Thanks! (Destiny)

by narcogen , Andover, Massachusetts, Monday, August 03, 2015, 00:41 (3499 days ago) @ nico

Thanks Narcogen for that level-headed and thorough analysis of narrative within Bungie's games.

I'm of the opinion that at its core, the problem is that the writing just got bad.

It went from superb ('thon, Myth) to good (Halo), to where we are now.

I fear may be onto something there... and it's something I'm working on for another video.

[snip]

Not everyone cares for reading terminals, and I suspect that Bungie as a studio started feeling the pressure of "dumbing down" the story-telling (Halo) so that younger, and / or more impatient players could get story content without too much investment.

Sure, I get that, but I suppose now they've just decided that the younger, impatient players don't need or want the story at all, and that everybody else can go read a website?

With Destiny, however, it just feels like the story-telling has taken a back seat to a lot of other components of the game.

I do agree with you that the episodic nature of the gameplay creates an additional challenge to the story-telling, and maybe that's why it's not at the forefront of the studio's priorities.

When I actually suggested, back before ODST, that I would love Bungie to pursue an episodic model (it was not yet clear at that time, I think, how thoroughly Valve had failed with their experiment with it) it was because of the advantages that model has for storytelling. You can't honestly look, just to name very recent examples, at Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Better Call Saul, Mad Men, and quite a few others, and say that an episodic format is inherently detrimental to storytelling. Quite the opposite! I think the problem is that Bungie just really hasn't engaged on that level, in part because of the MMO design elements, and perhaps in part just as a knee-jerk reaction to the multimedia behemoth that Halo became, and perhaps in part because of the departure of key individuals.