It's cute (DBO)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Thursday, April 19, 2018, 08:35 (2409 days ago) @ Xenos

Again, I truly do hope that Warmind turns out different than previous entries in terms of storytelling. I just think that getting our hopes up in this specific area is just asking to be disappointed.

I think even us on the podcast are not saying we expect in any reasonable terms that the story is going to be amazing, I think mostly we want lore and actual meaningful story content about Rasputin/the Warminds. That doesn't mean I expect that the story will be good.

So I've fallen down a little bit of a lore rabbit hole this morning, and I was actually about to come here and ask for clarification/insight from all of you. I've been reading about the state of Destiny's lore (not the content of the lore itself, but how it is being handled now compared to D1), and there are a few threads that jumped out at me.

First of all, Bungie's Lead Narrative writer has stated that the "grimoire is considered folklore, even to the inhabitants of the universe: true as far as they & we know!". This was stated in contrast to the comment that the new Osiris comics are considered "canon".

This is significant to me. It means we can/should expect the games going forward to contradict or deviate from D1's grimoire (but not from the Osiris comics?). It appears to me that Bungie is giving themselves wiggle-room to retcon or ignore established lore if and when they choose to.

Then, I saw someone on reddit mention that the D1 grimoire is no longer available on Bungie's website. I hadn't heard this before, and found it difficult to believe, so I went to check for myself. If it is still there, I certainly can't find it. Can anyone here clarify this? Do we know for sure if the grimoire is still available on Bungie's site?

If the grimoire truly is gone from Bungie's site, then that only reinforces my interpretation that all of Destiny's current lore and backstory is considered "fair play" to be changed or ignored.

There's a very cynical interpretation here that goes something like "Hey, all that lore that you know and love? Well none of that is necessarily real in the Destiny universe anymore. If you want to know the real backstory, you've gotta pay for it (ie buy the comics)". It wouldn't surprise me in the least if there is someone in the publishing side of all this that is thinking along these lines, but I doubt its the primary motivation. More likely, I think, is that Bungie's writing team largely changed between D1 and D2, and the current writers don't want to be tied down by the world-building of the previous writers. Long-going franchises see this kind of thing all the time. New writers come on board and undo/retcon/ignore a bunch of the previous team's work, only to then leave before completing their story and have some of their work retconned/ignored by the next writing team, and so on.

All this to say, the way I'm reading the tea-leaves is making me think that expanding on Destiny's lore in the fascinating and meaningful ways that we saw with D1's grimoire doesn't look to be where the studio is taking things at the moment. I think the closest equivalents that we will actually get are things like the adventure on Nessus where we meet "the captain", or the quest in Curse of Osiris where we learn the fate of Saint 14. It looks to me like those missions are the extent of "lore building" in Destiny 2 in the immediate future.