The problems people are having with the story

After hearing various thoughts on Destiny, I've been trying to figure out how the story/lore differs from the original Halo. After all, Halo had some pretty "Space-magic" stuff in it too. My guess is that the delivery between Cortana and your Ghost is one of the biggest reasons Destiny's story seems hokey.

When Cortana was giving some exposition about the Forerunners, it seemed believable; she almost seemed human. The Ghost sounds like it's just giving you boring museum tour as it describes the places you go and things you see. I know that people complaining about Dinklage's performance isn't exactly new (I actually didn't have problem with it in the beta), but I think it really hurts the world-building of the game. If Cortana said she "used to look up at the Moon", I would have become more interested in her character and the world she lived in. When the Ghost says it, my immediate thought is that no robot would ever think like that. It just seems impossible for me to relate to him/it.

What do you guys think? Do you have any problems with the story/world? Is it the Ghost's fault?

I actually played through all of the Halo FPS games earlier this year, in a row. Those stories aren't award winning science fiction, but they stand up as some fairly good popcorn soft sci-fi, mostly. The fourth game really is the only one where the space magic and stupid psuedo-mysticism are overwhelming. Actually, it's practically nonexistent in the first game, ODST, and Reach, and kept pretty much to a minimum in 2 and 3. For that matter, 2 and 3 treat the space magic and mysticism that the Prophet of Truth spews as absolute bullshit. Jeff also pointed out quite some time ago that Halo tended to keep that stuff in the background, giving the whole military aspect priority, which helps to keep those stories grounded and easily digestible without going "what the fuck is he talking about?"

As far as Bungie's weird-ass nouns go, you can at least recognize what most of those refer to. The Silent Cartographer is a map room. The Ark is a central control hub for all the Halo rings and the place where they are built. Monitors are basically computerized caretakers of Halo rings. You really have to have either forgotten about previous games or just not paid any attention to not understand the Halo game's stories.

Some small details are admittedly kept to the books (how did Johnson get off the Halo ring?) and none of this argument counts for Halo 4. Halo 4's story isn't quite what I'd call "hot garbage", but it's easily the worst out of all of them. There are some cool set pieces and it's the one with the most action, though.

I only played the beta of Destiny, but the problem there was that nothing is ever really explained. The big question, for me, was "why should I give a fuck?" None of it felt grounded in anything remotely relate-able. A bunch of aliens are attacking because I-don't-know, there's some kind of space darkness approaching, there's this giant globe sitting there, and so on, but the connections between these things are tenuous at best and nobody really seemed to care. They were all too busy speaking in highly polished accents about a bunch of bullshit. That was the beta so I was willing to give Destiny the benefit of the doubt, but it seems like that stuff isn't really expanded on in the full game either.

I feel like with Halo they have central characters that may be a bit cliche and archetypal but they do help ground things a bit (Chief, Cortana, Sarge, etc). Destiny doesn't seem to have that.

But personally, I wasn't expecting that at all. I was expecting about MMO level of story. With the exceptions of a few MMOs, most are just background noise.

Really it does remind me the most of Diablo III, where the story is just really throw away. And that's fine for me. It's a game I want to play listening to podcasts, have TV on, listening to music, etc. And replaying content as well.

I do think the Ghost is a bit lame though. It's really a crutch in story telling they lean on HARD. He basically is a little tour guide that is the only thing filling out the universe really. At some point it's easy to just ignore him droning on because it's hard to become invested in this faceless character talking at you constantly about things that haven't been built up with other characters or other moments.

In a way it kind of reminds me of audiologs that other games use, but here it's just this once faceless robot character constantly talking to you. At least with say Bioshock you hear from different characters and they fill out the world believably, even if the game leans on audiologs to tell its story.

While I have not played Destiny, the main strength of the Halo universe was how iconic it was. Yeah, the plot was mostly sci-fi fluff, but all of the terms, characters and big events from the Halo games are instantly recognised by most gamers out there, much like the Half Life and Metal Gear Solid series consist of somewhat shallow or ludicrous plotlines saved by extremely iconic events, lore and characters. This I feel, again without having played the actual game, so forgive me if I'm completely of base, is Destinys main problem, story wise: It lacks something that the people who play it instantly can relate to the game.

