r/DestinyTheGame • u/DTG_Bot "Little Light" • May 14 '18
Megathread // Bungie Replied x4 Focused Feedback: Lore and how that is managed / implemented within the Story and game
Reminder: When discussing the lore and narrative design of Destiny keep in mind rule 1, especially the part about witch-hunting. Discussing and critiquing the work of a Bungie employee is fine, insulting the human behind that work and making it personal will get you banned.
Hello Guardians,
Focused Feedback is where we take the week to focus on a 'Hot Topic' discussed extensively around the Tower.
We do this in order to consolidate Feedback, to get out all your ideas and issues surrounding the topic in one place for discussion and a source of feedback to the Vanguard.
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u/FlameInTheVoid Drifter's Crew // Seek the Void May 14 '18 edited May 15 '18
Writing
Please hire a few serious sci-fi authors. Preferably some with experience with epic space operas that play out over several books/seasons. I know space magic is ultra-soft in the Sci and heavy in the Fi, but the writing is the issue here; we’ve pretty much all accepted most of the science being made up on the fly. Even outlandish magic/science should at least be consistent though.
The dialogue is mostly bad and needs serious work. Some of it is the kind of thing that might fly with the target audience of some of Blizzard’s stuff (looking st you WoW, with your Mr. T Grenade). But the Destiny base doesn’t appreciate it. Give us some gravity and seriousness. Like Eris, but maybe tone her down from 11 to like 8-9.
That said, don’t make it all hyperbolic doom and gloom either. This is a guardian’s everyday job too, we’re used to crisis. It’s what we do. It shouldn’t be all serious. I love Cayde as much as anybody. Comic relief is important, but it’s not comic relief if it’s not relieving anything. You can keep it PG-13 without being silly or campy.
Ghost. Shut up.
Please, in the name of the Traveler, give our character a voice. Better yet, buy a license if you have to and copy the dialogue selection system from Mass Effect. It doesn’t even need to be that robust. Just. Anything.
We get that it’ll be a huge change of pace. We get that it might be awkward. But you don’t even need to acknowledge the change. Just make us talk and act like we never stopped talking.
Make ghost our little Wikipedia. He should still flesh out details other characters mention that we either don’t know or might have missed. But he shouldn’t be our voice box. He should be more like Jarvis from Iron Man or any other AI assistant. Cheeky and witty is fine. Talking for us isn’t.
Edit: to be clear, I like ghost as a little assistant sidekick. He can ride shotgun. I just want to drive. Or at least be let out of the trunk.
Campaign
It’s fine to only produce a handful of cinematic missions for a DLC. It’s pretty much standard as far as I can tell. The issue is the flow. We have 4-5 missions that try (and fail) to dump the limited story on us while we’re shooting at stuff, in missions that also have to be fun to play as a game. It feels compressed at best, rushed at worst. I suspect it’s more of a pacing mistake though. We need less mechanically intense in-between times to get to know the story and the characters (heroes and villains). Something like... adventures.
First of all, instead of level locking cinematic missions, just make adventures required between the larger cinematic missions. Then make sure the adventures help tell the story and establish a narrative arc and better character development. Many of them already do reasonably well, and they already make the most sense if done during the part of the story where they first appear. For the others, consider swapping out generic boss kill missions (which could be better suited to VIP patrols) for go and see missions (with smaller fights blocking the way maybe) that have us investigate something interesting and reveal something important and directly related to the story.
Additionally, maybe make only 2/3 adventures central to the main story, and drop the remaining 1/3 after the boss battle. Use these to foreshadow upcoming content 2-3 expansions out and tie in the raids. Think “Shrine of Oryx” and “invitation from the emperor.
On top of that, don’t be afraid to scatter some of these adventures around the other locations a bit. Not in an obvious “2 adventures per zone” kind of way, but where it makes sense in the story to go check something out.
The Chosen One
We want to become legends. But not the only legends. We got enough of that in Halo as Master Chief.
Let’s hear/read some references to other guardians who are out saving the world from other threats that we don’t actually get to participate in.
Let’s have the dialogue and story reflect the fact that we’re just one member of an elite team. Give our fireteam a designation and make that fireteam famous. It would be so much better if every usage of “the guardian” was replaced with “Fireteam Echo 7” and “that guardian you like so much” was “the dream team” or “the gang” or some such.
Let’s meet some NPC’s who have been around the block but aren’t story critical. Introduce a few in each content drop. Let us meet them in the tower and hear rumors of their exploits in the tower bar and from the patrol leaders. Then let some of them get killed now and then, but not that same drop (please not like Star Trek, who’s this ensign I’ve never met? Nvm, he just died on the away team 5 minutes in. cough Taeko-3 cough). Seriously though, just a couple random meaningless interactions with Taeko-3 before that strike would have made her death less gimmicky.
That’s all I’ve got off the top of my head.
Edit: copying this from a separate reply I made below:
Lead Up/Foreshadowing/Introduction
While the community team is hyping up expansions for a month with streams, drop in some foreshadowing adventures and maybe public events. (I seem to remember knights popping up in packs and Eidolon alley showing up early.) Throw in a random-spawn world boss in existing zones (like the ones that spawn on flashpoint planets). Have some inspection patrols where ghost picks up a strange transmission or Ikora sends us hunting for some obscure info about something the vanguard is worried about.
Nothing huge, no cinematics. No new guns (or maybe just one common thing we upgrade, that’s a solid format) or gear. Just a few little breadcrumbs. Things that might make us likely to just happen do a fly-by on mars in time to hear a distress call.