Destiny...Released in the end of the third quarter of 2014, Destiny cost over 500 million dollars to produce, which is 2.27 times the budget of The Avengers1. It made up that money in the first week of sales... despite having mixed and low reviews. The reason for this is the little name at the bottom right of the image there... Bungie, the creators behind the Halo franchise.
Destiny was designed to basically be the World of Warcraft of first person shooters, in that it is a massively multiplayer online game, but the similarities stop there really.
Sold exclusively to consoles, Destiny is nearly a year old now, with its first paid expansion on the way in September. So, I finally hopped on the bandwagon and gave it its fair shake...
...and the story is just as bad as you may have heard. Though not just the story, the world is not up to snuff either. It looks beautiful, but it is like a rich person's house. It looks really impressive, but it is usually fairly bleak and empty, and ends up seeming like a place you do not want to live in.
I know EXACTLY where Destiny went wrong, and how others can, in the future, avoid their mistakes.
First of all, no, Peter Dinklage as the Ghost (a tiny robot who acts as the exposition fairy) was not a bad idea. At first when I heard the complaints about his acting, I was thinking that he did just not care about the project and phone it in... but honestly the stuff he had to read for it was already incredibly dull. He is being replaced entirely by Nolan North in the upcoming expansion, and he sounds a bit more chipper, but it will not solve the real problems behind Destiny.
The first problem: there is no dialogue. Oh, people say things, but they are all exposition. Or not even exposition, just dancing around telling people things like in the case of The Speaker, who could tell you things but instead just decides to ramble. The main character does speak, so they aren't mute, but he or she says barely anything. The main character is just an exposition sponge; they do not ask questions, they just accept what they are told in its entirety.
This leads into the second problem: no one has any personality. Well, there is some personality in the game... but none of it comes from the main characters. Like I said, exposition sponge. They aren't allowed to say something funny amidst the chaos, or blow off something serious; they must treat every damn thing as stoic serious bizniz. There is nothing memorable about anyone. The only characters you'll remember are the ones that make you mad, or because you know the voice actor (Nathan Fillion plays the leader of one of the game's classes. He is pretty much Malcom Reynalds/Han Solo).
Now, compare point 2 to a game like, say, World of Warcraft. Their characters are memorable, not just because they are main characters, but because they have traits we can remember about them. For instance, there is Moira Bronzebeard. Once the daughter of King Magni bronzebeard, she was kidnapped and married to the king of the dark iron dwarves. Upon his death at the hands of adventurers, Moira became the queen of the dark irons, and eventually, upon the apparent death of her father, led the dark irons to rejoining their brethren under Iron Forge.
I did not have to look up any of that information, I knew it off the top of my head. There are others like that, like Budd Nedreck, a man who's a few eggs short of a basket, who somehow manages to survive some crazy situations by being just about as crazy.
There is also a key difference between WoW and Destiny: WoW allows for some fun and comedy to exist in its world. It has people like Budd Nedreck running around in the same world as monsters like Deathwing or the Lich King. Being serious 24/7 is just depressing, and unfun.
How would one make Destiny more memorable without impeding its expository train? the simple answer is to give everyone a bit of character, and be less serious. Make the Ghost be malfunctioning a bit, to where it'll play Reveille occasionally when the player respawns, or, when it trips an alarm for the thirteenth time, it starts apologizing profusely, and you just hear it apologizing in bigger and more extravagant ways as the fight goes on.
Of course, even better would be to have the player character actually talk back to the ghost more often. Have them argue with the Ghost about opening a door; where the player character thinks they'd have less of a chance of calling attention to themselves if they use a crowbar, rather than the Ghost's light thingy. You're going to be spending most of your time alone in the game, with only your ghost as company; he should be GOOD company.
For a direct comparison, lets compare the Ghost to Wheatley of Portal 2.
Meanwhile, the Ghost gets...
