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Destiny

Discuss all things Destiny.
Edited by Evilman520: 10/14/2014 11:36:16 PM
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*SPOILER ALERT* Destiny's Lore and Storyline Explained: The Method Behind the Madness

There's a method behind the madness and the "lack" of a storyline in Destiny so far. Let's take a trip down memory lane, back to the original Halo. When the game started off, you were beginning at the middle. Something had happened before the start of the game, but you don't know what exactly it was. All you knew was that you were this big green walking tank who can move, jump, shoot, and lift a helluva lot better than a normal human. Now, think about the kinds of questions that can already be asked, just from playing through the first mission. Where are we? Why did we have to make a blind jump to here? What are the Covenant? Why are they attacking us? Why am I this big, buff, badass effing killing machine? Why was I in a cryo tube? Why are there no others like me around? Whats up with the big-ass ring? All of this, just from the first mission. And, throughout the game, only a few concrete answers are given in the game alone: You are here by coincidence, nothing more. You jumped because the Covenant were chasing you. Clearly, they just want you dead. So, you know, fight back or die. This ring is some kind of superweapon made by the Covenant to exterminate humans. Oh wait, now we just found out it was made by some ancient race called the Forerunners. Oh wait, now we just found out that the ring is meant to kill ALL life nearby, to prevent these weird-ass half-naked zombies from spreading and feeding. Nevertheless, a lot of questions were still left unanswered. What happened before the beginning of the game? Why were the Covenant so pissed off with Humanity? Who were these Forerunners? What are the Flood? Why is the Chief the only one like him? What exactly is the Chief? How were these kinds of questions answered? Books and an Instruction Manual. Throughout the entire Halo series, much of the lore was explained via Books, short stories, graphic novels, short films, and even anime. Most of the lore came from other sources in the Halo series, and made it into one of the best and most memorable crisis-filled stories in history. But, looking at the first game now, you can see that it had the LEAST amount of lore, story, and information out of the 3 games (i don't count the 4th because it was not made by Bungie, only their child company) That is what Destiny is doing as well. "You've been dead a long time, so you're going to see a lot of things you wont understand." "You must have no end of questions, Guardian." "I don't even have time to explain why I don't have time to explain." Destiny is taking the "mysterious beginning" idea and cranking it up -by making YOU the main character. Why do you think we don't have an option to name our Guardian? 1) Because you've been dead for so long that you don't remember anything, even your name 2) Because the Guardian is YOU. Get it now? Your Guardian knows just as much as you do. You woke up on the ground in the middle of a scrap yard, air filling lungs that felt as if you had held your breath until you passed out. Light stung your eyes, as if they hadn't been opened in a long long time. Your body is stiff as a dry twig, cracking and popping from rigomortis. Where am I? Why am I here? What's going on? What happened to me? Suddenly, this floating talking lightbulb starts speaking inside of your head, telling you to run because something called Fallen is coming after you to kill you. Nothing that you are doing makes any sense right now. All of the questions filling your head are about to make you go insane. Then, the sight of these freaky-looking aliens nearly tips your mental stability over the edge. Then, when your hands grip your newfound Khostov, something occurs to you: Somehow, this feels right. Somehow, this feels natural. Your hands, shaking off the rigomortis, are instinctively performing checks on a weapon you had never even touched before. That first Fallen drops down in front of you and everything happens before you can even think: you raise the Khostov to your shoulder, take aim at the Vandal's head, let loose a storm of hellfire into its skull with pinpoint accuracy, then transition to the Dreg nearby and give it the same fate as the other. As you continue on, something starts to resurface in your dead memory, as if your mind is trying to tell you to do something. You instictivley hold your hand out, as if cupping the air, and suddenly, a grenade appears in your palm. You just transmatted a grenade! It seems as if fighting is slowly returning bits of your memory of how to fight. After evading the Fallen, you are brought to this weird place you have never seen before, wandering around like a lost child, trying to figure out what the hell is going on. The questions are still swimming in your mind, enough to drive you crazy. You know that, if you start to let loose, you might never stop asking questions, and might regain control of yourself. You might simply collapse into the fetal position and go insane. But then you remember the Khostov on your back, and how right that felt. Suddenly, you are heading to your Vanguard mentor and to Banshee to arm up, then to the hangar to demand your repaired ship back and head back out to do the one thing that you know right now: Fight. Right now, you're just fighting to maintain hold of your sanity. From then on, it was just crisis after crisis. The Hive invading Earth, the ritual that is draining this Traveler, the Stranger contacting you to warn you about enemies that you might not believe. Following the Stranger to Venus to find and fight this evil so dark that it despises other evil. The shock of seeing the Fallen (creatures you thought were just a bunch of xenocidal maniacs) obeying the command of somebody who isn't Fallen. Pushing through the Cabal on Mars to destroy the Black Garden. Every event just put you into lockstep. With every answer, you only create more questions in your head. The Cryptarch and Ghost's Grimoires only give you a shard of insight into what is going on around you. It simply isn't enough yet, and there is too much going on for you to afford to stop to sit in a corner and think. So, to cope with your astounding lack of knowledge, you turn to the one thing that you know best: Fighting And you are really really good at fighting.

