Mythic Sci-Fi: does it work for you? RNA

Star Wars was mythic sci-fi and that worked for me. (Greedo-shot-first and anything after doesn't count - in case I need to state the obvious. La, La, la, can't hear you, didn't happen.)

But Destiny's take on it? I don't think so. Yet.

Was the story a damp squib because the writer's were incompetent? Or was the subject matter/ genre the problem?

Most film/tv/game sci-fi is unscientific. It doesn't get science and doesn't care. Science is magic. Who cares how it works?

Add actual magic on top and what is left is just made up shit that nobody has taken the time to work out how it works.

One example: the glimmer drill. WTF is a glimmer drill? Why is glimmer a currency if you can dig it out of the ground so easily? We can't say for sure that you can't mine glimmer because we have no idea what glimmer is. Yes we mine for gold but that is rare and difficult to get. Glimmer mining seems easy. (part from the being killed by: psycho zombie Guardians!)

Can we mine glimmer? If so why are we bothering to collect it from chests and shooting people? Can we steal a glimmer drill from the Fallen? Or we could do a deal - you mine without being killed - you give us 50% Does it harm the soil to extract glimmer from it? Do we care about the soil in the Cosmodrome?

But, anyway, that is a digression... Except: I do wonder why we don't talk to the Fallen, do deals, come to arrangements, find out what they know of the Darkness, the rest of the galaxy...

Back to the genre being a problem...

The names! God the names. Nigel the knickerless, Morag the unlovable. Can you imagine having to come up with that lot? A story for every exotic weapon, "there was an elf who lived in a shoe and he??? made a weapon that does stuff. I think he made it out of bones or something" I couldn't do it. I would be so depressed if that was my job.

Do you remember the presentation where Joe Staten said that we tried to come up with a real-world based explanation for why souls shoot out of Fallen when you headshot them. I think in the end he just gave up and went with it: souls fly out of Fallen when you shoot them.

Do you think this happened to all the writer? Who cares how it works: just write it.

Maybe they were all thinking, "Why am I doing this? What has my life come to?"

I mean, WTF does restoring a priest's soul actually mean? Is there a person alive who cares?

We pondered and debated the Halo story because we could relate to it and thought we had a chance of understanding the world enough to form opinions and have some confidence that we could reason correctly about it.

How do we reason about machines that feed off souls? What is a soul? Is it energy? Can you grow a new one?

And what is the motivation of the Fallen? are they really just dogs? Wolves? Pirate doggies that follow the pack leader and have poor skills at assessing risk (mine worlds that are swarming with psycho zombies that WILL kill you dead in under 2 minutes).

Of all the races I think that I understand the Cabal the best. The ones we see are soldiers working for a very large, militaristic, empire. Mars to them is a shitty backwater that they have been unfortunate enough to have been posted to. The grunts we kill didn't choose to be there. Their situation makes sense to me. The higher ups don't care if the rank and file are being slaughtered in their hundreds. They probably have a multi-world empire with a population in the trillions (or hundreds of billions). They have enough hormonal young men that need military discipline that they just wont miss the ones we kill. The ones that live will have been toughened by being under live fire during their tour of duty.

I suppose the Hive have a cunning plan that we will see in the DLC.

Maybe Vex don't consider the individual unit. But why don't they just teleport inside the exclusion zone? What is with that? Can the cabal block teleportation inside certain areas?

What do walls and trenches do in a world where teleportaion and air travel are common place? I love the look of the trenches and the general Cabal art design. Love Mars to bits. But does it make sense?

Anyway, just wanted to talk story and world. Just wanted to share. Thank you for your time. Refunds not available ;-)

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That's one of my absolute favourite pieces of Destiny concept art.

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Was the story a damp squib because the writer's were incompetent? Or was the subject matter/ genre the problem?

Or, perhaps none of the above. Destiny lacks the long front facing story we got used to in the Halo games, but the background details are both fairly detailed and worthy of discussion.

Glimmer

It sounds like Glimmer is more of a man made substance or a substance all highly advanced races eventually invent. The Glimmer that The City runs on is said to come from breaking down Golden Age finds or from supplies that were created back in the Golden Age. Presumably, the Fallen's Glimmer Drill is a device or the first stage of a process that can create Glimmer from appropriate buried resources. Perhaps Glimmer ultimately starts off as some type of rock shared between Earth and the moon since we see Fallen mining in both of those places.