For starters the name Destiny could pretty much be put upon any action game ever made. You have of course a goal, and since most games are liniear in their storyline progression, this goal is the players destiny. Halo is the name the doomsday device of the Halo universe, which is unique to this universe. Metal Gear is the same way. Half Life involves a scientist, a rather unique character trait in games, so naming it after a scientific term makes the name relatable to that specific series. But the word 'destiny' doesn't imply anything about Destiny other than "you have an objective" which isn't unique to that game. So the title is horrible. The universe also suffers from its lack of unique places and characters. Mars, Venus and Earth is not recognised as "places unique to Destiny", they're first and foremost recognized as "places in our solar system". Of course you can make these places unique to your particular universe. Total Recall is a very iconic movie in part because it makes Mars feel like a place that belongs to the movie. From what I have seen of Destiny, it fails to do this. The characters only who seeem to be there to spew exposatary dialouge at the player to move the story foreward and the story only seems to exist to get the player from one firefight to the next.

There are no relatable characters in deatiny, it seems. I have watched an awful lot of the content, and there hasnt been a single character you could give a shit about. Not that the writing is making characters unrelatable, they dont seem to even exist.

Now in Diablo, I dont bother reading the story. But this ok, because the loot race has me hooked. You are consistently finding better loot and getting stronger. Destiny though... it zeems like most of your loot is assigned to you by some random number generator at the end of the mission. It just looks empty and soulless. All the fun things about borderlands and diablo, which is obviously what they are going for and has been their justification for the repetitive missions and bland writing, are just not there.

I will be buying it on PC in a sale someday. Until then... I honestly dont think this game is going to keep up the playerbase they want it to. They sold a ridiculous amount of pre-orders, but I would not be surprised if you see a lot lf people dropping off until the dlc comes out.

It seems like there is an assload of mythogy, story, even characters in Destiny - it's just all walled off in those stupid online-only grimoire cards. It's the weirdest thing in the world. I can't fathom why they decided to hide all of it like that.

I really enjoy the Bungie mumbo jumbo type stuff. I think they are really great at naming things and making things look cool (aside from the awoken) and sound cool but unlike Halo, Destiny has failed for me so far in tying all those elements together into a game I actually enjoy playing.

@Domineeto I think the problem is in the mission design. The disjointed nature of the story missions, combined with the fact they are mostly the same thing : bring ghost to place, scan thing, beat waves of enemies, kill bullet sponge boss, repeat. Story wise, this takes you right out of the immersion. Why is that rotating set of actions so important to the unîverse?

I usually value story & characters in games very highly - in Destiny I don't think it matters. Once the combat "clicks", the game becomes a badass FPS Diablo with a higher skill ceiling. Of course it would be nice if the story & such was better, but I think the gameplay overcomes those weaknesses just as is true for games like Diablo, Battlefield/CoD MP, Borderlands, etc.

The mission design is less than great, the story at least seem to pick up when you get to Venus, and perhaps they even introduce an actual character with a face there!

I don't really have a problem with the story, I have issues with how it's told and how the way it's told reminds me of FF13

What's the problem? Find the enemy and kill them. Works for me.

One thing I do like about Destiny that I bet a lot of people won't is how old school sci-fi it is. Destiny did not strike me as a grim, space trucker future, it seems very Roddenbury in how it's clean, altruistic, it's about optimism in the dire hours, which some people call courage. It seems like the exact counterpoint to 40k or something; in the beautiful brightness of the future, there is only the incredible juxtaposition of destruction and architectural perfection.

The Last of Us promises that the world is brutal beyond belief and it's going to eat you alive. Destiny promises that the world is beautiful beyond reason and you will save it through heroism.

Saying an FPS has a high skill cieling is like saying an action movie has a deep plot.

@bollard: While normally true, compared to Diablo, despite my incredible love for that game, i'd have to agree with @ethanielrain.

I'm really not sure how to take Jeff's commentary about Destiny's story. I love Halo's story, so the fact that he and Dan are going off about how dumb it is (in not terribly compelling ways, big surprise from Dan) make it hard for me to accept their criticisms of Destiny. That said, they aren't the only ones saying that it doesn't seem up to scale with the game's supposed ambition.

I wonder how much closer to the product people were imagining Destiny will be when it's first two expansions are out. One has to suspect Activision may have played a part in partitioning it off beyond the designers' original intentions.

To be fair the original halo story delivery was considered pretty average. It's just that the characters gave it a lot of personality, which i'm hearing is lacking in destiny.

When they were talking on the bombcast about how by the second or third game they may get it right, am I imagining that Bungie has said that there aren't any sequels and that this is the one game (for the next 10 years at least) and that its all just expansions from here on out?

