This isn;t going to stop me from trying with Blade Runner 2049 though :-p

Hmm. I've played quite a bit and there are still legendaries and exotics that I don't have.

The Destiny Sets site that was just posted did a good job of highlighting all the stuff I haven’t tried yet.

Ugh, I literally cannot stand how adorable she is :)

It's like she's saying it directly to you!

Ugh, I literally cannot stand how adorable she is :)

It's like she's saying it directly to you!

Ugh, I literally cannot stand how adorable she is :)

Ugh, I literally cannot stand how adorable she is :)

In Destiny 1, you did need to keep playing to get the best stuff, in much the same way you need to keep working to make more money. This is good.

What do you mean by the best stuff? Gear you like, or the power of the gear? In D1 I frequently had gear I liked but it was not high enough level to allow me to be effective in the activities I wanted to play.

In D2 it is much easier to collect all the things and then upgrade all the things, giving you more selection of which high-power tools you want to use. At various points in D1 I had the opportunity to upgrade a very, very small selection of things, and I had to wear my highest power things if I wanted to keep getting better things. I wasn't a fan of that--it felt limiting.

That's where you're wrong. I don't want to use any guns in Destiny 2.

That's a different point. It follows that if there aren't any guns you want, you're never going to get any guns that you want.
I prefer the D2 system of having more opportunites to upgrade more gear, instead of having to choose a precious few objects to infuse. There are quite a few guns I enjoy using, and I feel like there is more of a chance for me to give everything a shot because it is easy to upgrade something if I end up liking it.

In D2 if you play a lot, you get lots of things, so you would have a wider selection of gear to choose from than someone who plays almost none at all. In other words, I disagree with you.

I have played almost none at all, and I have all the guns anybody else has with the exception of a few exotics. I agree with me.

Hmm. I've played quite a bit and there are still legendaries and exotics that I don't have.

In Destiny 1, you did need to keep playing to get the best stuff, in much the same way you need to keep working to make more money. This is good.

In Destiny, you could play a lot and eventually get really good stuff.

In Destiny 2, you play a lot and get literally no better things than someone who plays almost none at all. This is bad.

No matter how much effort you put in, you don't get anything extra.

That's my opinion.

But is that even true?

Yes.

In D1 if you weren't playing the right activities and you weren't always wearing your highest-power gear, you wouldn't get the best stuff, and even if you were playing the right activities, you still only had an RNG chance to get the things you wanted.

Correct.

In D2 it is much easier to collect all the things and then upgrade all the things, giving you more selection of which high-power tools you want to use. At various points in D1 I had the opportunity to upgrade a very, very small selection of things, and I had to wear my highest power things if I wanted to keep getting better things. I wasn't a fan of that--it felt limiting.

That's where you're wrong. I don't want to use any guns in Destiny 2.

In D2 if you play a lot, you get lots of things, so you would have a wider selection of gear to choose from than someone who plays almost none at all. In other words, I disagree with you.

I have played almost none at all, and I have all the guns anybody else has with the exception of a few exotics. I agree with me.

In Destiny 1, you did need to keep playing to get the best stuff, in much the same way you need to keep working to make more money. This is good.

In Destiny, you could play a lot and eventually get really good stuff.

In Destiny 2, you play a lot and get literally no better things than someone who plays almost none at all. This is bad.

No matter how much effort you put in, you don't get anything extra.

That's my opinion.

But is that even true? In D1 if you weren't playing the right activities and you weren't always wearing your highest-power gear, you wouldn't get the best stuff, and even if you were playing the right activities, you still only had an RNG chance to get the things you wanted.

In D2 it is much easier to collect all the things and then upgrade all the things, giving you more selection of which high-power tools you want to use. At various points in D1 I had the opportunity to upgrade a very, very small selection of things, and I had to wear my highest power things if I wanted to keep getting better things. I wasn't a fan of that--it felt limiting.

In D2 if you play a lot, you get lots of things, so you would have a wider selection of gear to choose from than someone who plays almost none at all. In other words, I disagree with you.

In Destiny, you could play a lot and eventually get really good stuff.

