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Destiny 2's biggest core change? "Probably the inclusion of a story," says Bungie

Of course, a lot of those loose threads aren't being followed up on because Bungie dumped their entire writing team for a second time, and the third writing team is interested in a different direction, and doesn't even necessarily know what the first or second writers actually had planned.

This is why I simply can't trust Bungie trying to hype up their new "story" Especially when their current story lead's previous two credits are Halo 4 and Mass Effect: Andromeda.
 

Blueblur1

Member
I would take a boring story over new player character races, new enemy races, new enemy types (so far there's only one, the Cabal Dog), new classes, and additional weapon types (two is not enough for a sequel). Story is the very last thing on my list, Bungie.
 

BiGBoSSMk23

A company being excited for their new game is a huge slap in the face to all the fans that liked their old games.
I'm with Brandon Jones from EZ allies in that the destruction of the tower is not just a plot tool, but a figurative admission of how much of a failure Destiny was a new story-driven IP.

So, this is not surprising.

Still, it's shocking how open they are about admitting it and hand waving it off.

I can't forgive it because I need the fantasy to propel me forward in the loot game.

And it was fine for the first year, but when 60 dollars became 100, then 140, 180, 200... for salvaged scraps of an abandoned story and new loot?

No.
.
 
Halo 2's intro is pretty iconic imho.

Unfortunately, Halo 2's story was bad and didn't make a lot of sense. For example, it wasn't clear why the Covenant’s Priest Leaders (the aliens with the long bendable necks) made the elite commander the Arbiter after demoting him. Bungie also never explained why the leaders promoted the brutes and demoted the elites. Finally, how the hell did the flood get into the Covenent city? The ending of Halo 1 implied that the flood were contained when the Master Chief destroyed the Halo ring. My big point is Halo 1 had a really good story but Halo 2's story was just bad. It didn't make sense and it really wasn't clear why things happened.
 

Foxxsoxx

Member
Didn't stick around with Destiny to experience it.

Vanilla Destiny was so bad.

Don't worry you didn't miss much.

Blows me away people think TTK had a good story.

It was about as generic as you could get and had a cliff hanger they never followed through with through Eris. Cayde was the only good thing about that.
 

Ivory Samoan

Gold Member
The story is the last thing I care about with Destiny. Personally, grimoire cards were perfect for me.

I'm in the boat that is hoping that the 'collectable lore bits' in D2 are somewhat grimoire like, so we get the best of both worlds: deep story narrative in-game and deep lore information in collectables.
 

Admodieus

Member
Unfortunately, Halo 2's story was bad and didn't make a lot of sense. For example, it wasn't clear why the Covenant’s Priest Leaders (the aliens with the long bendable necks) made the elite commander the Arbiter after demoting him. Bungie also never explained why the leaders promoted the brutes and demoted the elites. Finally, how the hell did the flood get into the Covenent city? The ending of Halo 1 implied that the flood were contained when the Master Chief destroyed the Halo ring. My big point is Halo 1 had a really good story but Halo 2's story was just bad. It didn't make sense and it really wasn't clear why things happened.

Did you play Halo 2? Both of these questions are answered there. Arbiters are given the most perilous missions in the Covenant, so bestowing the title on that particular Elite was the equivalent of giving him a suicide mission, which would remove a thorn in the Prophets side. As for the Flood on High Charity, The Flood capture In Amber Clad when Keyes goes to find the Index and the infected crew members crash it into High Charity, which gives the Flood an entry point onto the city.
 

Juan

Member
Unfortunately, Halo 2's story was bad and didn't make a lot of sense. For example, it wasn't clear why the Covenant’s Priest Leaders (the aliens with the long bendable necks) made the elite commander the Arbiter after demoting him. Bungie also never explained why the leaders promoted the brutes and demoted the elites. Finally, how the hell did the flood get into the Covenent city? The ending of Halo 1 implied that the flood were contained when the Master Chief destroyed the Halo ring. My big point is Halo 1 had a really good story but Halo 2's story was just bad. It didn't make sense and it really wasn't clear why things happened.