The thing about Destiny for me is the thing about all MMOs. The narrative doesn't really work with hundreds of other players running around doing the exact same things. Early on in the game, I think the second mission, you do something and the Ghost is like "Wow, the Darkness is really in trouble now!" and all I could think is "A) I'm level 3 and I see level 15s running around so if the Darkness is in trouble it's not fro me me and B) Hundreds of other people have already done this, I'm just a drop in the bucket."

Likewise when I go down to a planet to do a mission and see someone who is high level grinding rep or helping a low level character level, all I'm thinking is that this mission that's going to be tough for me would be a cakewalk for him, and is largely irrelevant in story terms. But Destiny never has you killing rats to get stronger, from the beginning the Ghost treats what you do as important, and it's clearly not, and it makes it seem silly.

I just finished the main story and let's just say the end cutscene is barely longer than a minute. It's just all super lazy and badly presented, even though there is potentially interesting lore.

I really, REALLY enjoyed playing the game though. One of my favorites this year.

I was thinking it's pretty much going to be like WoW, right? Small regular updates with expansions every 3-12 months or something?

Does the game world at the end of the story at least feel changed because of your actions?

There's no way they aren't selling a Destiny 2. Even though this is going in MMO directions, it's still a console game. They can get the $60, and money for DLC in between.

I won't be surprised if it's a bit until we see a sequel though and there is a substantial amount of DLC for this game.

Halo is memorable because of Master Chief and Cortana. I don't really care too much for those characters myself but they are characters that stand out. The story seems more secondary. Destiny seems to focus more on the story and doesn't really have characters of note.

That's the biggest difference for me.

Is Diablo really that simple? I would've thought the skill bar and APM would make it more complex than Destiny, I could be wrong, haven't played Destiny yet.

The WOW model relies on a subscription fee. Destiny doesn't have one, therefore it's almost certainly going to have sequels.

Of the 12 hours i played of Destiny, still got no idea what's going on. Black garden and a threat ? and a robo head ? story feels like a MMO grade of a storyline.

@bocam: Nope, not at all. One of the lines from the ending literally is: "This is far from over! There's still a threat out there!!"

EDIT: Just to be clear and without spoiling anything, the thing you actually "achieve" is fairly minor in the whole scheme of things. The game world doesn't change, because you really don't change that much. It's definitely built in a way that they can keep adding stuff into the story with expansions/DLC. If I weren't on mobile I'd put spoiler tags in and explain it better.

I have a big problem with the lazy sci-fi naming of everything. Nothing gets a proper name, it's always "The [insert noun]"

• The Traveler
• The Watcher
• The Speaker
• The Awoken
• The Tower
• The Hive
• The Fallen
• The City
• The Reef
• The Crucible

etc etc.

So far, I've only come across one example of them bothering to throw in an adjective to spice things up. It makes the whole universe very forgettable.

I don't think the problem is the Ghost. I like the Ghost. The problem is that, as someone else mentioned, there are fuck all other NPC characters to interact with. In Halo you had Sgt. Johnson or the Arbiter to interact with outside of Cortana. In Destiny, all the NPCs are just glorified window dressing for the vendors. I mean, they had Nathan Fillion voice one of the dudes in the Tower, and then give him nothing to do. What the hell were Bungie thinking?

Also, you kind of need to engage with the Grimoire, since it at least helps give some context to what you're doing. It's sort of like the item descriptions in Dark Souls, if the only way to read the item descriptions was to leave the game and use your phone to look them up. That's something that needs to come into the game, ASAP. I can't figure out why they left it out.

I didn't play the beta and went in cold and expecting the story to be mysterious and lackluster. That said, I had a blast of the few hours I played so far last night. The game itself is a great game. But just like with COD, I don't show up for the story. I just wanna shoot dudes. I feel like my issue isn't the Ghost or story or any lore related issue, but rather with what appears to be a lack of content.

Consider how they're selling the game in trailers and consider the comparisons they spur on themselves to games like Borderlands, and Star Wars Bounty Hunters, etc. Then look at what's actually there. Bungie kind of set themselves up for this by not selling the game on its own merits and its really weird that they'd advertise it as this completely tonally different game. Like, if you knew selling it as that would sell more game copies, why didnt you just make that game? Its wierd.

Halo has Sarge, and that made everything feel way more grounded from the first cutscene.