Mining for Glimmer might be easy if you have the equipment, but it is made clear that The City converts most of the found Glimmer into tangible items necessary for continued defense or industry or standard of living and so a constant inbound supply is needed.

I think getting Glimmer from killing enemies and opening chests is just a gameplay mechanic in the same way the Master Chief didn't actually die x number of times during the course of the Halo series.

Deals with the Fallen

I'd love to see some communication between us and our enemies. We know Fallen are intelligent and willing to work with us if absolutely necessary as shown in Cayde-6's battle against a hive onslaught along side a female Fallen Captain. But we also know that they raided smaller towns like Palamon where Shin Malphur, the last known owner of The Last Word, lived as a child. His parents were killed by Fallen. We also know that Fallen mounted larger scale attacks. One of the Tower reps mentions being there when the Fallen burned London. And we also know that it was the combined forces of the Fallen houses that crushed The City's outward expansion and killed a lot of Guardians in the battle of Twilight Gap.

Diplomacy is nice, and I would like to know how much diplomacy was attempted, but right now Humanity seems to shoot Fallen on sight and for good reason.

The names! God the names. Nigel the knickerless, Morag the unlovable. Can you imagine having to come up with that lot? A story for every exotic weapon, "there was an elf who lived in a shoe and he??? made a weapon that does stuff. I think he made it out of bones or something" I couldn't do it. I would be so depressed if that was my job.

The stories for the Exotics are some of Destiny's best background bits. The intertwined fate of Thorn vs The Last Word is probably my favorite. The shorter weapon descriptions aren't as involved but they are creative and sometimes delightfully amusing. The names are mostly from the Hive who have an odd dark Knights of the Round Table type thing going on. It's part of their theme but perhaps not for everyone.

Personally, I'd love the job of crafting backstory!

Do you remember the presentation where Joe Staten said that we tried to come up with a real-world based explanation for why souls shoot out of Fallen when you headshot them. I think in the end he just gave up and went with it: souls fly out of Fallen when you shoot them.

Not true. Fallen seem to breath Ether instead of good old oxygen. It is established that Servitors create and distribute Ether to Fallen units. There is a Grimoire card that actually questions whether it is their souls escaping or just the Ether they breath. I'm inclined to believe it's both given that I'm playing as a previously dead Golden Age hero...

How do we reason about machines that feed off souls? What is a soul? Is it energy? Can you grow a new one?

In Halo 1 we had no idea what the Halo Effect really did. In the first Star Wars we had no idea how a light saber worked. You're asking the questions but seem... I don't know... too jaded to think about possible answers that fit. I remember when someone came up with the idea that the Halo Effect destroyed Calicum and argued it made sense since Hunters didn't have bones and Flood couldn't infect Hunters. We would have never gotten there if we'd all throw our hands up and said, "WTF does a Halo do?"

Cabal

Yeah, the Cabal are probably the most understandable, but you're missing a bit of information. Based on a few bits, I think they lost their homeworld to The Darkness. At one point a Ghost discovers a hologram of one of their worlds broken and shattered. I believe it's the same Ghost who notices and speculates that while the Cabal are an impressive and competent military force, they also seem to be running scared.

As for blocking Vex teleportation, I think the Cabal do have that capability based on their ability to prevent us from obtaining our Sparrow.

Anyway, just wanted to talk story and world. Just wanted to share. Thank you for your time. Refunds not available ;-)

Just remember, major key points of the Halo universe (Cortana's origin, the existance of more Spartans, Dr. Halsey, etc) were not acknowledged in game until Halo 3. And we had a ton of brilliant speculation long before that. Destiny's narrative was a letdown in a couple of ways, but I think its backstory and universe is far better thought out and detailed than Halo's was at a similar point in its life.

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Also, regarding Scarab being depressed if he had to make up all these "silly" names if it was his job - please relinquish that position to me if you ever find yourself there, Scarab, as some of us love imagining up all the details of a fun universe, and that sounds a helluva lot better than most jobs I've worked.

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Shooting enemies in the game is fun but the universe is not.

But I think that you are totally missing the point of what I'm trying to say. My Bad.

What I am saying is that, so far, nobody in Bungie seems to give a shit how stuff works. And I think that this attitude is baked into the genre. This Mythic Sci-Fi.

How do you restore a soul? From what? How does a machine feed on a soul? What is a soul?

