Wait you can talk to NPCs?

I heard somewhere that you can to get a little more juice outta the story... Maybe I shoulda confirmed that it was true first =P

I wish I could - but I feel like the game doesn't let me... :/ I really hope there is some kind of satisfying 'ending' as the latest bombcast talk has me worried.

I mean, it could be true, but everyone I've talked to so far has just sold me stuff or given me messages/bounties.

Kinda although they don't really seem to give much context to what's going on early on. I'm hoping it's a bit more than blah blah darkness blah blah.

I want a full story. I don't buy games without stories at full price.

Where is the choice, "I'd like to care, I'm watching and asking all teh NPCs, but the story is not really showing up".

We should not blame the victims if they cannot find the story or the wherewithal to care about what little trickles down to them.

I like the story, and I've quite enjoyed the cutscenes. I think a lot of the story could be delivered better and from a wider variety of interesting characters, though.

I certainly would, because I think the vistas and the world are evocative enough. But I don't. That hasn't been a significant detriment to my experience with the game (which I'm actually enjoying quite a bit), but it does feel like a missed opportunity.

It's so plain and boring right now. Go save the universe. There is evil out there. Uh huh. Maybe it turns up soon. I don't really care honestly, but a neat story would be nice.

I really want to but so far the game is doing a pretty poor job of telling one.

Wish I could, but feel as though the story completely fell through when I, as an Awoken character, went to the Awoken home and both my own dialogue and that of the Awoken there seemed to recognise me as a normal human character rather than Awoken :P Never mind that I have the same skin and eyes as they have, every bit of dialogue was just me telling them I was from earth and them being annoyed at me "trespassing" on their home.

Nope. I'm playing it to put some holes in some fools.

What story? I'm glad i'm not the only one in the menu during cutscenes lol

I bought Destiny to be a loot shoot. I'm a satisfied customer. Sometimes Peter dinklage tells me there might be better loot on another planet so I go to the other planet and shoot.

im interested in the world of destiny, but like the "plot" of this first game, so far (im on venus) is a mess. and thats shocking and disappointing to me since the halo series had some of the best stories in a fps imo.

Still enjoying the game though, but i fully expect the reviews to slaughter the game, aand i hope bungie takes on some of the criticism and addresses it for the first expansion.

I too am interested in what the reviews are going to be like. More to see how Bungie reacts. I don't really but a lot of stock in scores, but they will have to. They have already been getting out in front of the negative ones, which seems a bit of a bizarre thing to do before any reviews are even out. IF the reviews are positive, great, but I wonder about their reaction to negativity.

I'm interested in the world they have here and really wish there was more of it.

So I..guess so?

Yeah I feel like they didn't record different dialog for the different races, which is a bizarre fucking decision to make.

There's a story in this game? I really enjoy the gameplay, but when it comes to the story they never explain shit. What is up with the Traveler? who knows! why is it here? beats me! who are we fighting? the darkness! who are they and what do they want? just shut up because your the light! blah blah blah. Also here is some random info from this pamphlet i found about this place you are shooting through!

I guess I'd say I wanted to care about the story, but so far that aspect of the game has been a bummer. It's super serious while also being real cheesy, which isn't a great combo. I really like the gameplay and that's keeping me going so far, but the story and some of the decisions they made with social stuff (lack of ways to interact, clan features being only available on their website, etc etc) seem really dumb.

Yeahhhh, I really expected to get some kind of side stories/lore from the NPCs in the tower. There seem to be a bunch of different factions and stuff, but the NPCs don't seem to want to tell you anything about themselves or those factions lol. It feels like the "important" NPCs are missing a "sooooo, whats your deal?" or "whats your faction about?" button to at least attempt to get you into the world.

I think there is a big difference between the awoken who live in the reef and those born in the city. The reef folk probably look down on an earthborn awoken the same way they do a human.

It has potential. It really does. Unfortunately almost all of the actual interesting bits are being told through the Grimoire, which is a completely separate thing that you can't even access in-game. Right now, the story you get is basically "go fight THE DARKNESS" in different locales. Its a bit disappointing but I guess Bungie is expecting you to fill in the blanks with your own experiences.

Indeed.... Wouldn't really matter all that much if it hadn't been as specific as this example really. Just feels weird playing as a race just to have other members of the race seemingly not noticing I am one of them. If they could have explained why they act like that it would have kinda been okay, but, again, it just happens out of nowhere.

It feels like Bungie made this game they thought was going to totally blow everyone away, and only after the game neared completion did someone say, "you know we're just making Borderlands, right?" I mean, I know they in actuality weren't oblivious to Borderlands, but perhaps their past successes with Halo have caused them to have a little too much pride and confidence in themselves.

I haven't even played the game, though, so what do I know.

That was kind of what I was thinking after seeing that cutscene too, but as far as I know it hasn't been explained as such anywhere else before that.... Maybe as part of the grimoire? But, can't really expect most people will go through all those tiny little bits of lore just to find out something like that...

It feels like a sequel to a long running series or something, there is so much terminology being thrown about with 0 context given beyond 'guardian good, darkness bad' and while I'm sure the grimoire has all sorts of background info for some unfathomable reason its not accessible in game. I want to like the story but it seems so obfuscated (and not in a good way, like dark souls).

Also, the exo have totally normal human voices and it freaks me out.

Gameplay's great, it's awfully pretty, the in-game music fits it well, and there's enough of a skeleton to the story for me to fill in the blanks.

