There were notes, audio logs and excerpts from diaries scattered throughout TLoU's story. They all added further depth to the already epic story that was told, but they weren't required reading at all.

Aww man those audio logs. Such wonderful acting to supplement an awesome story. Destiny with those type of audio logs (and in-game diary entries) would have put it over the top for me.

- CC

If they didn't feel as necessary, I think we'd think the cards were cool.

Bingo! That's exactly how I feel about them, Kerminator.

- CC

They also were good at telling stories without words; in Fallout 3 I still vividly remember breaking into the quarters of an Air Force General to get something for a fetch-quest, searching the house, and finding in the bathtub a skeleton, four empty liquor bottles, and a toaster. The story told itself; I didn't need to read a suicide note to know what that General thought would come of his orders to turn his launch keys.

-- Steve loves that sort of thing.

God yeah that kind of stuff is the exact kind of in-universe story telling I make googly eyes at.

I keyed into your saying terminals and cards violated "show, don't tell." If they provide supplemental info that builds the world, they can be a quite effective way of adding richness to the story, and do so in a creative way that isn't just exposition. (This topic also pushes my buttons re: 343's abandonment of text terminals--I'd want to say to them: evoke, don't show, i.e., don't make a expository-heavy cutscene that wouldn't exist in this fictional terminal.)

I think what you're getting at is what many others have said, which is that there isn't enough story in the game. If they didn't feel as necessary, I think we'd think the cards were cool.

That is more along the lines of what I'm saying, yeah

The fact that a significant part of the late-game plot was based on non-game materials like the Librarian/Didactic dialogue and the increasingly complex Forerunner novels rendered key cutscenes incredibly confusing. Why is the Didact an evil monster? Why is this ghost angel talking to Master Chief? Wait, she... sped up his evolution? How? Why? WHAT IS GOING ON I NEED AN ADULT.

At least when prior Halo games referenced background lore, they stuck to fun atmospheric easter eggs, like Cortana echoing Halsey's memories towards the end of the Cortana level in Halo 3. But making it required reading for understanding the core storyline is just like you said -- homework.

I was just thinking this... Having not had a chance to read any of the recent books or anything, I only knew that the Didact and Librarian were mentioned in the Halo 3 terminals. Other than that, I had no idea who they were and what their motivations were for their actions.

Like Jilly said, I had to go out of the game to Waypoint to even watch the Terminals and see who they were. It was homework and should've been conveyed in the main story, not hidden...

With mixed success, I've tried to recruit guardians of similar rank in the tower. A library would add another variable. One could assume that any guardians in the library care about the narrative, and those are the players I want to play with.

-- Steve loves that sort of thing.

Unfortunately I haven't finished the game. (I need to find a level ~16 fireteam to enter the Black Garden.) I'm still getting my head around Destiny's story. I'm not sure we'll end up disagreeing that much, but I think the Grimoire cards would be something we love like we love Halsey's journal if it were perceived as garnish for the main course.

I solo'd the black garden, but I was 19 by the time I got to it. I had been playing a bunch with friends and pursued bounties and replayed missions I thought were fun.

Let me guess... you got roped in by the 5 dollars off if you buy the first 2 deal? Remember, there's no subscription fee, but you have to drop 20 bucks every 3 months to stay current!

Plus 50/yr for PSN+, but at least that's spread among games you play.

At least when prior Halo games referenced background lore, they stuck to fun atmospheric easter eggs, like Cortana echoing Halsey's memories towards the end of the Cortana level in Halo 3. But making it required reading for understanding the core storyline is just like you said -- homework.

As I still haven't finished the game yet, I'm holding out my final judgement, but I have to agree that, so far, it's not quite as deeply-rooted in-game as I expected.

I agree a lot of the mechanics are hard to get a hang of. I often find myself trying to explain how Attack/Defence power works and how gun stats like Impact matter and what is relevant for the Crucible vs the PvE content....it's hard work that I shouldn't have to do.

