The side story missions have smaller circles with stars in them. (Several of these missions follow the "Rasputin the war mind" plot line)

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I agree that the distinction isn't clear at all, and I didn't even notice until I was on my second playthrough.

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And yes, leveling would be off if they changed how the missions unlocked - that would have to be rebalanced a tad.

Watching that, I think the major problem with the plot is that the side missions have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the main plot, and there's very little indication that they're even "side" missions when they first appear. Or at least, I didn't get that until I was playing through with my second character.

Perhaps I will help to illustrate your point, but... I'm not exactly clear on what the side missions are vs the story missions. Patrols & Strikes?

There are story missions that are not part of the main story. I can't remember their names exactly, but I think both Venus and Mars have one or two missions that open up to you along the way but don't really follow the main storyline. I remember being confused when the game told me that the final task was to go to the Black Garden, but I still had two missions I hadn't done yet. I think the reason Bungie probably did it this way was to help with the problem of not leveling up fast enough to keep pace with the main story missions -- but I'm not convinced that was the best way to handle it. I definitely would have appreciated if these "side" story missions only unlocked after I worked my way through the story.

Watching that, I think the major problem with the plot is that the side missions have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the main plot, and there's very little indication that they're even "side" missions when they first appear. Or at least, I didn't get that until I was playing through with my second character.

Perhaps I will help to illustrate your point, but... I'm not exactly clear on what the side missions are vs the story missions. Patrols & Strikes?

Honestly, I think the game's plot would be getting better reviews if the side missions didn't unlock until after the main story was complete, and then unlocked all at once.

Irregardless, I wholeheartedly agree, but the leveling would have been off for me. At one point I needed to run some patrol/strikes to level up before I was ready to continue with the campaign.

Watching that, I think the major problem with the plot is that the side missions have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the main plot, and there's very little indication that they're even "side" missions when they first appear. Or at least, I didn't get that until I was playing through with my second character.

Honestly, I think the game's plot would be getting better reviews if the side missions didn't unlock until after the main story was complete, and then unlocked all at once. I also think this change would have made the world feel bigger and the game feel longer because it would have effectively given each world a whole second plot thread to follow. Instead of feeling like "I beat the game... and nothing happened" it would have felt like "I beat the game and holy crap there's a HUGE unlock that doubles the content!"

Poor planning by Bungie, I think. It's too late now to change it for current characters, but boy should that change be made for new characters.

I came across this video (ht: Polygon) and found it to to be a really good synopsis of Destiny's story. I, like most of us, was very underwhelmed by the story - at least as it was presented to us in the game. Watching this video though shows that there is actually a lot to it when you put it together like this... And that doesn't even take into account any of the grimoire - which takes the story several layers deeper.