Hmm, did you watch the cinematics while playing Halo 2? I mean, all of this was explained actually, the Arbiter is a rank made for the purpose of shame and suicide-mission (explicitly tell during the third cinematic) since he was already supposed to be executed (better use your tool for a last mission than just kill it).

The Brutes were promoted because one of the Covenant's Priest Leaders was killed by the Master Chief (well, the player), so they were thinking Elite weren't really good guards.

The Flood get into High Charity using human's space-ships while they were chasing the Index (a sort of key) on the Halo Delta.

I mean, yeah, Halo 2 story wasn't perfect, and there is a lot to criticize, but all the points you mentioned were clearly explained during cinematics, so I'm not sure you really are pointing the right things when calling for "bad story" and bad explanations. ^^
 

Z3M0G

Member
Destiny has had more story for a while. Since Taken King, they really stepped up their game on the story front.

It just didn't go in the direction I cared about... and still doesn't... (Darkness vs Traveler)

Everything since the launch missions has felt like side-plots... not the main trunk of the story that Destiny set out to tell. Same goes for Destiny 2, it seems.
 

Bold One

Member
This myth that Halo was a well-told story needs to die.

As far as D2 is concerned - and boy is there a lot of 'concern' we need to come to terms with some inconvenient truths. It will never be quite the game of the forever it has the potential to be - the mountain top will forever be out of reach.

The Darkness

The Traveler

The Ahamkara

The Nine

All the really interesting stuff on the periphery will never make it in-game.
 

Cranster

Banned
Unfortunately, Halo 2's story was bad and didn't make a lot of sense. For example, it wasn't clear why the Covenant's Priest Leaders (the aliens with the long bendable necks) made the elite commander the Arbiter after demoting him.
"The tasks you must undertake as the Arbiter are perilous, suicidal. You will die, as each Arbiter has before you. The Council will have their corpse."


Bungie also never explained why the leaders promoted the brutes and demoted the elites.
Pretty obvious it was because Brutes were more willing to blindly follow the prophets where some Elites were beginning to question the reasoning for the genocide of humans and pondering their loyalty to the prophets and the Great Journey. Master Chief killing the Prophet of Regret simply gave them a reason to do it.

Finally, how the hell did the flood get into the Covenent city?
The Gravemind used the Master Chief as a distraction and hijacked the UNSC ship In Amber Clad and used a procession slipspace jump to crash into and infect all of High Charity. This is shown and explained in the last two Master Chief levels.

The ending of Halo 1 implied that the flood were contained when the Master Chief destroyed the Halo ring. My big point is Halo 1 had a really good story but Halo 2's story was just bad. It didn't make sense and it really wasn't clear why things happened.
No, it was directly stated by 343 Guilty Spark that there were other Installations which meant the Flood was not limited to Installation 04.
 

Gestault

Member
Unfortunately, Halo 2's story was bad and didn't make a lot of sense. For example, it wasn't clear why the Covenant's Priest Leaders (the aliens with the long bendable necks) made the elite commander the Arbiter after demoting him. Bungie also never explained why the leaders promoted the brutes and demoted the elites. Finally, how the hell did the flood get into the Covenent city? The ending of Halo 1 implied that the flood were contained when the Master Chief destroyed the Halo ring. My big point is Halo 1 had a really good story but Halo 2's story was just bad. It didn't make sense and it really wasn't clear why things happened.

I don't want this to sound like an attack, but did you play the game? The majority of the story points you raise aren't mysteries, in the context of the game. And I don't mean it like it's revealed later; I mean they're pretty plainly spelled out when the event is introduced.
 

Nydius

Member
Destiny has had more story for a while. Since Taken King, they really stepped up their game on the story front.

Only in that what they told was finally more cohesive. But even that was built on a poorly designed, cracked and and crumbling foundation. Not really sure I'd say that's a massive step up, though they did finally realize that they had some fan favorite characters so they might as well use them to their advantage (especially Cayde and Eris).

Everything since the launch missions has felt like side-plots... not the main trunk of the story that Destiny set out to tell. Same goes for Destiny 2, it seems.