Mythic Sci-Fi is just a hodge-podge of guns and wizards.

Joe tried to work out how it made sense and just gave up.

Can you explain to me how souls work in Destiny? How do you know? How can we know? What is a soul in the Destinyverse?

I think that you would be on to a loser trying to explain how stuff works in Destiny, to try to make it make sense so that we could talk about it and all understand what we mean. So we could reason about it.

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Mythic Sci-Fi is just a hodge-podge of guns and wizards.

I completely agree with you. I much prefer Sci-Fi over fantasy, and mixing them is taking the best part of Sci-Fi and throwing it away. I think in general fantasy is much less sophisticated creatively and philosophically.

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Starwars doesn't work if you over think it either.

Destiny's background seems unified. Mankind expanded with super science, had programmable matter everywhere and high tech equipment and even performed singularity like events like creating super AIs and transferring memories and personality into robot shells.

The "glimmer drill" is like panning for gold, but instead of gold the Fallen want the residual programmable matter now that all the major stocks have been looted. Ether could be the gas they breath or it could be a recording of their memories and personality that is recovered by servitors and allows them to be reincarnated into a new clone body.

The names are the standard fare. I see no difference between them and any other sci-fi style story.

If anything Bungie hasn't done a good job letting you really get into the world via play. Too much is hidden outside the game or in barely noticeable text boxes. There also isn't enough land area to explore. The patrol missions really don't give you an idea of the enemy forces or the world at large. They really need the enemies in the areas to do something more in keeping with their motivations that allows the players to feel more immersed.

Perhaps you interrupt a Cabal fortification team building a bunker, or witness Vex creating a spire? I like the battles between two enemy groups that occur occasionally.

They really need to add something like the old firefight where a team of an enemy race, say cabal, come in and start building a bunker. The players can stop them, but they will call in reinforcements in ever increasing waves until they succeed or the players kill the head honcho. Meanwhile other players can come into the area and assist or get the heck out of dodge.

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Like panning for glimmer and there being residual programmable matter in the soil?

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I wrote a big Grimoire card explaining what Glimmer is and how it's used, but I've never actually heard of anyone unlocking the card. Should be readable on destinygrimoire.com, at least...

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Keeping it simple.

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I've got it but I don't remember unlocking it. I kinda assumed it starts unlocked as part of the general universe building but maybe not.

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Good card on Glimmer. Just finished the story from Cayde about fighting Hive with a Fallen. Very cool.

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I wrote a big Grimoire card explaining what Glimmer is and how it's used, but I've never actually heard of anyone unlocking the card. Should be readable on destinygrimoire.com, at least...

Considering I just today unlocked the card for Motes of Light, I don't even want to know how much glimmer you'd need…

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In the cards they talk about glimmer coming from pre-collapse catches. Humans used to have tons of the stuff lying around since it is so useful. Think about it, just a tablet and a battery can turn a block of this stuff into anything you want near instantly.

Your ammo supply is supposedly glimmer transmuted into bullets, for example. Well in a battle there will be lots of glimmer lost as those carrying it are blown up, scattering the glimmer around. Also catches and storehouses will be high priority targets for destruction, also spreading it around in a fine mist. So now with the major supplies gone the Fallen have to find another way to gather this precious and amazingly useful substance. Skimming it from the sites of large battles or destroyed storehouses seems plausible, and the moon and old Russia are both.

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How stuff works is exactly not the point with Mythic Sci-Fi.

Have you ever enjoyed ancient mythological stories, or rich fantasy epics like Tolkien's, or even the classic Star Wars? The thing in common between them is the crafting of stories with epic overarching themes, emotions and metaphors about the struggles of humanity through the ages.

Destiny is shooting for some variation on that, set in space.

The need to make things more "realistic" or gritty or explain how things work... it's not the style of story that Bungie is telling. Staten wasn't even trying to give things a pseudo-scientific explanation. It's not necessary to tell the story.

Maybe you prefer Star Trek with it's "techno babble", or more "hard" sci-fi works that stick closer to the laws of physics. But this isn't a story about a rational science-based world, it's a fantasy world where things are freer to be anything you could imagine them to be.

"How does a machine feed on a soul? What is a soul?"