In Destiny 2, you play a lot and get literally no better things than someone who plays almost none at all. This is bad.

No matter how much effort you put in, you don't get anything extra.

That's my opinion.

There’s been enough good story beats and dialogue through the Grimoire and through D1 and D2 themselves that I believe that the writers do in fact treat the Destiny characters that way. It’s just, Destiny isn’t a book being penned by one person. It’s a huge project trying to serve many goals which it does better at some than at others.

Yeah, there are other games that have better, more personal, more in-depth stories. Destiny is no Life Is Strange or The Last of Us, but at the same time, those games are no Destiny in other ways like FPS gameplay or PvP multiplayer.

The fault of the plot is only partly the writers' fault. I'm sure they did their best within the constraints they were working under. Ultimately, making the plot important and letting the plot inform game design is the job of the lead designers, and I think the Destiny design team has made the technology and gameplay more important than the plot.

Ultimately, I think this is a mistake on several levels. Most of the inspired gameplay I've encountered in my life is either puzzle based (Destiny does this well with their raid mechanics), or has come from using the gameplay mechanics to further the plot (destiny rarely has gameplay that is unique to the plot. D2 is far better than D1 - the story missions contain unique mechanics like the sunlight burning you, or the many times you shoot turbines). These moments where the plot does inform the gameplay are some of the best moments in the game! It's a shame that there aren't more of them, and that there are literally no plot --> gameplay elements in the patrols.

This is, I think, a really big missed opportunity in this game. Having plot happen during exploration, and having that plot inform the gameplay, would have gone a very long way to making the game feel like a living world. Maybe when you first get to the farm, all of the enemies around are fallen, and then later, instead of discovering cabal in a different part of the map, the cabal actually start spawning in where it used to only be fallen. The world would feel more alive.

In any storytelling venture, be it a book, a movie, a video game, or any other form of narrative, making the story more important than the trappings around it is really important. I know this sounds completely obvious, but all too often we see major productions making the plot secondary to a big action sequence or shiny graphics.

To me, video games can often get by on little or no story at all if the mechanics are truly compelling (see: Mario 64, Tetris, State of Decay, Fortnite's pvp mode)., but I feel like Destiny 2 doesn't quite hit the mark. I haven't figured out a good way to explain it yet, but the world of Destiny 2 *needs* a story. It may actually be that because the setting is so rich, the lack of story is just glaring. Perhaps it's that the gunplay is not as rewarding in D2 as it was in D1 and as a result is less compelling? I'm not sure what it is. Whatever the cause, the gameplay is not so compelling that I can forgive the lack of plot.

---

You mentioned that this was, in your esteem, "just a chapter" of a larger story. I think you're probably right, and that Bungie is telling its "10 year story" with this as just a small part of it. And I also think that's a horrible mistake and a disservice to the gamers who buy these games. Each game should tell its own story, as should each expansion pack. Those stories should feed into a larger, overarching narrative that can span several installments (ideally the whole shebang), but the individual components need to play out their own narratives.

As I said before, D2 has legion opportunities to do that, and it takes none of them. As Edison said, "Opportunity knocks all the time, it just wears coveralls and looks like work." Bungie did not do that hard work of making a compelling story worthy of their setting and which would have affected change in the game world, but rather took the easy way out of having the end of the game be essentially the same as the beginning.

Yeah, there are other games that have better, more personal, more in-depth stories. Destiny is no Life Is Strange or The Last of Us, but at the same time, those games are no Destiny in other ways like FPS gameplay or PvP multiplayer.

I think it’s the other way around. The writers are doing their part to get the right words and dialogue in there.

You can 'lie' with dialogue. It happens all the time. Characters say one thing, but internalize the opposite thing due to poor writing. A strong characterization is what lets the audience know what is going on inside the character's heads, not what they say. Actions and internalizations first; dialogue second. In fact, as a writer that's how you determine what dialogue to write! What would this character say in this situation based on their wants / needs / personality?

Working backwards gives you flimsy characters and weird motivations.

Use the fewest number of words possible that still get across what you want to say.

