Destiny 2 has a plot in there someplace, however it doesn’t reward consideration and interrogation.
Destiny 2 feels likes its stunning, busy environments have been created primarily based on some broad narrative brushstrokes and design objectives, after which one other group got here alongside afterward and plugged vaguely-related missions in any outdated the place.
Well! That’s how open world video video games are, isn’t it, and Destiny 2 in all probability doesn’t should be known as out particularly for it, even when different titles do a greater job of creating mission places really feel extra crafted when in comparison with the remainder of the open world.
But what makes Destiny 2’s missions really feel particularly hole to me is the shortage of memorable, fast connection to the continuing story and its supposed motivations – and the underwhelming nature of that story. For all Bungie’s discuss of manufacturing a cohesive narrative, giving us a central villain and putting all the story in the game instead of Grimoire cards, Destiny 2’s marketing campaign fails to inject that means into gameplay and environments.
To Bungie’s credit score, Destiny 2’s marketing campaign has a more straightforward plot than the first game: the Red Legion conquer the City. Ghaul steals your Light. You observe down your former leaders, and then you definately convey down Ghaul’s finest weapon. Finally, all of you assault the Red Legion collectively, ending in a closing showdown with the person (?) himself. Easy! Hangs collectively.
But each time you arrive someplace new alongside the best way, you’re instantly despatched off on a collection of distracting, necessary chores unrelated to this story thread besides by the flimsiest pretext. Nessus is the one vacation spot with an instantly grokkable and linked narrative, and whereas the remainder of the Destinations do even have story justifications they’re totally forgettable and muddled because of an absence of signposting and callbacks, presenting merely as Follow The Waypoint And Kill Baddies Because Reasons.
“Ghaul isn’t actually present in your story, but in some other story happening in cutscenes you’re not involved with at all.”
Bungie talked up Ghaul as a really complicated and relatable villain, ever-present within the story as a major motivator pulling you thru the marketing campaign as shortly as doable so you will get on with discovering out The Real Destiny 2 Starts Here – however he isn’t profitable on this function. Ghaul and the participant character don’t have any rapport, no chemistry, no private connection; you haven’t any purpose to care about him past being instructed that he took your Light and conquered your metropolis, issues launched solely minutes earlier.
Ghaul isn’t really current in your story after that, however in another story taking place in cutscenes you’re not concerned with in any respect. This different story, about Ghaul’s historical past as a rejected toddler left to die and his subsequent obsession with gaining value, is just very evenly and vaguely communicated by the sport itself, and has nothing in any way to do with you and what you’re doing. It’s additionally very a lot instructed, not proven, with the participant relegated to a pure spectator function.
You’re not even instructed that a lot, for all of the grandiose speeches and dramatic backwards and forwards with The Other Cabal Guy (that’s the Consul, simply FYI). Even the entire query of what the Cabal Empire is (not to mention what Ghaul’s place in it’s and who the Leviathan Raid boss is) shouldn’t be actually addressed “in-game” as Bungie stated all pertinent lore can be. It’s often referred to in some scannable quips and non-obligatory content material, however the meat of it’s in paper supplies included with particular editions – and Destiny 1’s Grimoire playing cards. Ah ha ha.
Compare and distinction with Wolfenstein: The New Order, which I performed for the primary time this weekend. Villains General Deathshead, Frau Engel and Bubi pop up in-game, interacting instantly with you, a number of instances. They threaten and hurt individuals you’ve already had purpose to come back to know and like, or at the least to empathise with, as a result of they’re grounded and actual characters. Things they do occur proper in entrance of you, usually when you’re nonetheless seeing via BJ’s eyes, in an instance of displaying relatively than telling. There’s a really clear, black-and-white narrative of excellent versus evil anyone can instantly get behind, however poking into non-obligatory conversations, cutscenes and the blurbs on idea artwork, supplies all of the nuance, context, motivation and relatable character perception required to raise story and characters past the cartoon macro construction.
Moreover, as ludicrous as Wolfenstein: The New Order’s story and conditions are, they’re threaded collectively so tightly that it’s very straightforward to comply with the plot. Each mission inside an arc builds naturally to the subsequent and follows on from the final; whenever you go to the moon, you recognize why, and also you care.
As a single-player recreation with linear play order and a set protagonist, Wolfenstein: The New Order has inarguable benefits over Destiny 2, which should navigate the murky waters of storytelling and mission design in open world, multiplayer areas. But I don’t excuse Destiny 2 on this rely, as a result of Bungie hasn’t performed something with the marketing campaign to leverage and even acknowledge these differentiating components; Destiny 2’s cutscenes, dialogue and missions would really feel at house in a PS2 period recreation. In a recreation of hundreds of thousands of Guardians, it makes no effort to elucidate why just one regains the Light. It offers you the flexibility to create an avatar to characterize you within the recreation world, however why hassle when you have got completely no company* over your individual story? It additionally maintains the phantasm in all dialogue and cutscenes that there’s just one energetic agent in the whole world, even whenever you’re clearly hanging about in a fireteam of three like, proper then.
“It’s a very old school video game affair where you are relentlessly drawn through a series of environments, suffer through terrible cutscenes, never have any agency over your actions and see no lasting change to the world state.”
For some purpose, Bungie has elected to disconnect gameplay and story solely and fall again on old school recreation narrative instruments. I requested the developer about this at a preview occasion, and was instructed that typically in video games you simply you need to settle for such dissonances, providing them up as sacrifices on the sacred altar of Telling A Good Story.
That makes me fairly indignant, as a result of Destiny 2’s story shouldn’t be a god worthy of worship. It shouldn’t be the Citizen Kane of video video games. It’s not even the Marvel Cinematic Universe of video video games, regardless of drawing very clear inspiration (can we please cease with the fixed voiceover quips for a minute, please, please). It is, in actual fact, a really old-fashioned online game affair the place you might be relentlessly drawn via a collection of environments, undergo via horrible cutscenes, by no means have any company over your actions and see no lasting change to the world state.
And additionally? Absolutely none of your lore questions are answered and even acknowledged. To actually put a cherry on all of it, there’s a post-credits teaser which, together with quite a few fastidiously hanging threads uncovered by thorough exploration, is meant to make you excited for Bungie to do all this once more! As if this time, this time, it’s abruptly going to lean into its personal fiction and really do one thing with it as an alternative of presenting it as an afterthought to creating cool weapons and fairly environments.
And I imply – all that is fantastic. It’s fantastic! I still don’t care about the story even now I’ve seen the tip, however I love Destiny 2’s loot cycle, as maddeningly opaque as it is, and I really like its unimaginable gameplay really feel. All of this I’ve written right now is meaningless. Carry on as you have been.
*I lied. You can select to not shoot the Fallen Captain within the Titan World Quest. There aren’t any penalties.
Source