At least for now, Bungie is leaving these things open for interpretation. To provoke imagination and discussion. What do you think a soul is, in a world where we have Exos and Warmind AIs and dead bodies brought back to life by some strange Sphere from Mars? Clearly, in this world there's either very strong technology or very strong magic that can manipulate souls. Isn't it interesting that Destiny is steeped in religious language, where giant aliens and machines are referred to as demons and gods?

I'm not sure if Bungie is going somewhere specific with this, but I definitely wouldn't want them to trot out some midichlorean-based explanation of how all this stuff works.

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How stuff works is exactly not the point with Mythic Sci-Fi.

Have you ever enjoyed ancient mythological stories, or rich fantasy epics like Tolkien's, or even the classic Star Wars? The thing in common between them is the crafting of stories with epic overarching themes, emotions and metaphors about the struggles of humanity through the ages.

And to me that is less interesting than the struggles that humanity has yet to face. Fantasy is backward thinking, reveling in and codifying ignorance, whereas Sci-Fi is forward thinking and progressive. It's why fantasy rarely if ever tackles complex philosophical issues, whereas Sci-Fi is full of such things.

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How stuff works is exactly not the point with Mythic Sci-Fi.

Have you ever enjoyed ancient mythological stories, or rich fantasy epics like Tolkien's, or even the classic Star Wars? The thing in common between them is the crafting of stories with epic overarching themes, emotions and metaphors about the struggles of humanity through the ages.

And to me that is less interesting than the struggles that humanity has yet to face. Fantasy is backward thinking, reveling in and codifying ignorance, whereas Sci-Fi is forward thinking and progressive. It's why fantasy rarely if ever tackles complex philosophical issues, whereas Sci-Fi is full of such things.

I feel like I've read this somewhere before... Oh yeah! I had no clue what you meant back and still don't now. A story doesn't forfeit addressing complex issues just because the primary mode of travel is a horse instead of a starship.

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How stuff works is exactly not the point with Mythic Sci-Fi.

Have you ever enjoyed ancient mythological stories, or rich fantasy epics like Tolkien's, or even the classic Star Wars? The thing in common between them is the crafting of stories with epic overarching themes, emotions and metaphors about the struggles of humanity through the ages.

And to me that is less interesting than the struggles that humanity has yet to face. Fantasy is backward thinking, reveling in and codifying ignorance, whereas Sci-Fi is forward thinking and progressive. It's why fantasy rarely if ever tackles complex philosophical issues, whereas Sci-Fi is full of such things.

I feel like I've read this somewhere before... Oh yeah! I had no clue what you meant back and still don't now. A story doesn't forfeit addressing complex issues just because the primary mode of travel is a horse instead of a starship.

Right. Cody's thesis presupposes that the humans in spaceships are fundamentally different beings than the humans on horseback.

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How stuff works is exactly not the point with Mythic Sci-Fi.

Have you ever enjoyed ancient mythological stories, or rich fantasy epics like Tolkien's, or even the classic Star Wars? The thing in common between them is the crafting of stories with epic overarching themes, emotions and metaphors about the struggles of humanity through the ages.

And to me that is less interesting than the struggles that humanity has yet to face. Fantasy is backward thinking, reveling in and codifying ignorance, whereas Sci-Fi is forward thinking and progressive. It's why fantasy rarely if ever tackles complex philosophical issues, whereas Sci-Fi is full of such things.

I feel like I've read this somewhere before... Oh yeah! I had no clue what you meant back and still don't now. A story doesn't forfeit addressing complex issues just because the primary mode of travel is a horse instead of a starship.

Right. Cody's thesis presupposes that the humans in spaceships are fundamentally different beings than the humans on horseback.

It does not.

P.S. you can do Sci-Fi without spaceships.

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How stuff works is exactly not the point with Mythic Sci-Fi.

Have you ever enjoyed ancient mythological stories, or rich fantasy epics like Tolkien's, or even the classic Star Wars? The thing in common between them is the crafting of stories with epic overarching themes, emotions and metaphors about the struggles of humanity through the ages.

And to me that is less interesting than the struggles that humanity has yet to face. Fantasy is backward thinking, reveling in and codifying ignorance, whereas Sci-Fi is forward thinking and progressive. It's why fantasy rarely if ever tackles complex philosophical issues, whereas Sci-Fi is full of such things.

I feel like I've read this somewhere before... Oh yeah! I had no clue what you meant back and still don't now. A story doesn't forfeit addressing complex issues just because the primary mode of travel is a horse instead of a starship.