Space mysticism or not, Halo originally resonated with people because it had a bunch of references to the space marines in Aliens. At least, that's my theory. It kicked ass when I started playing at 16 and felt like a good, fun world.

They started laying on more Covenant religious bs in 2, but by that point they had already grabbed me so it was easier to accept.

I wonder if the massive marketing budget was so much its own machine that they operated too independently of the developers, and went with their own ideas of what the game was.

The big problem with a Destiny/Halo comparison is time. When Halo came out it was fine compared to the competition, Destiny on the other hand falls short even when compared to bad titles these days. It's the same reason people loved the lore etc in Diablo 1/2 but everyone complained about 3. The games didn't change, our expectations did.

Also, as I mentioned in another topic, it tries to straddle this line of being stoic and iconic while using some pretty ridicolous concepts and the more I've played it the more I feel it fails at carving a straight path. It keeps on sending conflicting messages of wether it's trying to impress you or being ironic.

Maybe. I just wonder in the future if they lean into what the marketing made the game seem like or keep going their own way. Destiny already made its budget back in day 1 sales, before any reviews hit. The real question is are all these people going to be happy with what the game actually is? Maybe most of them played the Beta and set their expectations accordingly, but it will be interesting to see where Bungie goes from here. If they feel the need to react to fan complaints about the story or if they stick with it based on the initial sales. I think people won't really know if this game is a success until the first big expansion comes out. All we know now is the marketing campaign was a huge success, but people are actively forming their opinion about the actual game world and mission structure as we speak.

It's just... Too simple.

It's the Mass Effect plot without the Mass Effect dialogue and characters. It's all the broadstrokes of every Sci Fi end of the Universe story and none of the details, personality and quirkiness. The game feels super solemn which is cool but it also feels completely held up by wire strings and there as a playground, not a place.

Bad guys are attacking us because they are evil. You are a good guy. Go fight them. For a long time/10 year plan.

Halo had some amount of variety/personality/actually had characters; not to say Halo was an amazing story but it was passable and occasionally good. Destiny is just press square by a terminal sometimes.

Ghost is part of the issue, but I think he's just a larger part of what's lacking in Destiny. Both Halo and Destiny have fairly routine sci-fi stories - though Destiny is a lot more mystical and less grounded - but Destiny is lacking all the details that drew people into Halo. Instead of Chief, hero of humanity and treated with reverance or scorn everywhere he goes, you've got Nameless Guardian in a quasi-MMO world. Instead of Cortana, who is so iconic that Microsoft co-opted her name for their stupid phone app, you've got Ghost. And you otherwise have no returning or memorable background characters that Halo did.

Then there's the storytelling through mission design, which is basically absent from Destiny. Halo had levels and missions that helped tell the story and propel you from one place to the next, even if you were esentially on a straight path. And Bungie seemed to be getting better at that over time with Halo 3, Reach, and ODST having some of the best in the series. In Destiny you're doing standard, reptitive missions going through nearly the same corridors several times and hearing another voiceover from Ghost. Not to mention that in between missions instead of being propelled to the next chapter you're put back into a hub with a long series of loading screens, and you're constantly surrounded by other people, leaving things completely disjointed. It's lost everything they were famous for in the Halo series by making the world and missions repeatable and MMO-like instead of memorable and unique.

If I had to guess, it's mainly just in translating their storytelling from a single player campaign to a loot-driven MMO with shared levels, they lost everything that made the Halo campaigns work.

I just read an article on Forbes that contended that the weak story is actually intentional and that Bungie really only provided it as a wrapper for a larger sandbox. Instead, you are supposed to have a bunch of individual moments you share with friends. This is a view I actually think is pretty accurate. Where it all falls apart is that Bungie's made it so damn difficult to group with anyone outside of their matchmaking feature.

The Clan functionality in the game right now is vestigial it may as well not even exist; you can't see who on the Clan is online without adding them as a PSN/XBOX friend manually, there is no in-game feature for planning Clan events, etc. You can really see that Bungie has a ton of experience with shooters while simultaneously having no clue about making MMOs.

I think the game might end up being pretty good if they get some of that stuff in post-haste. It needs to be quick though, or their player base is going to leave and I'm not sure Bungie is going to stop counting their money soon enough to realize it.

The problem is they, for whatever reason, actually expected this game to have one. Not sure why. You don't play a game like this for the story.

Dinkle's voice acting has zero effect on making the story for Destiny better or worse. Having someone else for the role of the little robot thing would not make the story for Destiny better either. The problem with Destiny is largely in the writing among other things.

