(Edit: If I could redo the poll, I'd separate feeling connected to your Guardian versus feeling connected to the gear your Guardian has acquired. Seems a lot of people have a strong attachment to their weapons and armor while relatively little attachment to their actual Guardians.) Hello Folks. Here we are, on the verge of Year 3. If you’re a Day 1 player like me, your Guardians have travelled across the solar system, killed Atheon, Crota, and Oryx, killed thousands of other Guardians in the Crucible (and been killed thousands of times), patrolled thousands of miles, tried countless loadouts, started and joined dance parties, rotated the camera countless times just to check yourself out (lookin’ good, Guardian.), kicked a purple ball, and waited for the Warsat on Mars [i]for days[/i]. TL;DR: Are you as emotionally connected to your Guardians as you would have thought at this point in the game? Why or why not? But, given all that, I don’t feel a particularly strong emotional connection to my Titan (I main a Titan. My Hunter and Warlock exist to collect and hold materials for my Titan. And to get him coffee.). Why is this? After all, I have invested a lot more time in Destiny than in any game I’ve ever played. Yet I feel less connected to my Titan than I did to Edward Kenway (Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag), Axton (Borderlands 2), Booker deWitt (Bioshock Infinite), and Geralt of Rivia (The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt). What’s interesting, is that unlike these characters, [u]I am my Titan[/u]. I’m the guy inside the armor. Heck, I even had my wife help me make him so that he actually looks like me. And yet, other than the emotional connection that comes by default with so much playtime on one character, there’s not much else. I don’t really care whether or not my specific Guardians are carried-forward into Destiny 2. And honestly, that’s kinda sad given the time I’ve invested. (Side note: all I really care about for Destiny 2 is that it’s near-perfect given the historic amount of feedback Bungie has received on Destiny.) So I’d like to hear from you guys. Are you emotionally connected to your Guardians above and beyond that which comes from simply playing them for days and days? Can you explain why or why not? What would make you feel more connected? For me, the major components that are lacking are related to the question:[i] Who am I?[/i] Why was I chosen to be revived by my ghost? Given that I was chosen, I must have been a pretty remarkable person. I’d like to know what I did to be so deserving. Why in the hell was I living (and dying) in Russia? Was I just trying to escape the planet? Was I a soldier? If I was a soldier there, where did I come from before the war? What, exactly, am I fighting for? To push back the Darkness? Hmm. But why? For the sake of humanity? Seems to me that humanity invited its own destruction. Not super-motivated to fight for it, especially since I can only assume all those who I ever cared for are long gone (Or are they? Destiny 2 plotline, Bungie?). Bungie, here is where you need to take a page out of Fallout 4. A cut-scene early-on showing my family, friends, community or country suffering, perhaps with a family member imploring me to fight (“Boys! Avenge me! [i]Avenge me![/i]” Red Dawn, anyone?), would have gone a long way in establishing that emotional connection to the game and to my character from the start. As it is, I’ve had to do all of the work to make and keep that connection, and as I said, I feel like any connection there is has more to do with the time spent playing as my Titan, than any truly meaningful connection based on who he is and why he is here. Not only was there no back-story to establish that connection, but on a day-to-day basis, there is nothing to strengthen my connection to my Titan, other than simply playing more. Sure, I play around with different shaders, and when I find one I really like, it increases my affinity for my Titan. But, we don’t formally name our Guardians. There is no transmogrification. There are no personal spaces – apartments, ships, etc. – that we could make our own; no personal effects from a life long-gone. No flash-backs. No [i]connection[/i]. No [i]depth[/i]. No answers to the question: Who am I? Perhaps this post is moot. Perhaps Destiny was never supposed to a game that engenders meaningful emotional connections between a player and his or her Guardians. Perhaps instead, the meaningful connections were supposed to be between us and other players. Regardless, I feel like Bungie missed a huge opportunity to connect me to this game. One that I hope is remedied in Destiny 2. I appreciate any thoughts you want to share. Peace Guardians.