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  • Nice

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  • I never viewed the game in this way, well said! It gives me new interest in the game, to find out what happens next. 10 years is a long time to fill in the gaps, hope it is worth it.

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  • Nice narrative...I came at this game having never played a game since cartridges!....Look and appreciate this game putting all comparisons to one side. Its not Halo's Cod or Warcrafts Rim, its Destiny..Let it evolve and unfold. I love this game being a 'virgin'. I have no prior knowledge or comparison therefore Im fully involved with the story as its becoming apparent. I have no frustration and most of the time I'm running about shooting shit till I figure out the next step.....just my tuppence worth....

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  • Bump

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  • I like it. I'm fine with the story.

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  • Here is basically what the story is going to become: Rasputin is rogue, he is the darkness, he caused mankinds downfall and is likely being controlled/influacing the Vex in some way. This leads on to believe that the warminds are based off Vex technology much like the AI's in the Halo Universe are based off Forerunner tech. Rasputin is pretty much confirmed rogue during the Sunken City mars mission in which you find another AI which has been taken over by Rasputin. Hell ghost final statement confirms it. "Rasputin has control of it. He is everywhere now..."

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    • Hm you have some points here BUT here's the thing : -Halo had memorable characters , Destiny didn't. Ask around in the forum about the characters from CE , some they say they loved Guilty Spark other will speak about Jenkins or a fan-favorite Johnson (hell we loved him so much , Bungie brought him back for Halo 2) etc etc Now ask about those in Destiny. The silence will be your answer , they aren't any , don't tell me the Speaker was memorable , nor is the Stranger , or the vendors... For example let"s take two characters that serves the exact same thing in the both Destiny and Halo. Cortana and Dinklebot. Cortana is here to help you just like Dinklebot , BUT she has an impact on the story , she's not here to just open doors and command you to defend some zone. And she expose plot-twist : the true purpose of Halo which leads to my second point -We have an answer to the mystery of the game. Destiny and Halo have both huge mysteries. But they both also have one that is litteraly infront of you. in CE , it's the ring itself and in Destiny , it's the Traveler. In Halo we get to know the 2 purposes of Halo , studying the Flood and eliminate their food. And well in Destiny...the Traveler did some stuff according to the Speaker and Dinklebot and that's that (I could tell you about this stuff , I could tell you that we are given scraps of an answer ...). -Another thing about exposition of the story , I don't mind being told what happend , if at least it's told to me. Halo had focus , Destiny didn't had any. In Halo when we finished the game , we finished it knowing what happend , now tell me , what did we do in Destiny ? Killed some dude , destroyed some stuff and that's it. We're left , wanting to know WHO ARE THE -blam!-ING CHARACTERS OF THE GAME ! AT LEAST TELL US WHO THEY ARE !WHY WERE WE CHOOSEN? WHAT IS THE BLACK GARDEN ? WHAT'S THE PURPOSE OF IT ? WHAT IS THE LIGHT ? THE DARKNESS? ARE THEY LIKE THE FORCE FROM STAR WARS OR SOMETHING? WHO IS THE STRANGER ? WHAT THE -blam!- ARE THE FACTIONS ? etc etc We have not a single answer in the game. Not a single interaction , nor does our character seem to be interested in getting answers... Not a single one , but you can get scraps of it in the Grimoire... A Grimoire that is not in the game itself. This is something that always bugged me. Why didn't we have audio logs of it? Or I don't know the Grimoire itself inside the game? Couldn't Dinklebot read it ? Or was it too expensive? It's not like every freaking game of the decade does it , like I don't know , MGS:GZ/PW , Bioshock , Mass Effect , Assassin's Creed... You know what's the most infuriating thing about Destiny ? It's that all the ingredients to make a great story are there. For example I just read a topic about the Vault of Glass and it blew my mind , now why didn't Bungie did that in the game , with I don't know an NPC or audio logs? All the pieces of the puzzle are here , yet Bungie didn't complete it. I don't care if they changed the original story , I just want a complete engaging story with engaging characters. I don't want to know everything (for example in Star Wars or Mass Effect , at the end of the first "act" of each saga , we don't know much , but we know what's going on and what we did). Something it seems that Bungie forgot how to do since they joined with Activision. Anyway I like Destiny but the story , well let's just say that it was made very poorly , I can just hope that Bungie will make it better (not only with DLC mind you).

