-HORIZON ZERO DAWN-

No wait! This is relevant to Destiny!

Kotaku recently put out an article where lead writer John Gonzalez (Fallout:NV. Shadow of Mordor) describes the hundreds of hours spent writing and rewriting the plot of HZD to accomplish several goals before writing a single line of dialogue.

“The very elements that made its high-level concept enthralling... contradicted each other in a way that demanded explanation. All told, that meant we needed to a) imagine an entire history for this strange new world, b) create a character who’d be compelling to play, c) give her a deeply personal reason to go questing across the world, d) make sure her personal quest put her on a collision course with the biggest mysteries of the world, and e) pace out the (quite intricate) answers to those mysteries so each revelation left players wanting more, driving them on to the end of the game,”

I think pretty much anyone who has played the game all the way through will agree that they succeeded in accomplishing all of those goals. But let's look at how Bungie's writing on Destiny fell a bit short on each.

a) imagine an entire history for this strange new world

Outside of Grimoire entries, we aren't really told anything about the world. There was a "Golden Age", then a "Collapse", but neither of these two is explored in any fashion. We don't know why the world is the way it is, or what it even looks like outside of the few patrol spaces (and the occasional Crucible map). Heck, the Last City has some fascinating design elements (districts separated by wealth and walls) that we never see anything of outside of rooftops. All very interesting things, but if not explored, then why should we be invested in this world?
In Yahtzee's review of HZD, he points out a number of burning questions that he has about the game's world when it starts... only to acknowledge that all of these questions are given solid answers and explanations by the time the credits roll. Contrast that with Destiny, which never finds the time to explain so much as why it doesn't have the time to explain.

b) Create a character who’d be compelling to play

Our Guardians are a blank slate, sure... But what motivates them (besides the promise of Loot™)? We aren't really ever given a choice or voice in the matter. We are told that we've been dead for a long time, but are now alive and have to serve the Vanguard. Why? This remains completely unexplored (despite the grimoire and an easter egg implying that there are many Guardians who declined this lifestyle), and our Guardians are essentially just fine with running off and obeying orders for no reason.

According to Gonzalez, some of the tougher scenes to write were the early segments of the game, when Horizon has to convince the player to care about Aloy.

“Writing (and re-writing, and re-writing) Aloy’s childhood scenes was hard work, but it seems to have paid off, because I find it impossible to watch and play those scenes without getting behind her 100%".
I think that's a big part where Destiny stumbled. Sure, our Guardian is suposed to be one of countless heroes, but from our perspective, we're getting far more done than other Guardians, and yet, we aren't really given much reason to get behind our actions, no believable motivation to be willing to risk our lives and possibly die for something as simple as obtaining an FTL drive. I'd like a sense of urgency and reason to care about my Guardian's actions in D2.

c) Give her a deeply personal reason to go questing across the world

Tying into the last point, our Guardian doesn't really have much of a personal stake in the events that transpire. Again, we're never given a reason why our Guardian does the things that he does. In HZD, Aloy starts off with a specific goal from her childhood. Every time that the story takes a turn, it's tied to something that has directly affected Aloy, or it's something that she can put her personal skills to use in (often because she has skills or freedoms that those around her don't have). In Destiny, we are simply magic zombies, and so we go and run errands for other, more important people who can't be bothered. What is our personal motivation? The aforementioned loot? The joy of collecting spinmetal?
Our Guardian is the most boring character in the whole game, and yet, we have to care about them...

d) Make sure her personal quest put her on a collision course with the biggest mysteries of the world

While we do tend to run into the biggest threats to the world, we don't really do so as part of a personal quest. The Dark Below? Eris is standing in the Tower, handing out quests to anyone who cares. House of Wolves? We owe Mara for the small favor that she did for us earlier. TTK? We're simply running an errand. Nothing is really a direct result of us doing anything for ourselves, because we're not ever really doing anything for ourselves (other than grinding for loot).
In HZD, everything from Aloy's actions as a child to the conversations that she has with people ends up affecting her directly, and it pushes the story forward in a believable manner, and before you know it, she's tackling threats much bigger than herself, but also directly tied to her in a personal way. Our Guardians are supposed to "become legend", and yet, it all feels like we're running errands for the established legends, and often as part of a group.

e) Pace out the (quite intricate) answers to those mysteries so each revelation left players wanting more, driving them on to the end of the game.