I think that is the root cause for a lot of the repetition in the game design and the lack of story in the game itself. (Yes, I know the investment system was part of Destiny's design concept, but somehow I doubt that the cookie-cutter story levels were.)

The investment system necessitates the type of story missions that are in the game.
http://destiny.bungie.org/forum/index.php?id=35662

On the plus side, I've always considered ODST to be in some respects a game's worth of the urban combat we craved so much after seeing the E3 demo that year.

A optimistic person might say that Bungie delivers on their promises eventually.

You've got a big Grimoire card with tiles and progress bars and a score. Then a bunch of individual cards next to it with their own categories and progress bars and scores (and red bookmark tassles with numbers, for some reason).

But click any one and you get a different, secondary layer (Inventory, say) with a different main card with different categories and tiles and progress bars and scores.

Click one of those (Economy) and you get a third layer of cards -- this time a main card with pictures instead of tiles, no progress bars, a numerical count of cards collected out of the total (in that category, I guess? Or maybe subcategory?). But then the score on that main card is zero, even though I've found two of six.

But then, when clicking one of the two cards found (Glimmer), there's no description and it just says "Unlock this card by playing Destiny." So you have to both find the card, and unlock it? Unlock it how? And the other four cards all say "Card not yet acquired." But I have no idea how to acquire nor how to unlock these cards. Or why. Nothing is ever explained.

Desktop version adds another layer of confusion with a sidebar of "new cards," all with a score of zero. Clicking any one both removes it from the queue (or maybe activates it...?) while also diving you somewhere into the ridiculous triple-layered tarot deck interface, where you encounter a whole row of shiny cards, some colored white, some colored gold, all with +0 score. The one you clicked to get there is blank on the reverse side (bug? feature? who knows). But if you're lucky, one of the other cards will have a random snippet of context-free, in medias res lore whose depth and character in no way reflects what you see during gameplay.

Also, apparently finding/unlocking Grimoire has some kind of positive effect on your stats or weapons or something. But, like most of the rest of Destiny's abstruse and non-intuitive system of gameplay mechanics*, there is nothing to indicate this possibility in the game or on the Grimoire site, much less explain how to do it. Because having to trawl forums and read wikis just to figure out how the damn game functions is the new hotness or something.

The fact that the rich backstories which were so elegantly woven into every Bungie game from Marathon to Reach have suddenly been relegated to this absurd maze that you have to stop playing the unpausable game to read is utterly ridiculous and more than a little frustrating. That the game's story without this system is a bland mishmash of mediocre dialogue and Generic Proper Nouns is just a kick to the ribs.

* Off the top of my head, some gameplay elements whose narrative relevance and in-game function the game has yet to explain, despite the fact I've already beaten Earth, the Moon, and reached Venus: Orbs of Light. Crucible Reputation. Armor Shaders. Vanguard Marks. Spinmetal. Spirit Blooms. Reviving dead Ghosts (even though a Grimoire card said Ghost death is irreversible). What the different level icon types on the map mean. Who the player character was, why they died, how long they've been dead, why they were chosen, what they know, etc. The nature, origin, and motivations of any of the enemy factions. The nature, origin, and motivations of any of the playable factions. The nature, origin, motivations, gameplay relevance, and basic mechanics of interacting with any of the Tower factions. What the different ammo types are, what effect they have, and why you lose it all just for switching weapons. The difference between Attack and Impact. How to switch to your heavy weapon. How to contact/team up with other players. How to travel back in time and convince yourself that buying DLC for a game that hasn't been released yet is a stupid idea. At this point I'm only continuing to play to justify having bought it.

[Also, being booted from an essentially single-player campaign IS NOT FUN. Especially not towards the end of an INFINITE BULLET SPONGE BOSS FIGHT. Hasn't happened yet (the boss fight part, not the getting booted part), but I'm sure it's... in the cards. Oh ho ho.]