Right. Cody's thesis presupposes that the humans in spaceships are fundamentally different beings than the humans on horseback.

It does not.

I think it does, otherwise you wouldn't assume that our "old" challenges are substantially different from our "new" challenges. Your language gives you away. Your perspective of history colors your perception of a genre of fiction. A fan of literary fiction could be just as dismissive of your preferred genre, and say it only pretends to be more realistic. A poet might say that the most devout practitioners of your favored genre lack a capacity for metaphor, or they unfairly discount the treasures that can be gleaned when the human imagination is unbound from the constraints of scientific "objectivity." You privilege one mode of knowing, and assume it has no limitations of its own. We probably can't have a full-throated discussion about this without getting into philosophical differences that would take us places we can't really go on this forum. Perhaps it's best just to say that I think understand your perspective, and I have a different one.

P.S. you can do Sci-Fi without spaceships.

Sure.

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I think it does, otherwise you wouldn't assume that our "old" challenges are substantially different from our "new" challenges. Your language gives you away. Your perspective of history colors your perception of a genre of fiction. A fan of literary fiction could be just as dismissive of your preferred genre, and say it only pretends to be more realistic.

It has nothing to do with old vs new. Many old problems are yet unsolved, although many are. The problem is with the mindset that goes into each genre. It's a question of direction. Fantasy dwells on the misconceptions and stumblings of the past (superstition, outdated beliefs and traditions, etc), and in many cases celebrates them, actually impeding our progress as a species, whereas Sci-Fi typically revels in the advancement of humanity in the future.

This does not presuppose anything about tech level or space ships or any of that. There are many great works that are forward thinking in which the character is on a horse. They are mostly westerns, rather than fantasies though. I would say that yes, technology often IS at the center of Sci-Fi, only because these are the issues we will face in the coming years!

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I think it does, otherwise you wouldn't assume that our "old" challenges are substantially different from our "new" challenges. Your language gives you away. Your perspective of history colors your perception of a genre of fiction. A fan of literary fiction could be just as dismissive of your preferred genre, and say it only pretends to be more realistic.

It has nothing to do with old vs new. Many old problems are yet unsolved, although many are. The problem is with the mindset that goes into each genre. It's a question of direction. Fantasy dwells on the misconceptions and stumblings of the past (superstition, outdated beliefs and traditions, etc), and in many cases celebrates them, actually impeding our progress as a species, whereas Sci-Fi typically revels in the advancement of humanity in the future.

This does not presuppose anything about tech level or space ships or any of that. There are many great works that are forward thinking in which the character is on a horse. They are mostly westerns, rather than fantasies though. I would say that yes, technology often IS at the center of Sci-Fi, only because these are the issues we will face in the coming years!

Don't assume I'm talking about technological challenges. Your response illustrates a certain view of the world, though, which strikes me as primarily technocratic, and assumptive regarding what role technology has played or will play in history. You kind of proved my point.

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I think fundamentally, as usual, Cody is using the terms to describe something a lot broader than anyone else in the discussion is used to consider. If you'd just establish it up front, though, it would make conversation a lot better.

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I think fundamentally, as usual, Cody is using the terms to describe something a lot broader than anyone else in the discussion is used to consider. If you'd just establish it up front, though, it would make conversation a lot better.

That's funny. I thought quite the opposite.

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Heh, I guess you could think that way too about what I'm thinking.

I was under the impression he considered Sci-Fi as something that inherently thinks forward, no matter how technologically advanced the story actually is.

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Heh, I guess you could think that way too about what I'm thinking.

I was under the impression he considered Sci-Fi as something that inherently thinks forward, no matter how technologically advanced the story actually is.

I had the exact same impression. I was never talking about technology, though. I'll be more explicit. Phrases like "forward-thinking" have connotations I'd rather not unpack here, but at the heart of the difference in perspective I was referring to is the difference in the extent to which one believes that humankind can be perfected. The struggles and challenges I referred to are inherent in the human experience (and I believe always have been), and good fantasy like all good literature is populated by characters who act in accordance with human nature; therefore, it's short-sighted to say that such characters are backward or forward. If they are portrayed believably as human beings (and that's not to say they can't be talking rabbits in the fiction) they can have something valuable to say now and 100 years from now.