Specifically regarding the story, I think it's a nice change of pace to not have so many answers spoon-fed to me.

If I was resurrected and told to save the world by a floating Portal cube, I'd demand answers. The game doesn't give me answers in a way I feel it should. This game has no personality to it. It has nothing resembling human thought or interaction.

I care as much about the story as I did in Halo and that's pretty close to 0%. When the ghost starts talking I just think "ye ye, just do your thing, let the enemies spawn". It's probably also due to the fact I'm playing the whole game co-op with 2 friends, who are chatting all over it :)

at some point I keep expecting it turn into Mass Effect part 1, but that's a lore I LOVE to dive into.

I'm finding it really hard to care about the story. I appreciate that it's difficult to tell a compelling story in an MMO/mission-based setting, but it just seems bad regardless. Peter Dinklage not giving a crap doesn't help, either.

What story?

i'm fairly certain they just pulled a Mad Libs on an old Halo script and inserted generic video game names for all the characters and important names. It's disappointing, but I wasn't into Halo for its story either, so... eh.

Are we sure there is a story in Destiny?

I need an option for the poll that is "I really wanted to get very into the story of Destiny, but the game itself has very little story and what it does have is so cryptic and mumbo-jumboy that I could not tell you what is really happening at any given time. Also, I have only have like 2 cutscenes so far and none of the NPCs at the Tower have any real, meaningful dialogue so I guess I don't care."

@monkeyking1969 said:

My thoughts exactly, well said.

Also, I refuse to read the grimoire cards until they put them in the damn game. Mass Effect solved this problem by just having an codex option in the menu and that was 7 years ago - don't make me do homework on your video game just so I can understand 1/10th of what is going on.

Well what seems like 99% of the lore in this game is locked into that grimoire thing. So its probably in there some where. Along with why there are skeletons on the moon. A corpse would never rot on the moon.

Where's the option for "I would, if Bungie told good stories"

or "Dunno, haven't played and want to see poll results"

Generally, when it comes to first-person shooters, I only marginally follow the stories. Furthermore, I forget most of what's going on as soon as I am done. For example:

1. Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare. Something about a Russian terrorist then a bomb blows up. I think there was a knife fight at the end, but I could be thinking of MW3.
2. Halo series. Covenant wants to use the rings to blow up the galaxy, a giant plant shows up, and you race in a warthog to reach an escape ship at the end.
3. Borderlands / Borderlands 2. Go to Pandora, crazy lady wants you to find a key, evil corporation wants the vault loot / return to Pandora, evil corp dude tries to kill you, gather the band, brother-sister, etc...

I won't be playing Destiny until the weekend (no time, work), but I'm not expecting any more than what I got out of other similar shooters. Move from kill-box to kill-box then get a reward. RPG's are where I look for story, not FPS's.

I think the issue is developers don't try to make an effort to create engaging stories for FPS. Look at Half-Life and for the more recent one Wolfenstein, both have solid stories which are engaging and people can at least understand.

Developers do not have to go to serious lengths to create lore for a game, they just have to ensure its interesting, engaging, has depth and most importantly is understandable.

As someone really not into FPS', I had zero interest in Wolfenstein until I watched the quick look and saw the interaction in the hub areas and a surprisingly engaging storyline. I was hoping for more of the same here.

That Destiny, a game that is heavily lent to an MMO and the expectation of their associated trappings, does not have the same sense of immersion is my biggest disappointment in what is otherwise an enjoyable experience.

Having finished the game I will say that this is the question the OP should be asking.

@nezza: Yep, I also didn't expect much from Wolfenstein's story either, I expected it to have a Duke Nukem feel to it but it was surprisingly good and the pace of the story was also good.

The game is thoroughly enjoyable to play with friends and has incredible gameplay and artistic polish.

The in-game story element is nearly non-existent. What little there is, we find only on the bungie website. There is even less in-game story exposition than Titanfall, which was relatively threadbare in terms of story itself. At least Titanfall had always been branded as a pure multiplayer release and so expectations were set accordingly. The messaging with Destiny has been much more vague and that is why so many people (myself included) are feeling disappointed. This isn't 'gamer entitlement' in my opinion.

It's nuts how lame the story is. Fucking ridiculous. That moon sword thing seemed cool. It could have so easily been cool. A legendary weapon that destroyed countless guardians? Its owner sleeping, the sword buried underground? Protected by a series of princes? This is all story stuff that should be easy to translate. But no, what do you do? Kill a dude with yellow health, go underground, find the sword fucking sitting on the ground, pick it up I guess because it's literally just a sword?, kill everyone with it, and then it leaves your inventory because that's how you destroy one of the most deadly weapons in the history of Destiny's universe. Yay! Good work, let's go back to your dumb ship. There's a story there, but Bungie willfully ignores it in favor of being boring as shit.

And yet I can't wait to jump back in and play more.

This is one of the most fascinating games I've ever played.

The story in destiny is an empty dry fart.

Not even a wet fart, as that has potential consequences.

I don't really care about the story. I like that there is one and I try to follow it as much as possible but I don't really consider this a story driven game.

Destiny is one of those games that doesn't need a story. The story in Destiny just holds it back.

I didn't really mind the story until getting into the level 20 stuff, going back and having a bunch of unskippable mid-mission cutscenes while replaying a level and dialogue that can't be muted separate from normal game sounds are making it a nuisance. It's at the point where I leave my TV on mute so I can listen to a podcast or video in the background and it sucks to not get any of the audio feedback from enemies and weapons as a result.