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      • Ok, here's the problem with this. If I was in the situations the Guardian ends up in, I would [i]not[/i] just kill what ever the floating robot told me to without knowing what the -blam!- was going on. I'd have told the seeker "bullshit! You want me to protect your giant God-ball? Then you'd better have a damn good explanation of what I'm protecting it from and why." The silent protagonist thing worked with Chief because he was a character with his own identity outside of the player, but you can't make people identify with characters who do batshit things that the players themselves would not do.

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        • I just want to say that the Pillar of Autumn didn't go there by coincidence. Cortina had gotten the coordinates for the ring and took them there they just didn't know what exactly they would find. Of course that info wasn't in the game but just wanted to point that out. :)

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          • No. Saying "The answers will be there eventually" does not excuse the pathetic story that Destiny has. It's okay to provide questions in the beginning, but NOTHING is ever explained. In Halo Combat Evolved, the story is left open, but not to the point where it's not a satisfying ending. Questions are answered. The only open ended part of the first Halo game is whether or not you make it back to Earth and if there's still more to do. Halo 1 has a complete story. Destiny gives you the questions but doesn't provide any answers. The Speaker doesn't tell you anything. The Exo Stranger, who calls you to Venus to talk doesn't tell you anything either. The Queen has an almost pointless role that they could have given to ANYONE. The story is BROKEN. The narrative starts on Earth, then the missions go to the Moon. Except that there's other missions on Earth, that have nothing to do with the main story. EVERY PLANET has them. They serve no purpose to the main story and only confuse the narrative. The main story jumps all over the place, raising more questions (that aren't answered) and none of the missions on each planet really go anywhere. Some only serve to get you to the next planet. Even if we start out knowing nothing, we should still end with knowing SOMETHING. After completing the story, I don't know any more then when I started. That's not good story telling. Everything you wrote, detailing how we are revived and what not? NONE OF THOSE FEELINGS ARE PORTRAYED. Even though Master Chief was left faceless so we can be him, he still talked and participated. He had a personality and so did the NPCs. In Destiny, we have no voice. No one has a personality. The aliens? Why are we fighting them in Destiny? Because they're evil? Yeah, that's not good enough. In Halo, we're told that we are at war with the Covenant and that we can't let them find Earth, for fear of them destroying it. We KNOW what the Flood are and why we need to stop them. There is nothing in Destiny to tell me why I'm fighting the aliens. They pose NO THREAT AT ALL. The city is safe. Why bother? Because the Darkness is coming back? What does that even imply? Look, more unanswered questions. When you're telling a story, you HAVE TO answer SOME questions. NOTHING is answered in Destiny. Add this to the lack of interesting characters, the fact that the missions are boring and repetitive and that there was nothing in the game to make me care about what happens to humanity, I don't care enough to sit around and wait for answers. Destiny fails to tell a good story.

