I think all of the grief the game gets about a lack of story is misguided. There is a great exposition that had been created which leaves room for a fantastic plot. What is missing from the game is the aspect of human emotion. It almost feels like bungie was scared to impose any strong feeling on the user, maybe in the spirit of letting us develop those feelings ourselves. But that's not what a story is about. We crave characters that have their strength and weaknesses, emotionally. We want characters that have opinions. In the live action trailer, the titan claims that he hates creatures with no respect for history. What does our character hate? I don't know. What does our character love? I don't know. What is my characters flaws? I don't know. And I know that bungie is no stranger to developing dynamic characters. I loved the relationship between master chief and cortona from day one, and it just grew stronger. Peter dinklage is a phenomenal actor (and I am seriously curious if he plays the game). And I know he is a robot. But our ghost has no depth. What is his name? Why does he throw out nonsensical sciency phrases like "entangling ket vectors" or when he says they broke some "constant" (can't remember the name, but it's at the end of the worlds grave mission). However, games have shown us that robot companions still have the ability to make fantastic characters, and have tremendous depth. Reference again to cortona, or my favorite Glados from portal. The story of destiny is not what has upset players so much. It's the lack of dynamic characters. Characters we can love, characters that make rash deductions, or mistakes, based on emotion. Characters that can let us know they are human, that they are like us. In both strength, but more importantly flaws. And if the idea is "don't worry, all of that will come in the future", well I hope it does. I really do, and all that can be done by bungie is to have this type of depth in future content. However, keep in mind, what we have so far is supposed to be considered a full game. It should contain all of this. Portal 1 was simply a side project by valve. However, the character development of Glados was amazing, "the cake is a lie" is an iconic saying, from a game that was never even on it's own disc. That's the type of companion or enemy we crave. We want to be tricked, or deceived. We want anything that can make us FEEL. The best two characters so far have been the queen and her brother, and we get only 2 short inconsequential scenes if them. What you have is a great game, a game that I love to play, and have spent way too many hours doing so. But we need emotion. That's the core of every complaint we hear about the story. It doesn't makes us feel anything. Happy, sad, angry, hopeful, anything. All we feel is puzzled. What is the traveler? what are it's objectives? What is the darkness? Why does it seek the traveler? How does it hurt the traveler? What is that heart in the black garden we killed? How does destroying it allow the traveler to heal? Why are the awoken so reluctant to help us, if we want to do something that would help them, and not exhaust any of their resources? And that's just to name a few. I think I have made my point. We just need a story that makes us feel something. Deej, I just want to know your thoughts, and if I can be hopeful to have something like that in the near future (I.e. December 9th). [edit] apparently, I was wrong about the sciency things, they are referring to real scientific phenomena that are beyond my education. However, the community still seems confused on the logic behind the hive being so scientifically advanced, yet archaic at the same time. (But this is all completely irrelevant to the point of this post) http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/85276945/0/0