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Your response illustrates a certain view of the world, though, which strikes me as primarily technocratic

You bet I am. I think you'd have to be pretty loony to think that technology is bad. Let's all live in huts and have to forage for food! :-p

Hell, technology even makes ART better. Those brilliant shades of blue you see in oil paintings during the Renaissance were the result of new techniques to create dyes. Special effects in film can take you to places otherwise impossible. Word processing even makes writing a book a less strenuous ordeal.

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We do live in huts and I still have lots of trouble finding what I want in the market... ;p

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Your response illustrates a certain view of the world, though, which strikes me as primarily technocratic

You bet I am. I think you'd have to be pretty loony to think that technology is bad. Let's all live in huts and have to forage for food! :-p

I didn't say technology was bad. We've had a form of this discussion before, and I guess I'll share this quote again.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. "

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"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. "

I never agreed with that line at all :-p

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Then you are backwards-thinking and superstitious and your opinion is void. ;PPPP

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And to me that is less interesting than the struggles that humanity has yet to face. Fantasy is backward thinking, reveling in and codifying ignorance, whereas Sci-Fi is forward thinking and progressive. It's why fantasy rarely if ever tackles complex philosophical issues, whereas Sci-Fi is full of such things.

Hand-waving away the 'how' does not prevent you from exploring the consequences.

Just the existence of the Exos and the Awoken raises many good Sci-Fi questions.

The Exos represent the shunning of biology in favour of machinery. The ultimate stage in the process of cyberization that is already happening today. While the Awoken represent another potential future: biological modification to survive in outer space.

It's not explored much in the game, but the Grimoire has a few passages on it.

People were speculating about them since the first concept art pieces: they're evocative just in their appearance.

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And to me that is less interesting than the struggles that humanity has yet to face. Fantasy is backward thinking, reveling in and codifying ignorance, whereas Sci-Fi is forward thinking and progressive. It's why fantasy rarely if ever tackles complex philosophical issues, whereas Sci-Fi is full of such things.

Hand-waving away the 'how' does not prevent you from exploring the consequences.

Just the existence of the Exos and the Awoken raises many good Sci-Fi questions.

The Exos represent the shunning of biology in favour of machinery. The ultimate stage in the process of cyberization that is already happening today. While the Awoken represent another potential future: biological modification to survive in outer space.

Robots are not fantasy. They can potentially exist, and in fact DO exist now.

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I'd love to see some communication between us and our enemies. We know Fallen are intelligent and willing to work with us if absolutely necessary as shown in Cayde-6's battle against a hive onslaught along side a female Fallen Captain. But we also know that they raided smaller towns like Palamon where Shin Malphur, the last known owner of The Last Word, lived as a child. His parents were killed by Fallen. We also know that Fallen mounted larger scale attacks. One of the Tower reps mentions being there when the Fallen burned London. And we also know that it was the combined forces of the Fallen houses that crushed The City's outward expansion and killed a lot of Guardians in the battle of Twilight Gap.

I like how you say that as if it were an actual part of the game's story and common knowledge.

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I'd love to see some communication between us and our enemies. We know Fallen are intelligent and willing to work with us if absolutely necessary as shown in Cayde-6's battle against a hive onslaught along side a female Fallen Captain. But we also know that they raided smaller towns like Palamon where Shin Malphur, the last known owner of The Last Word, lived as a child. His parents were killed by Fallen. We also know that Fallen mounted larger scale attacks. One of the Tower reps mentions being there when the Fallen burned London. And we also know that it was the combined forces of the Fallen houses that crushed The City's outward expansion and killed a lot of Guardians in the battle of Twilight Gap.

I like how you say that as if it were an actual part of the game's story and common knowledge.

A lot of it is in game. Details of the loss at Twilight Gap are spread throughout various item descriptions. Shin Malphur vs Dredgen Yor (the currupt owner of Thorn) is the quote just below The Last Word's item title. The Fallen burning London is, as mentioned, something one of the tower reps says in game. Only Cayde-6's story and parts of Shin Malphur's are truly outside the game.

And you shouldn't discount something just because it isn't directly part of the game's gameplay story. ilovebees, the Halsey Journal, Conversations from the Universe, the original story of the Didact and The Librarian, The Fall of Reach, and Contact Harvest were the best parts of Halo's story and they were all either entirely out of game or not very well known.