On this I 100% agree. Throughout the original game I kept waiting for it to rotate back to the beginning story about the Traveler vs. the Darkness but it never did. Nor did it ever return during the DLCs. It was just endless side arcs about stopping the Vex (which they didn't even really try to explain, hence the reason why the Stranger's line is so oft repeated sarcastically), stopping the Hive (twice), stopping the Fallen (twice; once solely to give us a glorified Horde mode), and the Cabal well, meh, they blow up planets and moons just for getting in their way but they're on Mars and no one cares about them.

On my main account I sunk 1300 hours into Destiny 1, 1000 on my main Warlock alone. I doubt I would have put in that much time had it not been for friends and my clan. In fact with the game winding down and most of them no longer playing, I haven't even touched the game so I can say for certain that it's been more social aspects that kept me playing than the game's story, lore, or, on some level, gameplay. Which is sad because I really had high hopes for this game, thinking it could have been Bungie's version of a Mass Effect level space opera with Bungie level gunplay. We got the gunplay at least (including Bungie's inability to balance shotguns...) but that was it.

Still interested in D2, but I'm holding off until I get to play the beta to see if I'll buy in at launch.
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Unfortunately, Halo 2's story was bad and didn't make a lot of sense. For example, it wasn't clear why the Covenant's Priest Leaders (the aliens with the long bendable necks) made the elite commander the Arbiter after demoting him.
Uh what? Yes it was, they explicitly said that they were gonna be sending him on suicide missions until he died like past arbiters.

Bungie also never explained why the leaders promoted the brutes and demoted the elites.
Because master chief got past the elites and killed a prophet.

Finally, how the hell did the flood get into the Covenent city? The ending of Halo 1 implied that the flood were contained when the Master Chief destroyed the Halo ring. My big point is Halo 1 had a really good story but Halo 2's story was just bad. It didn't make sense and it really wasn't clear why things happened.
It's more that you weren't paying attention. The Flood took over a ship and crashed it into the city.

EDIT:Beaten quite a bit. That's so odd that you missed all of these key story events since they were all told during in-game dialogue and cinematics.
 
I don't want this to sound like an attack, but did you play the game? The majority of the story points you raise aren't mysteries, in the context of the game. And I don't mean it like it's revealed later; I mean they're pretty plainly spelled out when the event is introduced.

I played it twice. Once when it came out and then again when I played through all of the Halo games in the Master Chief Collection. You can check my gamer tag. It's Colossal Moo on Xbox Live.
 
Uh what? Yes it was, they explicitly said that they were gonna be sending him on suicide missions until he died like past arbiters.


Because master chief got past the elites and killed a prophet.


It's more that you weren't paying attention. The Flood took over a ship and crashed it into the city.

EDIT:Beaten quite a bit. That's so odd that you missed all of these key story events since they were all told during in-game dialogue and cinematics.

Thank you (and the other posters) for the explanations. The story makes more sense now.
 

Raven117

Gold Member
Most gaffers maybe, but most people are going to go mental for D2 when it comes out. It's going to be HUGE.

Bungie aren't stupid. Most of the critical responses here are just noisy internet trolls with nothing worth listening to.

This. In the end...they created a game where it is as awesome to shoot the juice box out of a vex at hour 1 as it is at hour 100, with some loot grinding end game activities that some even pose a challenge (like raids)...Moreover, the game is an absolute blast to play with some friends. In the end...thats all that matters.

Fun to play? Check
Fun to play with Friends? Check Check.

And just watch the money roll in.

Do I share most of the critiques everyone has here? Yup. Sure do. Do I know Im going to get my moneys worth out of the game (even at 100 bucks) and have a blast playing with NeoGaf and my IRL buddies? Yup.

And that, in the end, is all that really matters to me.
 

Lasty95

Member
This. In the end...they created a game where it is as awesome to shoot the juice box out of a vex at hour 1 as it is at hour 100, with some loot grinding end game activities that some even pose a challenge (like raids)...Moreover, the game is an absolute blast to play with some friends. In the end...thats all that matters.

Fun to play? Check
Fun to play with Friends? Check Check.

And just watch the money roll in.

Do I share most of the critiques everyone has here? Yup. Sure do. Do I know Im going to get my moneys worth out of the game (even at 100 bucks) and have a blast playing with NeoGaf and my IRL buddies? Yup.

