A series with a lot of ambiguity and a main character that over three games accomplishes little to nothing of import.

I... what? Did we play the same game? I don't want to discuss the story, (since I haven't played Halo: CE or 2) I just wanted to point out the nonsense of this line. Carry on.

Man, that's so meta.

Dude, we've got faces, tattoos, hair-styles and colors. Not to mention gear and Ghost skins.

You're in for a wild ride.

Even then, I'm never wearing a dead orbit faction item out of principle alone. So their fans will never get the cutscene they deserve.

man why you hating

Their Titan flare says "The stars are waiting." THE SONG OF MY PEOPLE.

I've seen the future, and it doesn't belong to dead orbit. :-p

FINE more spaceships for me. :)

Their Titan flare says "The stars are waiting." THE SONG OF MY PEOPLE.

Yeah, but does it say "I'm a badass." like this:

Dude, we've got faces, tattoos, hair-styles and colors. Not to mention gear and Ghost skins.

You're in for a wild ride.

Even then, I'm never wearing a dead orbit faction item out of principle alone. So their fans will never get the cutscene they deserve.

man why you hating

Their Titan flare says "The stars are waiting." THE SONG OF MY PEOPLE.

I've seen the future, and it doesn't belong to dead orbit. :-p

Dude, we've got faces, tattoos, hair-styles and colors. Not to mention gear and Ghost skins.

You're in for a wild ride.

Even then, I'm never wearing a dead orbit faction item out of principle alone. So their fans will never get the cutscene they deserve.

man why you hating

Their Titan flare says "The stars are waiting." THE SONG OF MY PEOPLE.

Great observations. For me, grandiose vision not quite realized covers a multitude of sins. Swing for the fences, goddamnit.

But, it's an excuse with a lot of hope. Instead of people thinking Bungie sat around twiddling their thumbs trying to come up with new missions and drawing a blank, I believe they ran around frantic and panicked that they would even ship a solid game. They did ship a solid game IMHO and they can easily build story and mission on top of what they shipped.

I think it's the right tack to take, having not been there ourselves. Benefit of the doubt, in most cases, is best doubt.

EDIT: I mean jeeze so many want to just jump to "so and so is terribad" when some creation disappoints them. Creating is hard yah know! (Your post proves you know that)

I remember being nervous about Joseph Staton's departure last year. Makes me wonder why the lead writer would leave...

I can say nothing about Joe in particular.

From what I have heard, the story was supposedly revamped significantly as recently as 2013. I don't know why. A bunch of writers were subject to some tough crunch time. That took its toll on the story, and the writers. A lot of the story effort was at the last minute, including the grimoire stuff apparently.

I think it is reasonable to speculate that things were definitely rushed, for whatever reason.

Sounds like they must have cut a lot of stuff, even parts they already had content for. That sort of explains to me why there are so few cutscenes, and why the narrative feels so disjointed. Joe left, Marty was let go, and also that writer who went to work for Telltale, instead. I can now totally understand why.

I have played, for example, Two Betrayals maybe hundreds of times more than any mission in Destiny. But I have never been bored doing it. I always knew the stakes and new the stakes mattered. I've never said to myself, "but I've saved the galaxy before".

Totally agree. I still have no idea what I accomplished in The Black Garden, or even at any point before that. Apparently, my wandering, rugged individualist Hunter just does whatever Peter Dinklage says, without question.

I remember Joe saying that he sat down and tried to write a real world explanation of why we could see fallen " souls" leave their bodies when shot. Maybe he wasn't comfortable with the genre.

So I think part of the problem is that they were trying to marry fantasy with science fiction. A lot of their early concept art is fantasy, then it gradually gets more futuristic. It's an interesting idea, but the execution is lackluster, IMO, because talking about swords, wizards, and darkness with no explanations has made the story airy and insubstantial. It needs to be grounded. Actual fantasy has the advantage of being easy to relate to real world things, because it's all low tech. Destiny is going to need much, much stronger character interaction if it wants to be relatable, and they also need to go a little more in-depth into the tech and their explanations (instead of just saying that the Hive are "waiting for their gods to return"). Star Wars drew heavily on fantasy tropes, but the technology also felt very earthy and mechanical, which helped ground it, and even The Force was well-explained. By contrast, Destiny contains a lot of talk about 'wielding the Traveler's light', but no one even asks what that means, much less attempts to explain it.

I wonder if Bungie actually wanted to make a fantasy game, but realized they would never be able to sell it to Activision if there was no shooting, and if it wasn't similar to Halo. The Sword of Crota could almost be an homage to the game that couldn't be.

Really? Usually big companies get massive props for discussing failings, so much so that I'm surprised they don't use it more often as a marketing tactic. It makes them look humble and close to their customers and "authentic."

While I wish Bungie would open up and admit to what is really going on, I don't think they can. To admit they ran out of time is to admit failure, which the industry and the buying public, regardless of how fun the game is, would murder them over. No, they have to hang their heads high, say "we know what we're doing", and hope that in time they are able to create the universe that they dreamed about.

Really? Usually big companies get massive props for discussing failings, so much so that I'm surprised they don't use it more often as a marketing tactic. It makes them look humble and close to their customers and "authentic."

Hanging their heads high is exactly the thing that a lot of people already are murdering Bungie over.

I think it's too soon for a public postmortem. After the expansion packs, in the lead up to Destiny 2, we'll get some insight, I bet.

While I wish Bungie would open up and admit to what is really going on, I don't think they can. To admit they ran out of time is to admit failure, which the industry and the buying public, regardless of how fun the game is, would murder them over. No, they have to hang their heads high, say "we know what we're doing", and hope that in time they are able to create the universe that they dreamed about.

Really? Usually big companies get massive props for discussing failings, so much so that I'm surprised they don't use it more often as a marketing tactic. It makes them look humble and close to their customers and "authentic."

Hanging their heads high is exactly the thing that a lot of people already are murdering Bungie over.

You know what's astounding to me? Every time I launch this game my jaw drops at the visuals. Every time. If someone's with me I have a hard time not saying so, even though I've said it so many times before. It's the most beautiful game I've ever seen.

Every time I think about playing on the 360, I think, well, shoot, the visuals won't be as amazing. Then I launch on the 360 and my jaw drops at the visuals. I completely forget.

I'm in complete agreement with you at the end. In the back of my mind during the Beta was always, "This isn't as pretty as it should be", but holy crap it was still gorgeous.

I remember being nervous about Joseph Staton's departure last year. Makes me wonder why the lead writer would leave...

I can say nothing about Joe in particular.

From what I have heard, the story was supposedly revamped significantly as recently as 2013. I don't know why. A bunch of writers were subject to some tough crunch time. That took its toll on the story, and the writers. A lot of the story effort was at the last minute, including the grimoire stuff apparently.

I think it is reasonable to speculate that things were definitely rushed, for whatever reason.

Now, for Destiny.. At one point, I'm sure that Destiny had a standard 'Go here, shoot things, blow up giant alien artifacts and save the world' plot. That's what Joe Staten can do. At some point, the game just disappeared from that plot.

So... who do you think ghostwrote Contact Harvest?

I'm going to take a guess and say it's the result of absurd levels of mismanagement by upper-level staff, like it usually is in the industry.

I would posit that Activision has at least something to do with it.

Every time I think about playing on the 360, I think, well, shoot, the visuals won't be as amazing. Then I launch on the 360 and my jaw drops at the visuals. I completely forget.