Yes, Destiny needs more in game story telling. A lot more. But until we get that I'm going to appreciate what we do have. :)

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I've read a lot of science fiction and I've read a lot of fantasy. To be honest, a lot of the difference between the two is often just the setting and the color of the curtains. Still, a minority in both tackle important and meaningful ideas, emotions and experiences, by mixing what we know with what we can imagine, whether that's backwards or forwards, or even sideways. Destiny is sort of forward and off to the left a bit, heh. :)

I think the narrative of Destiny needs to be more present (or if not, many more missions of the current style to enable the world to feel more dynamic and extensive), but the universe they've created is very strong and alluring to me. It's far more interesting than Halo's was at CE's release and has the potential to go all kinds of places and do all kinds of things without breaking it.

What you call plot-holes, I call spaces for speculation. Where you feel you can't reason, I can imagine and don't even feel the need to reason. A lot of it comes from your opinion and experiences with the game. I've had a lot of fun with the game and reading the Grimoire so instead of looking the unknowns as a negative, I look at them with a fun speculation. It's like any book or movie, really. If the writer can catch your interest, it doesn't have to explain every little thing to be fulfilling. I think these debates often just boil down to varying personal experiences, and not the work itself.

Reason, logic, they are but one of our mental facilities, and when taken to the extreme, they can turn thoughts to redundant absurdity. Even the best works of science fiction have holes in it and can be picked apart to nonsense if the reader is in the mood. Because both sci-fi and fantasy require leaps to exist. If they could be fully explained, Arthur C. Clarke would be only a scientist with a proven thesis, not a conjurer and forward-thinker. A fitting phrase for this sort of continual deconstruction is "turtles all the way down"...

Which is funny/interesting as that's a myth (turtle carrying the world upon its shoulders) and yet we've used it to help explain an issue we experience. It's like... fantasy, man!

Instead of Star Trek's often fantasy-technobable, we have a more mythological vocabulary with Destiny. They seem barely different to me. And both can be convincing. You look at Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories and you see the two vocabularies morph into one - technology taken to extreme speculation where it has becomes magic and powerful aliens become gods.

I think we need more mixing of the pot, more entries in the vague spaces between genres. Destiny's universe and style feels fresh to me in this way, and I'm hoping Bungie can craft some fulfilling narratives with the tools they've built. I know I've got some fun comics already in my head with the Crucible factions stabbing each other in the back, Exo manipulations, Fallen origin stories. If only I had a time machine. Or a wand. Or both. :)

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Star Wars was mythic sci-fi and that worked for me. (Greedo-shot-first and anything after doesn't count - in case I need to state the obvious. La, La, la, can't hear you, didn't happen.)

But Destiny's take on it? I don't think so. Yet.

Was the story a damp squib because the writer's were incompetent? Or was the subject matter/ genre the problem?

Most film/tv/game sci-fi is unscientific. It doesn't get science and doesn't care. Science is magic. Who cares how it works?

Add actual magic on top and what is left is just made up shit that nobody has taken the time to work out how it works.

One example: the glimmer drill. WTF is a glimmer drill? Why is glimmer a currency if you can dig it out of the ground so easily? We can't say for sure that you can't mine glimmer because we have no idea what glimmer is. Yes we mine for gold but that is rare and difficult to get. Glimmer mining seems easy. (part from the being killed by: psycho zombie Guardians!)

Can we mine glimmer? If so why are we bothering to collect it from chests and shooting people? Can we steal a glimmer drill from the Fallen? Or we could do a deal - you mine without being killed - you give us 50% Does it harm the soil to extract glimmer from it? Do we care about the soil in the Cosmodrome?

But, anyway, that is a digression... Except: I do wonder why we don't talk to the Fallen, do deals, come to arrangements, find out what they know of the Darkness, the rest of the galaxy...

Back to the genre being a problem...

The names! God the names. Nigel the knickerless, Morag the unlovable. Can you imagine having to come up with that lot? A story for every exotic weapon, "there was an elf who lived in a shoe and he??? made a weapon that does stuff. I think he made it out of bones or something" I couldn't do it. I would be so depressed if that was my job.

Do you remember the presentation where Joe Staten said that we tried to come up with a real-world based explanation for why souls shoot out of Fallen when you headshot them. I think in the end he just gave up and went with it: souls fly out of Fallen when you shoot them.

Science fiction seems to fall into two camps. The first asks "What if" and extrapolates from there. What if two spacefaring empires waged a hundred-year war so vicious that experienced leaders would not have time to properly train new captains and tactics degraded as a result? What if there was an ancient galaxy-spanning civilization of Humans that mysteriously disappeared and new alien races grew up worshiping their remains? What if there was a form of matter that could increase or decrease the mass of surrounding matter if you ran an electric current through it?