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            • Edited by Jayhawk USN: 10/17/2014 4:17:12 AM
              I want you in my group. The quality of your writing and logic is extraordinary.

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            • That...was...beautiful! I salute you sir!

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            • The problem here though is that the 2 games were made in very different times regarding shooters. People didn't expect a triple A story, or mind blowing mechanics. They expected a game they could play for enjoyment and could play for a long time. The problem with Destiny is that it was sold out to us as an epic space opera! With story beyond story! But what we got was, to be frank, very lacking and saddening. The rage against Bungie can't be calmed by just saying, "The story will come later! With the DLC!" Because essentially what you're telling people is that they bought a half made game that took 7 years and 500 million dollars. That's quite disappointing, especially since their is so much lore Bungie practically didn't even bat an eye at. All the exotics have such interesting stories and tales that could be weaved through the game, but what do we get? RNG and Xür! So the only one to blame would be Bungie themselves.

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              • *slow claps*

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              • thank you for posting this.... this is exactly how i felt during my run in the campaign..

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              • What I think is happening is Capitalism at it's best. Why create a story when you can create a vague outline of a story and then have all your loyal fans provide you with free labor by writings their take on your vague facts? Then you just cherry pick the best ideas from the community behind the scenes and boom, you've got a story that you can add after the fact. The people that theorized it end up thinking, "Wow, I was right all along!" And Bungie will get off scot free with plagiarism. We live in a world where the consumer makes and playtests the products they buy. Free labor. Ingenious

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              • Bravo

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              • It's a point yeah but at the end of the day all I had to do is pop open my -blam!-ing manual to learn any backstory relevant to the game. The rest was told to you in game there was also far more cutscenes in a halo game than anything in Destiny. On top of that alot of expostion was told you vicariously through Cortana and 343 Guilty Spark...hell just the line about a Class 10 battlesuit and you're only wearing a class 2? Good point. Not Great 6/10 would dinklage again

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              • Maybe I was a teacher ... From before the Golden Age. So how would I know how to fight? And you are stretching to connect what is provided. Halo did invoke questions at the beginning and the end, but at least the dots all connected in between. How would an Awoken meet the Queen of the Awoken and not know their background ... Especially if all Awoken come from the Reef.

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                • The difference is CE had a beginning, middle, and end that could be followed and understood with ease. Destiny does not have this luxury. It adds more questions without answering any.

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                • lol if that is true, theres really no reason for the speaker not to explain or your ghost who is with you all the time. nice try tho.

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                • If this was true and you are your character fighting to stay sane wouldn't bungie make that clear to us... cause we are the characters? In all the cut scenes my guardian seems perfectly sane, and perfectly fine with following blindly. Which doesn't resonate well with me because I am neither.

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                • Edited by BiscuitNick: 10/15/2014 11:55:22 PM
                  Yeah except the manual of Halo CE gives a highly detailed explanation. That contradicts this argument entirely. It may not have been in the game but it comes with the game. That was back at a time when people read instruction manuals as well. I can understand the story before heading into the game, which you can't do with Destiny. Not to mention that even if the whole "mysterious" approach is what Bungie was trying to do, they did it poorly by not doing anything to incite my interest. It would be like a crime mystery movie starting after the crime and you never having any clue of what even happened. You would have no drive to want to know who committed the crime since you wouldn't have a clue what happened. Destiny has a lack of in-game story because it's just lacking. No excuse.

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                  • Bungie gives people the opportunity for people to be imaginative for now and come up with their own ideas for the story and everyone in the forums goes mental. Smh.

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                  • Edited by Dredd_fan: 10/16/2014 11:58:07 AM
                    lol Dude the story was ripped from the game when the main writer left throwing the narrative into chaos. The lore you refer to was hastily put together by a writer recruited to create a story. That's been the main criticism of this game by the gaming media / youtubers lack of a credible story. Your explanation like the story is full of holes and in several parts vague lol.

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                  • I could tell you that I read this post. I could tell you that you are right. I could you about how Bungie wants to maximize profits but that I will tell you in another DLC.

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