There's nothing I hate more than an alien with no respect for history...

August 28, 2017 11:45 AM

Catch Up On Destiny's Entire Story With This 90-Minute Video [YouTube] [1:31:12] “As we bid farewell to Destiny, a video game renowned for its storytelling prowess, let’s take the time to catch up on the plot so far. This feature-length video, by YouTuber My Name Is Byf, is possibly the best Destiny lore explainer you’ll ever watch. Even if you’ve paid attention to Destiny’s lore over the past three years, this video is full of juicy details about how Bungie’s universe functions, from the early days of the Iron Lords to the invasion of Ghaul that sets up Destiny 2 (out next week for PS4/Xbox One, with a PC release to follow in October). Imagine if the actual game had told its story this well!” [via: Kotaku] [Previously.]

• 'Destiny' Lore: What You Need To Know Ahead of 'Destiny 2' [Rolling Stone]

“There's ample evidence to suggest Destiny was once a very different game, with a much stronger emphasis on traditional storytelling. The best examples of the game's narrative aren't in the game at all; instead, they're relegated to the Grimoire located at Bungie.net – a vast, cryptic archive of short fiction and vignettes, each written from the viewpoint of a character within the game's eon-spanning lore. Not to beat a dead horse, but the decision to exclude the Grimoire cards from Destiny itself is a serious blunder in an otherwise historic, occasionally masterful game. Why not let us experience the story while we're playing? Even if it meant finishing a raid and then flying back to the Tower to read an ebook on my TV, that'd still be a marked improvement over a game with almost no story at all beyond the tales we live out ourselves. [...] In the meantime, it's worth looking back at Destiny's story so far and teasing out where we might be about to go from here.”

• Destiny 2 won’t use Grimoire cards [Polygon]

“Anybody who has played Destiny will be familiar with the concept of Grimoire cards, which are unlocked for accomplishing all kinds of tasks in the game — playing a particular strike for the first time, loading into a new Crucible map, unlocking an exotic weapon. The lore of this far-future universe is confined to those cards, which are written in the stilted tone of a religious text. However, Grimoire cards aren’t accessible from within Destiny — there’s no way to read them in the game. Instead, players have to head to the web to check out their Grimoire cards. They’re available on Bungie’s official site, and on third-party resources like Destiny Grimoire and Ishtar Collective. This isn’t some ancillary extension of Destiny, like Overwatch comics or Team Fortress 2 animated shorts; it’s the core fiction of the franchise’s universe, and players have to go outside the game to explore it.”

• Exploring the Lore with Jason Harris & Matthew Ward [MMORPG]

“Where is the line between the story experience we have as we move through the timeline of the narrative versus when we’re actually playing? So we are very mindful of this, we try to find a balance, but it is a philosophical question. There is a fine line between trying to engage new players and new fans into this franchise and not bog them down with too much backstory and I think setting up a world and a scenario and a conflict, it was kind of like killing two birds with one stone. You’re either starting new and fresh as a new player or it’s almost like you’re starting a whole new journey as a returning player. Returning players’ audio will be different, we have some contextualized dialogue spaces where when you come across the Taken for the first time or any [character] you’re going to a series of lines, even as you move around the tower at the beginning of the game, there’s a couple of lines in there that harken back to or remind you of the experience you had in the Destiny 1 era, that if this is your first time playing the franchise and your gamertag has never touched Destiny anything it’s going to introduce it to you as if you’ve never heard of it before.”

• Destiny 2’s open world content is as shallow as crepes, but equally tasty [VG24/7]

“Destiny 2 is not as new and different as it’s been made to sound, but once you temper your expectations there’s a lot of fun to be had. Activision flew me out to Seattle earlier this month to play Destiny 2, an occasion I didn’t expect to enjoy much in the wake of the underwhelming Destiny 2 beta. Well, friends, let me tell you: I am absolutely back on my bullshit. I played Destiny 2 every hour they allowed me and on one evening had to be escorted out of the room so it could be locked up. Having said that, Destiny 2 has been oversold with regards to its open world exploration content. This is important, because this is where PvE players end up once they’ve completed the campaign, done their weekly raid and run out of patience for strike playlists. Exploration content needs to be weighty enough to justify returning to the environments, it needs to be varied enough to keep you coming back, and it needs to feel like more than chores.”

