been killed
Delta Halo's gravemind has been lured to the Ark and destroyed
Two halo installations, one monitor, and the Ark installation that maintains them has been destroyed

All of those events are pretty big, and the disruption from the status quo is significant.

It seems to me that the main story of Destiny is basically a framework right now for telling smaller stories in the expansions. Hopefully, Bungie does turn it into its own story outright soon.

I'd like to say that I don't have a problem with the Destiny story as presented in game. I would like the Grimoire to be there, like Marathon, but I don't have an inherent issue with it. I know more is coming. It's why I didn't have a problem with Halo 2. I was surprised when it ended, but it was clear there would be a Halo 3, so I didn't mind.

Right now, the story IN THE GAME is just enough to keep me interested. Hopefully, like you said, that's not by design, and just due to the nature of Destiny as a beginning.

I really think the expansions are the real stories in Destiny.

I thought so too until they announced Taken King. TDB is an enjoyable little ark, but to me the motivations of the Hive are probably the most inscrutable of all Destiny's enemies, and to be given a double dose of them so soon is disheartening. I also feel that the logic being followed leads to an infinite regress.

We kill Sardon. Then a bunch more Hive. We kill Crota. That pisses off Oryx, who comes to get revenge. That means we need to kill DarkBlade (really, guys... DarkBlade? Somebody broke the imagination bank on that one.) and then probably a bunch of other Hive before a showdown with Oryx.

Will killing him off bring out his granddaddy? What about his granddaddy before him? And of course, even while the expansion launches that explains how angry Oryx is at killing Crota, some players are still killing Crota, some have yet to kill Crota. Some will kill Oryx before they get around to killing Crota, probably, and some will have a day where they kill Oryx before taking a break to go kill Crota. The sense of accomplishment comes from loot and advancement, rather than the in-game accomplishment, which contrasts with Halo because Halo didn't have loot or advancement.