The story is devoid of personality, and thus devoid of a reason to care. You can have a dark world, where everything is bleak, but you have to remember one thing about humans: we thrive, and cope. We keep hope alive, and we try to have fun in our lives. To quote Joss Whedon: "Make it dark, make it grim, but then, for Christ's sake tell a joke."
Your goal is to make the world fun. You aren't making anything fun by expositing all the things all the time.
But, there is a third problem with Destiny... and this is on gameplay. No, it isn't the constant horde mode via opening doors (though that is an annoyance), it is the lack of reward for exploration.
The world is full of caves, side rooms, and dead ends. They are all well detailed and crafted... and utterly pointless. In Destiny, I can find a cave that is carefully hidden, and find absolutely nothing in it. No chest, no rare enemies, not even an enemy of slightly higher level that'd tell you to come back later so you can reap some rewards. It is just a cave, an empty cave. Why even have the cave if there is nothing in it? There are caves one can;t enter, and that's because enemies spawn from it, so these caves are clearly different. The only time I saw an enemy in a cave was when the cave was relevant to a quest. Meaning, you have no reason to ever explore, just stay on the path, and complete quests.
This isn't just a thing about caves either; every place is thoroughly unremarkable beyond how pretty it looks. They're just battlefields...
Imagine a forest; imagine there is no end to that forest, and while there is the occasional fallen tree, there are no real land marks. That is how Destiny feels. Some fallen trees, but it is otherwise just the same.
Compare this to say, Elwynn Forest in WoW. To the north there is the Northshire abbey, where human characters get their tutorial. South of it is Goldshire, which is a small town with an inn and a blacksmith; pretty much exclusively catering to travelers. At the southern edge of the forest is a pair of farms, with warring families like that of romeo and Juliet (no literally, one of the quests there is to help two of the members elope), separated by a mine full of kobolds. Near Goldshire is a lake infested with Murlocs, and further to the east there is a lake feeding into the river that separates Elwynn from its surrounding zones, also infested with murlocs, but also some groups of bandits. To the southwest, there is an elite mob, capable of wiping out hundreds of level 1 gnomes, the terror known as Hogger.
Elwynn Forest is a level 1-10 zone. It is one of approximately 9 zones in that same level range, each one as diverse as it. During cataclysm, it was 1/72 of the zones one could level in. Each zone has something memorable about it, and diversity throughout.
But Destiny? I can recall a radio tower station infested with The Fallen. I can also recall a field of downed air craft... also infested by The Fallen, and occasionally The Hive. Some beached ships also filled with Fallen... Point being they all blend together because there isn't anything unique about it, it's just different typography for a battlefield. Why not throw some rogue guardians in an area, and have them rabidly attack players for their loot? or some wild animals scurrying about, thriving amidst the war? Not everything has to be focused on fighting the war; how about a quest where you go into a destroyed town looking for some kid's toy? A personable moment among being some badass space warrior.
All things considered, I can say there is already a version of Destiny that has all of its pros, and none of its cons; it's called Mass Effect, and people were mad that it didn't get a satisfying conclusion to its trilogy, instead of being mad that the story was bad. Mass Effect is by far the better Destiny.
In conclusion, to avoid the problems of Destiny, here's what you do:
Make interesting and fun characters
Don't just do exposition. Add character development to the mix.
Make people feel rewarded for exploring, whether it is finding some cool items, or discovering a cool set of enemies, or unlocking some quests... The zone should be diverse enough where people can recall places from it, and why they are unique, from memory. (I did not look up a map of Elwynn for my speech on it, I remember it that well.)
You can only be dark, serious, and somber for so long. After a while it's just depression. Add some cheer!
This has been Fixer Sue, talking about a game people gave crap for its story a year ago. Haven't played the expansions yet... but really, do we expect them to be less expositiony? Do we expect The Speaker to tell a joke?
... Bungie, have the speaker tell a joke. It doesn't have to be funny; in fact it might be funnier if it isn't funny. Have the speaker tell a joke that just doesn't work. It is the ONE time I'd accept awkward humor as being funny.
Seriously. Do it.