• ‘Destiny 2’ tackles the original’s biggest problem: storytelling [Engadget]

“The first time I played the original Destiny, I felt frustrated and annoyed. It was a fun online co-op team shooter but the game's narrative was insultingly shallow -- a poorly written space opera where a vague "darkness" was out to destroy a mysterious entity called the Traveler that somehow thrust humanity into a golden age, but also might be dead. It took a year for Bungie to patch in interesting characters and emotional hooks with The Taken King expansion, but by then, I had moved on. Destiny 2, however, has my attention. Not only does it look like a good starting point for new players, but it has the one thing every epic story needs: a great villain. It's possible I'm jumping the gun here. Technically, we don't know a lot about Dominus Ghaul, the antagonist of Destiny 2's campaign, but what Bungie has shown hints at a more complex villain than the franchise has had before.”

posted by Fizz (10 comments total)

I did not play the first Destiny, so I'm walking into this universe completely blind. That being said, I'm not overly concerned. I'm still going to play and have fun.

I'm sure there are some bad guys and some good guys and I'll be shooting things so I can get better loot. Still, I will give the YouTube video up above a watch as it does look like there's a fair bit of lore/story-history built into this world and I love exploring stuff like that.
posted by Fizz at 11:57 AM on August 28, 2017

we are in the golden age of sassy robots
posted by sixswitch at 12:31 PM on August 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Are the names still meaningless and nonsensical?
posted by Apocryphon at 12:44 PM on August 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

That's pretty legit criticism Apocryphon.

I *snort LOLed* .
posted by Fizz at 12:57 PM on August 28, 2017

Regarding the open world content - I'd be surprised if anyone who's played Destiny a lot expects the marketing regarding Destiny 2's open world content to pan out. The worlds are beautiful, but shallow and repetitive, and every attempt they made to try to make them more interesting fell flat.

I'm more hopeful for the storytelling in the campaigns. They really turned it around for the Taken King expansion - it seemed like they finally had the "we're doing this wrong" epiphany, even though they didn't (couldn't) fix everything.

I can't wait to get back to my PS4 to play Destiny 2 despite having tempered expectations, though. Destiny was a lot of fun.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 4:13 PM on August 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Bungie used to be really, really good at story. The Marathon Story Page was active for almost two decades.

Is it too late to hope for a Durandal cameo?
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 4:46 PM on August 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Durandal and Cortana are both named after legendary swords, so I'm kind of surprised Rasputin wasn't named "Samosek" or "Kladenets". I guess that's just one more thing they'll fix for the sequel.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 6:09 AM on August 29, 2017

So hey: I can't get a real answer anywhere for this, but does anyone know how long it'll be before the servers shut off for Destiny the first? If it's at all feasible I'd really like to try and play the single-playable content in the first game before I start the second (as long as I'm able to manage a PS4 in the next few months)...
posted by Merzbau at 7:47 AM on August 29, 2017

So hey: I can't get a real answer anywhere for this, but does anyone know how long it'll be before the servers shut off for Destiny the first?

It looks like they're being pretty vague about any specific kind of a date. This is what I found through a Game Rant article:

“We’ve planned to support it for the foreseeable future, so while we do have a sense of finality and closure as the theme of this [Age of Triumph] event, we are by no means turning the lights off on Destiny 1.” ~ Bungie community manager David “DeeJ” Dague

posted by Fizz at 11:09 AM on August 29, 2017

Also, as an aside. The game is beautiful on PC. One of the most gorgeous looking games I've ever played on my PC. This is going to be a great game. Is it October yet? This beta release was not enough time!
posted by Fizz at 1:45 PM on August 29, 2017