Meaningful endings (Destiny)
by Cody Miller 
, Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Monday, September 25, 2017, 18:55 (2427 days ago)
I think one thing really helped Des2ny's story feel better and like it was a journey…
…the fact that the ending changed something.
Every single 'ending' in Destiny, be it Vanilla, any of the expansions, etc, had no noticeable impact on the game world. We are asked to still play the game and be in the world, but it it quite literally the same as before we finished the story.
Des2ny DOES change something. The tower is rebuilt, and you now base your operations from there instead of from the Farm. The rest of the world is identical, but this one aspect changed which was visible.
So in some small way, the story of Des2ny had a lasting, visible consequence on the world. The fact that the game is a loot game meant to be played continuously means that such impacts can necessarily be small and limited, but it is a step in the right direction.
I agree with you. After finishing the campaign, automatically loading into the new Tower felt awesome.
This is sort related to something Korny and I talked about last night that I was considering bringing up, which I'll just jump into.
I still think The Taken King is the best example of what Destiny can do. It told a coherent story, but that story didn't end with the "campaign." Defeating Oryx only opened up a bunch of new Strikes and missions, both on the Dreadnaught and in other Patrol Zones.
I think Destiny 2 screwed this up. The campaign ends and then . . .that's just it. I expected to see a bunch of new quests and and adventures, see strikes populate the map. We got one new mission per planet and that's it.
It feels like a bit of a step backwards from The Taken King, which I still think feels amazing. Defeating Oryx and then seeing all sorts of new things continue to pop up felt great, and I wish Destiny 2 would have done something similar. As it stands, it's basically just mopping up the stuff you missed as you went through the campaign. It feels a little less dynamic than The Taken King did.
I also wish there was a bit more context for some of the adventures, or that more of them were strings of missions that built a smaller story. As it stands, some of them are interesting, but they're all one off little missions. That's neat, but it seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity. We do the stuff on Titan to stop a Hive Ritual, and then that's just it. No deeper investigation into what they were trying to do, what they're trying to do on Titan in general (besides just generally being shitty, I guess).
In general, I wish we explored the factions we were fighting a bit more. In the past, throughout Destiny 1, say what you will about the story, but it felt like the enemies all had motivations, whether implied or explicit. Maybe that's just me misremembering or looking back with rose colored glasses, but I felt like we were actually exploring what the enemies were up to. Now, it just feels like the enemies are there to be shot, and we're just there to shoot them, without any real goals for either side.
- No text -
Cody... STAP!
If you keep this up, I'll only have a short post on all things Destiny 2. :P
The Horror!
W.I.P
...Problem was it had about as much impact as a space fart from a lone, world-less star, with only its bent space time for company. Destiny 1 was the story of supporting stories, and not main ones. Pillars, not doors. The Black Garden, Oryx, The Taken King, SIVA. All pillars of the world, things that “exist”, but have no impact. Things happened, we “pushed back”, things stopped happening. They are all, amongst all the puffery, nothing more but a mental footnote.
Then came the Red Legion and Guul. How, Where, When, Why? I don’t know! They just came out of nowhere, blew up all our stuff, and to the stuff they didn’t blow up they tried to take. To the very least, this has impact. We experienced a loss of a home, our light, and learned to fight from those who know no such grace. So that’s it right? YAY Story! All is fine and dandy right? To quote a certain other mush faced foe, “Were it so easy”. ...
Cody... STAP!
by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Monday, September 25, 2017, 23:14 (2426 days ago) @ INSANEdrive
edited by Cody Miller, Monday, September 25, 2017, 23:18
If you keep this up, I'll only have a short post on all things Destiny 2. :P
Let's go deeper.
As long as the Destiny franchise is built on revisiting locations and re-doing activities perpetually, endings will be lacking almost by definition. The events and locations still need to be there as they were, for players to tackle those challenges. Bungie even kind of messed up with the things that DO change. You see the Leviathan in the skybox while doing Ikora's meditations; it would not be there if you are revisiting a memory of a mission you did before it showed up.
There are a few solutions to this problem:
1. The main story missions take place in unique, discrete locations arranged in a linear fashion. After the ending, the patrol zones open up and we can start with the activities of the end game, as well as side missions and adventures, which reflect a post ending world.
2. A completely separate set of patrol zones are created which reflect the changes that come from the ending. Access to old patrol zones is cut off after completion of the story, and the new ones replace those.
#1 seems to me the most feasible.
CheapLEY, I think Taken King had this problem as well. It was not really that much better than Destiny in this regard.
I think there's nothing wrong with re-using spaces, as long as the space itself doesn't change in the story.
I was a little disappointed that the old "spaces" just didn't matter anymore. I was kind of hoping to see at least some of them in addition to the new spaces. Which reminds me...
We restored communication to the entire solar system for Rasputin in Destiny 1. He was powerful enough to pull down a warsat on a whim so we could do a strike. For him (it?) to be relegated to a footnote, and largely replaced by a more relatable AI, was disappointing. I hope we see more there in the future.
Cody... STAP!
We restored communication to the entire solar system for Rasputin in Destiny 1. He was powerful enough to pull down a warsat on a whim so we could do a strike. For him (it?) to be relegated to a footnote, and largely replaced by a more relatable AI, was disappointing. I hope we see more there in the future.
i think we will. My gut feeling is that was the sole purpose of having a warmind bunker in the campaign. We reboot it and reconnect it to the rest of the system, rasputin notices it, and connects to it. voila, now we can have more warmind missions without having to go to the cosmodrone.
Cody... STAP!
by Malagate , Sea of Tranquility, Tuesday, September 26, 2017, 11:00 (2426 days ago) @ Schedonnardus
We restored communication to the entire solar system for Rasputin in Destiny 1. He was powerful enough to pull down a warsat on a whim so we could do a strike. For him (it?) to be relegated to a footnote, and largely replaced by a more relatable AI, was disappointing. I hope we see more there in the future.
i think we will. My gut feeling is that was the sole purpose of having a warmind bunker in the campaign. We reboot it and reconnect it to the rest of the system, rasputin notices it, and connects to it. voila, now we can have more warmind missions without having to go to the cosmodrone.
I hope this is true. He's one of the things that feels omitted from D2. Not an outright omission like the Stranger, which is still glaring; but the commentary on him really wasn't sufficient, imo. The decision to always keep him as part of the geometry, and not an active character, was also kind of an issue. I never felt we got much of a sense of him, other than having characters we know comment about what he's doing or what he's said.
I love the concept of him as an actor in the overall story, but I'd argue he may not even be worth bringing back if we don't have direct interactions with him.
~m
Cody... STAP!
by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Tuesday, September 26, 2017, 14:50 (2426 days ago) @ Malagate
If you are a hunter, unlocking the gunslinger subclass literally has several visions which discuss Rasputin explicitly.