And that, in the end, is all that really matters to me.

That's a pretty much perfect summary of D1.

And that's precisely why it's been the enormous success that it has been.

That they're aiming to add to this a campaign more in line with what people expect from a conventional shooter and with a story that will resonate a bit more, it's hard to imagine D2 wont end up taking over the world.
 
Unfortunately, Halo 2's story was bad and didn't make a lot of sense. For example, it wasn't clear why the Covenant’s Priest Leaders (the aliens with the long bendable necks) made the elite commander the Arbiter after demoting him. Bungie also never explained why the leaders promoted the brutes and demoted the elites. Finally, how the hell did the flood get into the Covenent city? The ending of Halo 1 implied that the flood were contained when the Master Chief destroyed the Halo ring. My big point is Halo 1 had a really good story but Halo 2's story was just bad. It didn't make sense and it really wasn't clear why things happened.

Are you sure you played Halo 2?
 

Leyasu

Banned
Destiny 1 did suck. Bigger problem than story imo was the lack of content. Good story without enough content is no better.


Oh there will be content baby. So much
paid for with real monies
content, that every game that has come before D2 will be bare bones in comparison. This game is going to take
paid for
content to un before seen levels.
 

Monocle

Member
Good? I mean, that's what I wanted from the original. That and a lot of cool places to explore.

Tbh, apart from maybe Halo:CE and maybe Halo Reach, Bungie doesn't really have a great track record with this.
Halo 2 was overambitious but still good with its Covenant civil war sideplot, Halo 3 felt kinda rushed and narratively stripped down due to Bungie relegating the Arbiter to a sidekick role and spending way less time on nonhuman factions, and ODST was all around fantastic, the way it used the futuristic Earth city New Mombasa as the anchor point for a fractured flashback-oriented narrative that fully exploited the diversity of that setting.
 

Neolombax

Member
After years of playing Destiny, I think I sort of got used to Destiny not having a strong main story campaign as its focus. Listening to Youtubers and reading Redditors piece together lore from the Grimoire Cards became something I looked forward to. I think its great that they're putting a huge emphasis on a main story, but I hope they would still include the Grimoire Cards to further flesh out the universe.

Gameplay wise, D2 looks super familiar. And that's fine. But part of me wants Bungo taking more risks. I want to play as other races with their own characteristics, or ride a Fallen Walker into a Nightfall or Raid or something. I want the ships to actually do something this time rather than a decoration for a loading. If this is a story about the Red War, why can't I use my ships to blast the Cabal out of the skies? That sorta thing...
 

Haines

Banned
I hope its good.

I mean that. A really great scifi story would be very welcome. Caring about that world would pull me in so much more than D1 did.

I have a bad memory, but all i remember is shooting dudes.
 
"The tasks you must undertake as the Arbiter are perilous, suicidal. You will die, as each Arbiter has before you. The Council will have their corpse."


Pretty obvious it was because Brutes were more willing to blindly follow the prophets where some Elites were beginning to question the reasoning for the genocide of humans and pondering their loyalty to the prophets and the Great Journey. Master Chief killing the Prophet of Regret simply gave them a reason to do it.

The Gravemind used the Master Chief as a distraction and hijacked the UNSC ship In Amber Clad and used a procession slipspace jump to crash into and infect all of High Charity. This is shown and explained in the last two Master Chief levels.

No, it was directly stated by 343 Guilty Spark that there were other Installations which meant the Flood was not limited to Installation 04.

Thanks for that. People waving off Halo 1-3's plot/story as bad obviously werent paying attention. Halo 4 and 5 ruined the plot narrative for me personally, but CE, 2, and 3 were excellent.
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Seriously? Well that's embarrassing..
Yea it provides two opposite perspectives one of which is from the enemies in the first game while in a very short amount of time drastically expanding the lore by giving the covenant a society with it's own rules and such instead of being just well designed aliens like in Halo 1. Plus that music and editing. It's very well done.
 

Mar Nosso

Banned
So, the most interesting thing about D1's plot, The Darkness vs The Traveller has been completely thrown out? Ridiculous. I didn't even finish TTK's storyline because it was a messy boring thing.

