There is a narrative. But it's clumsy and sloppy and poorly-delivered by voice-actors who were either phoning it in or had no idea what kind of context to operate in (more likely). Additionally, my main problem with the story is that humanity has been self-declared as huddling under the shadow of the Traveller for centuries, but all of a sudden makes these enormous strides toward fighting back the darkness! But... why? Why did humanity suddenly decide to get their shit together? All the lore states pretty clearly that ghosts and guardians have been operating as-is for hundreds of years. Why did it all turn around when your guardian woke up and started kicking ass across the solar system? Why doesn't anyone acknowledge your character as being single-handedly responsible for events of Master Chief-like cyborg-death-god proportions? All the acknowledgement you get is less than that from turning in a kill-ten-rats quest in -blam!-ing Elwyn forest. It fails as a narrative and it fails as a power fantasy. You utter maybe three lines in the entire game, for fear of them actually creating some kind of character. So obviously your character isn't anything special, isn't a catalyst of any sort, isn't a protagonist. So why? What caused humanity to suddenly decide to actually start -blam!-ing trying? Where's the CATALYST? Changes require a catalyst. You don't suddenly just decide, "OK, that's enough of that, I'm bored enough that I guess I'l lend world hunger today," without billions of people asking, "WHY THE -blam!- DID YOU WAIT SO LONG IF IT WAS THAT EASY?" There is no secret sauce to answer this. It's purely OOC - a conflict between design goals of not having any kind of protagonist characterization so that players could better identify and self-insert with their character. As a result, there IS no character. And the narrative (yes, there is one, I'll put it in spoilers if you don't know what it is, but basically it's just shit) suffers as a result. It's missing vital pieces that make it work. That dissonance is what people are picking up on, even if they don't know how to describe it. Apologists continually trot out excuses that 'it's not done yet', citing that this horrible story-telling will somehow be turned around by two DLC packs which aren't even scheduled to arrive for MONTHS. But do you really think that story will turn out to be utterly amazing, or just a couple new strikes/PVP arenas/raid, and a series of new voice-overs from a different character, still telling you to, "Go here, shoot this," for patrols? Because if the base game is just the first chapter of the story, I'm telling you, it's not a story worth reading. If you read this in a book, you wouldn't buy the rest. And in the meantime, be happy with your six strike maps or PVP. It's boring. It's boring as hell. The only thing that draws people back is the fun of the basic mechanics, pulling that trigger. I keep coming back to the game to enjoy the mechanics, but that's all there is left. It's empty and hollow. I keep coming back to sudoku puzzles, too. This feels exactly the same. It's a fun mechanic to practice, exercise, but then you get bored after too much repetition and go away until the memory of repetition fades and you feel the urge to practice those mechanics again.