This depends highly on the medium and genre of the writing. At work, and in academics, absolutely. In art, mostly but occasionally maybe? It's always a good process to edit and reduce, but sometimes it's good to leave things rough around the edges or elaborated upon. Brian Eno (music producer) is famous for churning out rough cuts as finished products and some of them are brilliant to my ear. Some producers would have locked in on "the hooks" or removed the wandering parts. Over time, some of the wanderings have become my favorites excerpts. All that to say, I don't think it's an absolute rule, but it is a good rule.

Note the last part of the sentence.

Sometimes more words or rougher prose does get your intent across better. It is relative.

I could cut any movie down to 20 minutes and hit all the plot points. But who would watch that?!

I mean, the supercut that turns the Star Wars Prequels into one hour and half movie is way better than all of those movies independently . . .

Imagine if Ikora takes a more proactive stance in this first expansion. Like, if she takes risks and operates on the principle that just relying on immortality is no longer good enough. I somewhat doubt it will happen. Not as dramatically as I wish it would. But the chance is still there.

And I find that the world and characters of D2 are, at the end of the campaign, by and large identical to before. Which makes me wonder why this particular 'story' was told and what the value of experiencing it first hand was, while experiencing the founding of the city or the fall of the golden age was left off-screen.

I would say that is largely because those are events that set up the world and don't need to be told. They exist as mythos to create the setting.

But your observations about characters is correct. You can have them say they have learned something, but actions speak louder than words (as does the specific portrayal of them). Maybe the writers don't understand their characters at all. Not the first time it's happened.

You would think that immortals, faced with their own mortality, would learn *something* or experience some kind of *consequence* they did not expect, but that shockingly doesn't happen.

I Disagree.

I believe its the first time you approach Zavala in the new Tower that he talks about how just huddling behind the walls of The City needs to stop and how he plans to look at the good that can be done beyond those walls.

Similarly, Ikora admits that she had grown lazy in her Light and pledges to fight all the harder. There is a real sense there that she regrets not doing enough over the previous years and decades. Regrets not using her Light to its full potential. Ikora’s whole mini-arc in D2 is about that. How she basically ran and hid because she was afraid of dying and how she overcame that fear to help save the day.

Even the random people in the Tower have a new outlook. I cringed the other day as one random woman said something like: “The Titans promised us we’d be safe behind the walls... but we weren’t...”

The things they learn may not be as directly shown as you or I wish, and yeah I agree Destiny 2 could have used a good tragic/heroic death to emphasize the consequences, but please don’t over look the pieces that Bungie did weave into D2.

TL;DR: Absolute statements will always get you in trouble. :)

I dunno. I think this is an "actions speak louder" situation. Ikora, Zavala, Cayde... I really don't think they change or grow as a result of what they say they've "learned" - which tells me that they haven't learned anything.

Zavala is still just standing around in the tower. Okay, he's moved from an interior conference room to an exterior balcony... maybe he learned to like the view? No, no, he's facing away from the outside world. Ikora claims she should have done (something) and is now helping the guardians to meditate on our past journeys (this is actually a really clever way to make the story missions replayable and I am impressed by the effort shown here to make a very video-game mechanic part of the living world), but she's not really doing anything, either. In the very intro mission we have the three vanguards actually doing something to defend the city, but only Cayde really shows up for any action (on nessus, trying to get a teleporter) until the final mission (which was a great way to use them, and I wish it was done more often)... But at no point in time have they changed or grown.

I hear you - they *say* they learned something. But their actions show that nothing has changed. I don't believe Zavala thinks the outside world is worthwhile because he's never in the outside world. He doesn't send you on missions to help the outside world. It's still all about strikes and the same vanguard territory that he always held in D1.

And I get that this is asking a lot from the game designers because, practically, I'm asking them to take their vendors/quest givers and make them mobile or insert them into the game world. I'm kind of ignoring that problem for the sake of discussing the plot of the game in as pure a sense as possible.

And I find that the world and characters of D2 are, at the end of the campaign, by and large identical to before. Which makes me wonder why this particular 'story' was told and what the value of experiencing it first hand was, while experiencing the founding of the city or the fall of the golden age was left off-screen.