Will not buy. Looks the same, will play the same and I have no clue what the Red War is.
 

Ramirez

Member
True, but I don't think his "keep it real" method is great for selling the franchise or building camaraderie at the studio.

I get that for a lot of fans, vanilla Destiny had a lot of problems with the story - but given that game was in development since Halo: Reach, I'd imagine it was an incredibly difficult process to make.

Each time Luke gets on the mic and starts saying "lol Destiny 1 sucked," he's basically invalidating the work his own studio did.

I seriously doubt anyone responsible for D1's story is still at the studio.
 
The thing about Bungie is that they've always been a "gameplay first" company. Master Chief being a stoic and taciturn protagonist was an intentional choice for players more interested in just playing the game, with the story taking a backseat.

Some people actually dislike the 343 games putting too much story and scripted events into the game.
 

jviggy43

Member
This has been painfully obvious since the first reveal. Disappointing as the story was the last thing I cared about in destiny (which also doesnt mean it should have been as non existent as it was in the first one).
 
Funny, because all the trailers and such for the first game lead me to believe that the first game was gonna have a pretty big story, and yet I've always heard nothing but the opposite. So why anyone believe them this time?
 

ZeoVGM

Banned
Funny, because all the trailers and such for the first game lead me to believe that the first game was gonna have a pretty big story, and yet I've always heard nothing but the opposite. So why anyone believe them this time?

To be fair, they have already proven themselves with expansions after vanilla Destiny.

The Taken King had a solid enough story that finally gave focus to the NPCs so I expect Destiny 2 to go further in that direction.
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Funny, because all the trailers and such for the first game lead me to believe that the first game was gonna have a pretty big story, and yet I've always heard nothing but the opposite. So why anyone believe them this time?
Because unlike the first one this one seemingly didn't go through development hell?
 

jviggy43

Member
Bungie will always be damned if they do, damned if they don't with Destiny.

The story sucks in Destiny, but the gameplay is good? Ridicule it forever!

They worked on making an epic storyline in the sequel? Story doesn't matter, they should've worked on the other things that we can be mad about!

I think there literally isn't anything Bungie could do to make most people actually give it a fair chance. It's become the thing to shit on no matter what.
You posted this same line of reasoning in another destiny 2 thread and im.having trouble following your logic. Destiny got ridiculed for having a non existent story, maybe the worst story I've ever seen in a game. That didn't mean that people couldn't also be apathetic about the story while also pointing that out. Additionally, them focusing on implementing something that should have been in the first game and is expected in most games, as the sequels biggest feature, is super disappointing. In no world does bungie operate under the dammed if you do, dammed if you don't dichotomy you posited.
 

Grisby

Member
Well there's nowhere to go but up.

Destiny 1 had a terrible campaign and story, so much so that I didn't even bother to finish up the last mission and just did strike runs, etc. They improved alot with the Taken King though, I gotta give them that.
 

joe_zazen

Member
I'm with Brandon Jones from EZ allies in that the destruction of the tower is not just a plot tool, but a figurative admission of how much of a failure Destiny was a new story-driven IP.

So, this is not surprising.

Still, it's shocking how open they are about admitting it and hand waving it off.

I can't forgive it because I need the fantasy to propel me forward in the loot game.

And it was fine for the first year, but when 60 dollars became 100, then 140, 180, 200... for salvaged scraps of an abandoned story and new loot?

No.
.

.

Destiny was supposed to have been a 10 year journey, a new kind of game, a special game. Instead, D1 was a cobbled together perma-crunch game that they are now retconing, including destroying player characters. The hype and sales of D2 are not going to be on the same level as D1 because almost nobody expects D2 to be a groundbreaking 10 year journey.
 

anothertech

Member
I'm excited for destiny 2. Finally a story line. That will be great.

Just hope they have more to show than reskinned baddies from the first game, like they did for the first 2 years.

The open world size increases and 'dungeon' like explorable content will be interesting to see.

Really hoping we can finally go to 'that mountain over there' this time
 
This will go a long way for me. Having really great shooting is one thing, but if I can actually give a shit about what I'm partaking in I'm much more likely to stick with it.
 
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