After reading a lot of the lore and what was supposed to be the story i'm deeply disappointed. From the beginning sequence I felt like this game could have been a complete triumph for humanity in the sense of the rich story telling and deep immersive world that could have been. Instead after some time with it, i was honestly emotionally hurt in the sense that I felt cheated and not oblivious about how inconsistent and hacked up the game seemed. By hacked I mean chopped up, I love fps but at the same time a deep immerse story truly drives in that feeling of purpose, inspiration and accomplishment that makes the investment of money and time worth it. Something that the halo lore does well. Even after defeating the black garden the game now seems inconsistent and not unlike a soulless fps farming sim. The art work is beautiful the mechanics well made and the weapon play fun, but its difficult to know that a lot of content made by wonderful hard working creative people was deliberately cut out, lost. Hard worked for content that we may never see. The cards are really no way to tell a story the way the technology itself can, for example, the backstory of the vault of glass raid and the vex as I have read here is fascinating and its incorporation would justify and make playing the raid infinitely much better. Because you're understanding not only the impact but also the meaningfulness of your actions. something that can be elegantly set up in a separate cinematic that a single player can willfully trigger before playing the raid so you don't have to watch countless of times whenever you play, in case your peers are impatient to it. What about the warminds? Tentatively mentioned but still a backdrop overlooked. The lore is incredibly interesting but when you don't implement it well into the game you sacrifice a prolific looking work of art to appease twelve year olds and their ADD tendencies for sales and quick profits. That does not help the industry. Humans are inherently curious, and even if there are people out there who'll skip all the cut scenes there will always be those impressionable young minds who will see the amount of work put into this and who are filled with wonder not only for the STEM fields that can advance our own current technology but for the universe and the possibilities for their lives as well. I'm 25 years old and playing games like starfox and metal gear as a kid filled me with this wonderful sense of purpose for the world. I honestly expected Destiny to bring me back to those roots teaching me along the way concepts of physics and philosophy and an appreciation for deep history and art. With this in mind I honestly I feel that Bungie and Activision had a golden opportunity in their hands. Not only monetarily but altruistically as well, getting kids interested in a range of fields of study while engaging them in deep and meaningful ways was something worth preserving and not something worth sacrificing for quick sales, cheap thrills and pretty graphics in order to reach a wider audience. Imo Game making is honestly a cooperative form of art making and while its practical to make a fun and mindlessly quick profitable distraction, sometimes making the most pragmatic decision means thinking about the overall impact of your choices, because although it may not seem like a very apparent issue, in cases like these with a game of a supposed lifetime of 10 years, these excecutive decisions can affect important aspects of history, culture and society. Specially with a generation growing up alongside and being influenced by big title games like these. With that said. I believe that call of duty sales do not justify some of the choices made. Specially for a company with such a great story record as bungie. Maybe activision had a hand on it or maybe not. I dont know. Ultimately It might have just been a series of truly unfortunate events. I don't know if this will be read by anyone up top but with all due respect to everyone who worked tirelessly on a project they wholeheartedly believed in. I hope that we agree in that had the game been delivered as promised it would have spoken for itself. It might have sold even more. It might have become a complete and timeless epic worth mentioning.