Think about Vanilla Destiny. Do you remember what happened in each mission between your Guardian waking up and the destruction of the Black Garden heart? Were you eager to jump into the next story mission to further flesh out the revelations of the one you just completed? When the game ended, did you have a better understanding of anything in the world? Were you provided with a satisfying number of answers after defeating Oryx or the SIVA core?
Odds are you still don't know hardly anything about the world of Destiny if you haven't delved into Raga's Bite-sized Backstories or the Grimoire, but our direct actions fail to give us any answers to the questions that we have throughout a level (especially the Venus levels). Even Rise of Iron feels like the game thinks it's giving us more answers than it is, with vague bits of exposition (oxymoron?) given to us through chatter between each mission objective.

Throughout the Horizon map, the player can discover something called “Vantages,” which are cached messages recorded in the old world. Once activated, the player can hear a story that is appended with a photograph that shows what a locale used to look like, before it was overtaken by nature.

“Looking beyond the main story, the narrative told by the Vantages also meant a lot to me,” Gonzalez said. “My mother has been in poor health for some time, and nearly died last fall. Taken literally, the mother-son relationship described in the Vantages story bears no resemblance at all to our relationship, but my aim was to portray a more universal bond of love."

In HZD, there are significant answers given not just at each stage of the story, but even sidequests help flesh out the world and characters, often giving us closure or a better understanding of the people and the world, and at least one sidequest can have very different dialogue if you start it after you beat the game, since you've gained plenty of knowledge that you didn't have before..
And you don't even have to beeline to the end to get answers. Sammy has been avoiding the story missions and doing all of the side missions and collectibles (which all flesh out the world as well) in each area, and even by focusing exclusively on these side stories, she's been getting more and more invested in the world and the people that inhabit it. For example, Nil is her favorite side character in the game, and she went into great detail explaining her theories on him. Simply through her interactions, she learned about the Carja region (that she had yet to explore) and of specific places within that region. When she finally visited some of the locations that Nil mentioned, she had unique dialogue options that I never did, since I played through the entire game without ever running into him, so it's neat to see that I have more reasons to explore and more opportunities to learn about the world and its mysteries.
Not only that, but despite the fact that there are still plenty of questions that remain unanswered by the time the credits roll in Horizon, we've received enough to give us a satisfying conclusion to the game, rather than having a ton of cliffhangers or vague plot threads. We know the threats that remain, we know what's coming, and yet, there's plenty to figure out before we get there, so we have plenty to do while we wait for the answers to those questions...
Hopefully Bungie can give us the same desire to go out and explore in D2.

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A separate article on Karakter's contributions to the design of the Nora region in HZD reminded me of one big issue that I had with Destiny, and it's that the playspaces don't feel real. They feel like contained playspaces devoid of any life or signs that they were once realistically filled with people. While not reaching Witcher 3 levels of believable world layouts, Horizon does a great job with each region's cultures and ruins, making former cities feel believable, and part of this is through a world design based on deconstruction and reconstruction.

First, the artists designed a realistic town,

then they let disaster strike,

then they let the post-apocalypse happen,

then they finally let nature reclaim the world, which was then modeled into the game and populating it with wildlife and machines.

It's a really neat approach that I would like to see more of, especially if we get to explore larger cities in D2.

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And lastly, I wanted to take this opportunity to show off a some more of my 4K screenshots. Have I mentioned that I love the photo mode in this game?

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Here's a set of photos highlighting the importance of lighting (time-of-day slider)...

Original:

Angle and lighting changes:

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And lastly, this is completely OT, but if anyone wants some 4k Last of Us screenshots, I took a few test ones for Wallpapers and such. Might take more as I play through the game: