On Storytelling (Destiny)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Friday, July 21, 2017, 15:21 (2681 days ago) @ Cody Miller

Reserving judgement fully until the game ships. But…

Remember how the battle of Hoth started?

Those tiny dots are the Imperial Walkers. We see them coming from literally miles away. They are unstoppable, mowing everything down. Weapons do not harm them. Luke has to come up with a crazy plan to even take one down. They just keep marching. It's drawn out more, and there's a sense of dread and defeat.

Why does our character enter the fight so late? We make it to the tower near the end of the battle. Would it have not been better to put our character in the room with Zavala, Cayde, and Ikora (or even a time before this moment)? To feel the impending danger? To then take control running to our battle stations, like in Halo 2? To see the people of the tower begin to start to panic? When we enter the hallway with Shaxxx, there's all these civilians… but it doesn't register because we don't have a glimpse of the tower and all these people BEFORE the attack.

Why do we not save those civilians ourselves? Why do we not fight off cabal as we put people on ships out of there? Why do WE not discover the speaker is missing? I did not feel much agency or like what I was doing was actually helping things…

We meet with Amanda. The screen fades, and we go inside her cockpit as she flies around. We are supposed to be in the ship right? So why do we not see ourselves beamed aboard? Interact with Amanda? We don't even see ourselves get dropped off on the Cabal ship. Watch that cutscene… it's like we aren't even there. The first time, I was legitimately confused as to what I was supposed to be watching. All this shit should be in engine so our guardian can interact and feel a part of this world!

I didn't really ever feel like I was that much IN the battle. And by the time you do, it's over. It is the same problem with Destiny. There are all these wonderful threads of the world, yet they not all woven into a tapestry.

But given that, we have what could be a good villain and a potentially interesting road to defeat him. I had fun playing the mission, but I am not sure the quality of the storytelling is quite there yet. I get that Des2ny is an action game, but a little calm before the storm would have gone a long way.

There was calm before the storm (or at least relative calm during a storm that turned out not to be just a storm). I grant that it might've been more exciting to be in the tower as we know it and have it be attacked, but you make it seem like there's no dramatic value in arriving there afterwards.

I liked how you can't tell where you are at first, then you realize you're in the hanger proper (where you've not been able to go before), then you're in spaces you know well (and joined by other guardians in the middle of story mission!), and then you progress to new spaces again. Also, we've never been able to control a character within a ship before, so why have that expectation now? Maybe they'd have to redesign the cockpit to show multiple characters.

I take several of your points, and the approach you suggest might have been effective, but I think you overstate how much more effective it would've been.