Love them or hate them, few can deny the impact Bungie has had on the modern gaming scene over the past three generations with the Halo franchise. Having contributed to the success of the Xbox repeatedly, understandably, Destiny was hyped for the new generation. The result is a solid combination of Action-RPG and first-person shooter ideas, but don’t buy too much into the hype.
The story is certainly nothing to write home about. Some dark nebulous force almost drove humanity to extinction years ago, there’s a giant alien orb in the sky, and you’re one of a few heroes who can hunt down aliens. Peter Dinklage voices both a floating robot companion and the narrator.
I was so disappointed in this game. I play games for the story, and to see one so utterly bereft of one was deeply unwelcome. I had enjoyed Halo, which, I will admit did not have the greatest story on the planet, but whatever.
ReplyDeleteThe story seems to solely consist of the Noun is Nouning that other Noun that we really Noun. Jargon without substance, not to mention the drab and lacklustre voice acting.
I've heard defenses that say the story is driven through the grimoire cards on their website, that people who are whining need to go there rather than be lazy. A game's story should be told through the game itself, not forcing me to go to a website to read vague sentences that reavel little more than the game does.
Anyway, that's my slightly more than two cents on the game. I'd be curious to see what your thoughts are on the story and Bungie's chosen method of delivery.
Honestly i'm usually fairly big on story myself, but it's a little different when it comes to first person shooters. In my opinion what matters there tends to be atmosphere and presentation far more than anything else. Take Crysis 2, that was a title which had some serious narrative flaws but it presented the city, aliens and environments so well they were largely excusable, and the same sort of thing kind of worked here. Admittedly I may well be biased on this account however, as someone did explain it was Borderlands with fewer butt stallion jokes. That and the fact that Halo, as great a universe as it is, mostly benefited on the story angle thanks to its novels, Karen Traviss' contributions not withstanding. The games themselves were fairly straight forwards, and in my opinion mostly worked thanks to the atmosphere created by the music, visual design and presentation.
DeleteI certainly agree with you that the story was fairly bad, but beyond The Secret World, The Old Republic and, possibly Final Fantasy XI there are not THAT many MMO titles with great narrative arcs to be found. Those which do attempt that tend to run into problems as several World of Warcraft expansions discovered when they tried to treat everyone as the chosen one.