The other kind of science fiction just uses the trappings and tropes of science fiction to tell a story. You could have a murder mystery on a generation ship instead of the Orient Express. You could have armies of the dead made from AI clones of humans. You could have the moon propelled to superluminal speeds by an explosion of radioactive material on the dark side, and Isaac Asimov would take time off from his busy schedule to write about how terrible you are at science fiction.

I won't say that you need to have hard science fiction to have a good story, but mythic science fiction seems to run into the same problems that generic fantasy does. It's more about the characters, and the universe breaks down the closer you examine it. Things happen because they have to happen, and nobody is going to work with the rules of magic to do something more interesting than enchanting swords.

I mean, WTF does restoring a priest's soul actually mean? Is there a person alive who cares?

How do we reason about machines that feed off souls? What is a soul? Is it energy? Can you grow a new one?

Quick question: Have you ever read the Night's Dawn trilogy?

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I liked the first one best but I liked the rest of the trilogy as well.

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I liked the first one best but I liked the rest of the trilogy as well.

It was a good story, written by a good author, in desperate need of a great editor.

I mostly asked because it had the best treatment of souls that I've read in science fiction. The discovery of souls changed everything in the story, but it was treated as an insufficiently-understood scientific phenomenon instead of a mystical part of ourselves beyond the ken of science. And it managed to explore the idea without ramming its head up its own ass like Xenocide did, so bonus points for that.

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I have really enjoyed the first camp, Asimov, Vinge, Arther C. Clark, etc. I really like the "What If" SciFi, not to say that I don't occasionally really enjoy the second camp on occasion. I'd say there's plenty of stories/books/games/whatever that have a foot firmly planted in each of the two camps, I feel like Halo is part of that inbetween group.

What camp would you put Halo in (& do the sequels get different placement)?
How about the Marathons?

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I have really enjoyed the first camp, Asimov, Vinge, Arther C. Clark, etc. I really like the "What If" SciFi, not to say that I don't occasionally really enjoy the second camp on occasion. I'd say there's plenty of stories/books/games/whatever that have a foot firmly planted in each of the two camps, I feel like Halo is part of that inbetween group.

What camp would you put Halo in (& do the sequels get different placement)?

Oh, man, the answer to that could take me all day to type up. For starters, that classification isn't rigorous. I mean, this is literature and storytelling, there are no rules.

In my previous post, I hinted at Halo when I said "What if there was an ancient galaxy-spanning civilization of Humans that mysteriously disappeared and new alien races grew up worshiping their remains?" The Halo games (And I'm just talking about the Bungie trilogy) are fun stories that explore that question, and the related question of "How could such a powerful race disappear?" Halo 1 attacked that question, Halo 2 approached it from a different angle vis-à-vis the Covenant Schism. Halo 3 basically wrapped it up and clarified how the Forerunner disappeared.

Halo Wars belongs firmly in the second camp, as does ODST and Reach.

Halo 4, I think, tried to explore the same question that the original trilogy did, with the new question of "What if a member of that ancient civilization survived to the present?" It failed because it changed the framework of the question to "What if a galaxy-spanning species vaguely related to humans, but with a deep grudge against us, mysteriously disappeared and new alien races grew up worshiping their remains?"

It also failed to reasonably extrapolate the abilities of that long-vanished race. The result is basically what you'd get if it was handled by Marvel or DC. "What if a member of that alien race survived? Superman would punch him in the face until he went away."

I guess it's possible to ask a question and fail to satisfactorily answer it.

How about the Marathons?

I think those are mostly in the "What If?" camp because of how central AI Rampancy is to the story. It's tackling the same question of AI supremacy that the first two Terminator movies touched on and Asimov wrote his stories around.

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How about the Marathons?

I think those are mostly in the "What If?" camp because of how central AI Rampancy is to the story. It's tackling the same question of AI supremacy that the first two Terminator movies touched on and Asimov wrote his stories around.

That is exactly what I loved about the Marathons, exploring AI's becoming more than just an AI (and add in a few other things, concerns they might have about death/end of the universe).

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I forgot to say so at the time, but I liked the Halo references. :)

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Mythic Sci-Fi: does it work for you? RNA (Destiny)

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