I personally enjoy the lore and story for Halo. Cortana is an amazing character and Jen Taylor really brings that character to life in the games. That being said, the Cortana character and her origin is already well written to begin with in both the games and books. The good voice acting in Halo helps an already well written universe. If you take out all the average to sub-par voice acting in Destiny, the writing is still largely pretty terrible.

The story in the Halo universe for the most part at least makes sense and is written in a way where an emotional attachment can be developed between characters and the player/reader. When something drastic happens to someone in the Halo universe it carries weight. I'm not gonna turn a blind eye to the fact that there are a few "space-magic"-y things -- especially in Halo 4 with the Promethean stuff -- that are pretty dumb, but those are still small pockets of dumb in a largely well written and established universe that does not take away or impede on that weight when shit happens.

I've watched a lot of Destiny gameplay over the past several days and I've heard some really terrible dialogue and there is nothing there that makes anything nor anyone in the game believable. There's no one likeable, relatable. or worth giving a shit about in that universe. There's nothing motivating the player to progress. Even a game like Borderlands 2 managed to humanise it's characters to some degree plus the additional lure of a shit ton of loot to hunt for.

Destiny just seems to have a lot of 'Go here. Kill things.' and 'Go here. Scan a thing.' or 'Go here. Shoot a wave of enemies while Robo Dinkle scans something' and not much focus on anything else but that. It's a game that even if it has a pretty terrible story would at least have the loot hunt to fall back on but it doesn't even really have that to fall back on.

I agree.

I also think blaming all story issues on Dinklage's performance is ridiculous and completely unfair. I don't even think the story is all that bad, and It seems somewhat irrelevant to the core game anyway. This really sounds like a personal preference to me. I never liked Cortana myself, and found her annoying most of the time, but that's just a personal issue and I wouldn't blame Halo's story on her.

It's also worth noting that the Halo games actively acknowledge that the Covenant's religious stuff is bullshit, and every word of it is just the Covenant deluding themselves. The overarching story of The Arbiter's levels in Halo 2 are pretty much about establishing this.

I can see where you're coming from, but I thought the beta established that most humans now live in some tower because the rest of the Earth is pretty dangerous? It has the clean look, yes, but it's still got that dark, shitty-place-to-live sci-fi idea in its world.

I do agree with you, though, I'd like to see some good sci-fi whose outlook on the future is positive.

I'm just sort of confused by how little dialogue there is. I mean you have Nathan Fillion in the tower and he barely says anything.

I feel like the game they designed and the story they imagined are at odds with each other. They're doing a quick get in get out mmo style fps and somehow they want you to care about the story without them actually telling the story. Maybe if they had a mass effect style codex it would be easier to dive into the lore but they instead put the whole thing outside of the game. I really feel like the MMO stuff is holding back the story telling.

It's the one foot in both worlds approach that is the problem, I think. I understand that people are enjoying it for the Diablo / Borderlands-esque gameplay loop, but those games have loot and skill progression at a frankly manic rate, that's what keeps people playing them. It remains to be seen whether Destiny can keep its player base engaged. I personally hope it does, and they fix some of the problems people have with it in upcoming DLC. But if all the DLC will be adding is more places to shoot stuff in, and the story telling remains the same bland affair, I don't have high hopes for it as a 10 year commitment.

@believer258: Good point, they got to write their silly mystical stuff while simultaneously cutting it down and being self-aware about it.

Destiny (so far) has been dead fucking serious. It's like we've become the Covenant.

Interesting that such a big game seems not to be super divisive. Whether you like the actual gameplay or not, everyone's almost universally "eh" oh the story, lore, execution thereof.

What small bits of the story you get in the first couple hours or so of the game have interested me, and I honestly don't think Dinkladge sounds as terrible as everyone keeps saying. The game looks gorgeous and suggests a civilization that was very much a Roddenberry-esque civilization before it got pulped by the Darkness and their love of hair metal.

What few Grimoire entries I've unlocked have added a certain amount of additional depth, but not enough (and not accessible in the game! What the fuck, Bungie?). I would like the story to be a little more front and center than it is.

I just finished the game, and like to say that there's almost no story and the "meh" feeling jeff had continuous the whole story through. I dont even know if they hired a 5 year old kid to right something on a paper, because there's no story ! Not even Paul McCartney jumping out off a space ship saying gotcha bitch !