SHOW ME the story! CONNECT with the characters! (Destiny)

by Hoovaloov, Saturday, September 27, 2014, 23:22 (3951 days ago) @ narcogen
edited by Hoovaloov, Saturday, September 27, 2014, 23:35

Aside from the unrelated threads, the sometimes boring exposition and other problems, there's the glaring fact that while most Halo games contained within them near feature length cutscenes, a sort of sci fi action movie with the action scenes removed, and Destiny seems to clock in around 30 minutes, with the balance taken up by voiceovers on top of loading screens.

There's simply much less commitment to the standard cutscene/gameplay formula we saw used in Halo.

I think this is the major problem with Destiny's story. Destiny doesn't SHOW us much of anything. The beginning and ending of almost every mission is a voiceover. Precious few are the times where we end a mission with a cutscene. And of course, those few times are the most interesting parts of Destiny's story!

Also, the levels themselves don't SHOW the story happening. When we encounter the Hive for the first time, they've already set up camp on Earth. Did none of the other Guardians that live in the Tower come across them and their giant seeders all this time? Why not show the seeders raining down from the sky DURING a mission?

The one mission that really sells it is The Last Array. We actually SEE the array opening while we're fighting off unrelenting waves of enemies. It's great! The music is swelling, the Hive won't let up, you're running out of ammo, all while the massive Satellite dish slowly unfurls itself against the clear sky. One of the best missions in the game for sure. Why aren't there more missions that SHOW the plot in action during missions?

That only makes me wonder why the heck these kill targets have names. Once they don't have names, they're not characters-- and they're not part of the story.

If all these targets were just referred to as a member of their rank-- a Fallen baron, a Prime servitor, a Vex Nexus (vexus?) I think I'd feel more charitable during the repetition of these voiceovers. It may be that Destiny is light on traditional cutscenes because there are so few characters to put into them-- so little of consequence actually happens.

Another great point. Let's try to define a character in the context of a video game's plot. They must have a name or distinguishing title and be seen in the game. That's the bare minimum.

To be a GOOD character, they must also:

1) Have lines of dialogue in English or translated through subtitles
2) Connect with the player on an emotional level with facial expressions
3) Interact with the main character either during gameplay or in a cutscene

Hardly any of the characters in Destiny pass these tests.

For Test #1, think how many characters in Destiny don't speak their lines in English - Riksis, Sepiks Prime, Phogoth, Zydron, Aksor, Gotra, and the Nexus. There are also various named lesser bosses that don't have any lines in English (the Baron, Hive Witches, Big Cabal Guy). And Rasputin only talks in Russian, but of course, no subtitles, just more voiceover telling us what he said. All of these "characters" just make gibberish noises that are never translated for us.

Contrast this with very talkative bad guys in Halo - 343 Guilty Spark and the Prophet of Truth. They drove the plot with their dialogue. In fact, in one cutscene Cortana actually goes out of her way to switch on translation for the Prophet of Regret. This gives us a reason to hate the Prophet of Regret. We want to stop him after hearing that! But the Darkness doesn't have any lines. The bad guys in the universe don't actually talk to us in our language, so there's little motivation to stop them. We need to HEAR the characters.

For Test #2, consider how many of the characters that do speak our language actually have visible faces. The Ghost is a single eye at best, a talking origami fortune teller at worst. The Speaker is wearing a full face-mask. Rasputin is just a Russian speaking progress bar. The Vanguards only speak to us during loading screens. The Stranger is a robot, facial expressions do not compute. In fact, the first people you talk to in a cutscene with faces are the Queen and her brother. That's HOURS into the story. And those scenes were pretty much the most interesting scenes in the whole game. We need to see FACES in order to connect with the characters.

Lastly, for Test #3, while playing Destiny, examine how many characters exist in the world during gameplay. The Speaker, Cryptarch, Vanguards, and Faction Leaders all stay behind in the Tower and radio in commands. Remember the backlash people had to Sarah Palmer in Spartan Ops? All she did was order you around via radio comms. You never saw her in the field. Same thing with the other characters in Destiny, you never see them during missions. They are just menu prompts in the Tower and a few minutes of voiceover dialogue here and there.

Contrast this with the Halo series. You fight alongside Sgt. Johnson, Captain Keyes, 343 Guilty Spark, Miranda Keyes, the Arbiter, Buck, Dutch, Dare, Romeo, Mickey, Carter, Jorge, Kat, Jun, and Emile. You remember seeing these characters in the world itself. They moved, they bantered, they fired, they...well, they didn't drive, but they tried! Those characters became fleshed out and memorable because they had their existence in the actual game world.

This leaves us with the Queen and her brother. They speak to us in a language we can understand, we can connect with them on an emotional level by seeing their facial expressions, but we don't get to interact with them during any missions. I suppose 2 out of 3 ain't bad compared to all the previous characters that failed all three tests. That's why I think many found the cutscenes in the Reef to be the most intriguing ones in the game.

In fact, the only characters that you encounter during Destiny's missions are actually other Guardians. But they can't speak to you (no proximity chat), don't have faces (just helmets), and interaction is limited to four emotes. Plus whatever they would have to say wouldn't be canon anyway. :)

So to wrap up, I think Destiny's story feels so empty and unsatisfying because we aren't shown enough cutscenes and the characters in the world either don't speak our language, don't have a face for us to emotionally connect to, and/or don't exist and interact in the missions themselves. It's extremely disappointing coming from the Halo universe where the games where chock full of memorable and engaging characters. But there is hope that later expansions and games will fix these shortcomings.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading!