Judging Bungie's story by their own standards | Myelin Games
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- Опубліковано 20 лют 2024
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1. Most Interconnected seasons www.gamesradar.com/bungie-res...
2. Gamespot article www.gamespot.com/articles/how...
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Judging Bungie's story by their own standards | Myelin Games
• Judging Bungie's story... - Ігри
Lightfall: Traveler and Veil connect because oops
Defiance: ???
Deep: Ahsa says to talk to Savathun
Witch: Savathun says to talk to Riven
Wish: Riven says no, until she says yes
Veil containment: science mumbo jumbo with characters we don't see
The only thing is that we work with things that use the darkness regularly (mara, ahsa, savathun, and riven) and are more opening to expanding our allies out of desperation. Intimate darkness connection. So there is an incredibly light theme connection and that's it.
Most accurate synopsis of this year's story content I've seen so far
Accurate as fuck
And Osiris saying to Mara during the season, 'oh, I've figured out how The Veil opened the portal into the Traveler, btw. Just working on how to do it again.' Like, what?? That's literally the most important thing going on and it's just a bit of dialogue with, zero reaction from anyone because Bungie doesn't want to explain anything to us. Just carry on doing whatever and we've decided Riven will let you in. Now shut up and go away.
@@DG-oc2uw It's so tedious being a bloodthirsty war god that can kill anything but gets treated like an errand boy by the NPCs. I kinda figured the player character being the one to notice the pattern in Savathun's wings would be a sign this is changing, but nah.
I'd argue Beyond Light seasons leading up to Witch Queen were more interconnected. Even if the stories do jump around a bit, the whole year was the work of Savathun-Osiris who connects every season. There's also a shared thematic connection of making alliances and working with people who'd previously been enemies, Crow, The Cabal, The Fallen, and even in Lost our alliance with the Awoken is sort of uneasy, and we're making a pact with Savathun. Then Witch Queen caps, off the year and then set up the next year to come when it reveals The Witness.
I remember finding their statements so confusing because they already did everything they were saying better before.
I am not sure about that, there is a bit of disconnect like one season didn’t directly lead into another, like our actions didn’t cause Chosen to happen, or Chosen didn’t cause Splicer to happen, you could say for lost but that is more Savathun’s influence. In LF seasons, each one are more directly the cause and affect of the other.
@@MW2proificationyeah, came here to say this. If you have to read lore to uncover the mystery of how they’re connected, you can’t market them as connected. And they aren’t connected with one causing the other, they’re connected by having the same origin. Lightfall minus Defiance has been A -> B -> C
Yeah the thematic undercurrent of the Beyond Light seasons was really solid. There wasn't any direct causal link for most of them, but it was a really satisfying exploration of "Are your enemies really your enemies?" The redemption of Uldren Sov through Crow, peace with the Cabal, the first alliance with the Eliskni, all great stuff leading into "The Hive have the Light, what now?"
@@The5lacker yeah, but the lack of causality makes them unconnected. Thematically cohesive, sure, but not the metric being advertised or measured.
The only thing Bungie did this year was dragging out a single question - "How do we get through the portal" - throughout the entire year, it's far worse than say, the BL seasons that had loose connectivity with Savathun being behind it all after taking over Osiris and WQ seasons all linked in to dealing with the moving forces of the witness and trying to create prevention measures.
Marketing LF as the beginning of the end and the arrival of the witness only for it to be a year of filler content was such a bad idea. I've never seen a company piss away so much goodwill, trust, and positive sentiment so quickly for what amounted to be a short-sighted cash grab. I'm not even excited for TFS at this point ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I literally laughed at the end of Season of the Wish when Osiris' research into the Veil as an effort to get into the traveler turned out to be a dead end. The WHOLE YEAR of efforts to understand the Veil immediately felt like a total waste of time.
What a hilariously massive stumble at the finish line.
Agreed. I was expecting a "plot twist" where Osiris figures out how to get us through, and Riven's (Savathun's) wish was something completely unexpected.
@@xariyl Or we just never use the wish and re-genecide the Ahamkara. But alas...
The worst part is that Osiris figured out how The Veil opened the portal into The Traveler yet never told us how despite it being the whole point of the story leading out of Lightfall, and worse, no one in the Vanguard nor Mara batted an eyelid!
@@DG-oc2uw "oh you figured out a backdoor into the big God-cueball everyone has been obsessed with for milennia over the long weekend in your spare time? pretty cool I guess. Anyway I'm bringing back the dragons we decided were too dangerous to live teehee" --Mara
There’s many problems with the story of wish but that’s actually not one of them.
Osiris’s research into the Veil is how we’re following Crow. The issue Osiris found was attempting to pinpoint where the Witness went. Crow volunteered to go so that Mara Sov can act as navigation and guide Osiris’s efforts.
This isn’t like a small lore tab or book page, it’s the actual narrative playing out in front of your eyes.
It was just them in damage control and saying what they needed to. "Intentionally left questions unanswered to discover in further seasons"... sure that's why they quickly threw together Veil Containment in the second season as a response to all the backlash. They weren't weren't going to do Veil Containment or the Weapon you got from it (that was only one of several advertised weapons that we never got). Just crazy.
One of the biggest issues is that especially in the year of Lightfall, but in other seasons too, leading up to it, the seasons shifted away from us, The Guardian and the player, being the main character of the seasonal story to us just being a camera for the story to happen in front of. Season of Dawn, while yes Osiris was involved with it, heavily, it was specifically us that could save Saint because of of who we were as the guardian, it was our grave specifically we got Bastion from. Then you have Defiance that didn't need The Guardian, it just needed generic guardians. We were there to witness the the story, not be in the story. And I think so much of the narrative issues stem from that shift they've been making. It explains a lot about Lightfall too, in that, the result of Lightfall is what would happen if The Guardian didn't exist. The seasonal stories, when you look at exactly how the end results happen, we didn't matter, like we didn't exist. Amanda still dies and we still have pyramid ships stealing people, you only get 6 coral samples to talk to Ahsa, Eris really just needed to Kill Savathun to become more powerful, and crow and petra could've gotten the eggs for riven instead of being on comms.
"The seasonal stories, when you look at exactly how the end results happen, we didn't matter"... it's the Indiana Jones Syndrome!
the biggest issue with lightfall is that season of the seraph came before it. Such a well written narrative season that made everything feel so urgent, and the finale with rasputin sacrificing himself and the traveller moving to make a stand, all just leading to lightfall?????
imagine making your third move since showing up in Sol only to get stunlocked and have a big pizza slice portal drawn on your face. Traveler is taking mad Ls in this arc
@@xXx_Regulus_xXxtruly a bozo
@@chem2430 Replace that big triangle with a small red ball stuck to the side of the Traveler and give it a big rainbow wig.
Also Seraph felt like things were making such big developments in its story every week. The beginning and end was great but the middle was so fun and engaging to follow along with from both a gameplay and story aspect. Not only was the payoff very well done but we were actively engaging with the story and characters, not waiting for something to happen.
Season of the Witch was the only season this year that came close to this but just barely. This years seasons felt like their big moment were written first (Witness Cutscene,Savathun and Wish 15,Amanda's death) and everything was dealt with after.
I mean look at Deep's story up until the cutscene. The main story moment each week was a distorted piece of the cutscene that we will eventually see clearly. Why not have a main story developing alongside this rather than the story being super cryptic statements of something that we wont need to piece together because itll just be shown to us anyway.
All I remember post Lightfall is Amanda died to save some cabal (I think), sloane was partially taken and spoke to a fish, Eris became a Hive God and Crow is going through a portal. That is all I got from this year. Not sure how that develops the narrative. My memory of the entire year is fragmented and disconnected. If the story is told over 16 months in teeny sample bits how am I gonna get what they are trying to do? Tell the full story in the the expansion and then tell compelling side stories in the seasons. This is why Splicer stands out to me.
Love it. Hours of script writing reduced to 'Spoke to a fish' 😂😂😂
@@tufkc3588it was crap exposition
These aren't the worst set of seasons we have gotten but I feel they are the worst handled
Best seasonal content/activities/weapons/armor/fragments/aspects, BUT- the story and lore were definitely lackluster and jumbled. Still not awful but you're totally right, they could have been handled so much better
Agreed
Season of the Wish was okay… but you compare it to Seraph??? No fucking contest. Seraph had a lot of urgency to it, the enemy was at our gates and with Lightfall….. nothing happened
The Witness has entered the Traveler and no one’s seems to care. They say they do but it’s also been a year in in-game time and all the leaders are just chillin
Seraph has definitely been my favorite season of all time. It got me HYPED for Lightfall cuz it was such a high
@@Subsistence69 Seraph's Shield was more spectacular, with its space run in the middle, than Starcrossed. There is something great and could've even been better about Seraph's Shield, it has a je ne sais quoi. Would've liked a 'master' version. Anyway, gonna run it again today, nice.
Preach Brotha! Bungie please give us a standalone campaign that actually tells a story. Bungie can't do this, they are so into not offending 'modern sensibilities,' that they will give us a campaign that has all the flavour of watered down milk. If a story has no 'real' conflict, then writers can't deliver a riveting conclusion. Story telling today is the equivalent of watered down milk
@@the43rdGuru the really frustrating part is it will probably turn out that the Witness got inside and has barely done anything, because what we're now calling TFS was meant to happen right after WQ.
I wanted to believe that bungie would get their act together. Played since vanilla D2. Deleted the game. They’re just going to promise things, not deliver, and keep emptying your wallet. I deleted. I’m done. There better games out there to play that deliver.
see you next season
Brother we have one expansion left, nows not the time to hop off lol.
Jesus there really is no one more dramatic and sanctimonious than someone declaring they're not playing D2 anymore
@@arasonyth3243not if we didnt buy it. I'l never preorder a thing from bungie again
@@fuddmuggler Big facts. Game is far from perfect, and you gotta take breaks sometimes to not hate it. But they really are so dramatic
The direction the story and lore went kinda killed my interest. Another great video. As always.
IMHO, the major problem with Lightfall’s storytelling is not that it left plot threads or unresolved mysteries for future seasons…
Rather, it’s that characters within the in-game narrative of Lightfall are behaving based on information which they seem to possess, but is never communicated to the player.
Osiris somehow seems to know how important the Veil is, and how terrible it would be for Calus to possess it, but he never gives us any indication of how or why he knows this. We’re never told what the veil can do, or what precisely it would allow Calus to achieve.
We didn’t need to know the entire history of the veil or everything about it… we needed the most basic, barely-competent level of storytelling to inform the motivations of our character, and Bungie failed HARD.
"why should we want the big cosmic mushroom other than it looks cool?"
"I don't even have time to explain why I don't have time to explain."
this is what nearly a decade of """listening to player feedback""" looks like.
08:45 Nailed it. That has been Bungie's issue for the past few years IMO and why I left the game. The devs look at Destiny 2 from a developer standpoint and are no longer capable of seeing the game as a consumer or player. I still love the lore and the story and I want to see it through. Because, let's be honest, it's a fantastic narrative. I just don't want to sit through any more seasonal BS or be forced to play a game that the devs seem to have lost all desire/ ability to make the game fun to play. I think so many of us are just over it and moved on to games that are just good ol' fashioned fun to play.
it has fantastic moments, but overall it's not compelling and I just keep up with Byf and Myelin because I'm still curious about the ending. When Destiny is good there's nothing else on the market like it, but that has happened less and less over the years.
@@xXx_Regulus_xXxMy wife sometimes sees me watching Byf/Myelin/Cross and says "I thought you quit that game?". I just want to know the end and for Bungie to quit "Beating a dead horse" if you will. And I agree, D2 story is really a shadow of it's former self at this point.
The thought that they'd use their once-a-year big piece of cinematic, campaign story content to set up the disposable, narratively limited seasons drives me up a wall and it makes me want to buy into the talk of "lightfall wasnt supposed to happen its filler!" even more because there's no way, having seen all the seasons, that they knowingly chose that path in advance.
Seeing the seasonal content for this year actually reinforces the theory that Lightfall is just filler, at least from my perspective. The stories here have either been really low effort or callbacks to some loose threads in lore being executed at okay levels at best if we were lucky. Only one that stands out is Season of the Witch which just had the cool factor of Eris cutting loose and becoming a Hive God of Vengeance. That season's models also coincidentally seem to be the most unique compared to these other seasons, whose weapon models have vastly just been recolors with the occasional tweak on the model. There's more to my thoughts, but when 80% of the "new content" in a year is really low-effort reskins and poorly written storytelling then that tells me it was all rushed out with as minimal effort possible to cobble together something to fill the time with a cheap product. And that means Bungie doesn't care anymore or they needed to buy time to build the Final DLC up to a level where people will be satisfied.
Given that all the seasonal story content will be gone once FS launches makes this approach to storytelling baffling to begin with
Myelin is spot on about paying for the intro of a book ,but with how Bungie handles seasonal content preservation it’ll be as if the pages of all the middle chapters have been ripped from the same book
Not to mention it’ll be recapped in just a minute for those who need a recap / can’t play the content at all which makes you ask , if the middle content can be bridged over entirely then why make a story so big that never needed it’s second act to reach its final act
I have been playing since 2014, bought and played every season. Like most of us here. I have no idea what's going on. I know The Witness and The Traveler are enemies, but i dont know why, and I don't even know what The Witness or The Traveler even is. The weird seasonal model killed the game, especially seasons like Plunder, which made no sense that all of a sudden, here are some pirates. I'm completely deflated when it comes to Destiny 2.
Plunder was the worst season. This game makes no fuckin sense.
Season of the Plunder was about us and Mithraxx raiding alien pirate bases for artifacts which turned out to be fragments of Nezarec. Mithraxx uses these fragments to make tea which lets Osiris wake up from his savathun-induced coma in time for Seraph and Lightfall.
How? Why? I dunno. I don't recall Osiris or Mithraxx saying anything when we went to the terraformed pyramid ship and literally fought Nezarec himself.
Bungie: Unhappy with Lightfall performance. "What do we do to fix player trust and engagement."
Bungie PR: "Simple, start a media campaign gaslighting the community and turn them against each other. Lie to their face and say this was the plan all along."
and it will keep people playing through TFS and beyond.
It's crazy how Lightfall killed any hype I could've possibly had for Final Shape (after being insanely hyped for Lightfall) and then Bungie just continued to beat the dead horse for an entire year and now I literally have no interest/faith in how it all ends.
I got all the important story points of the last year from the Lightfall trailer. They haven't progressed past "The Witness is actively in conflict with the Traveler" in any meaningful way.
Also, please come back to DCP!
Also, what happened to the silver material that the Neomuna weapons were meant to be made of? They used it for Quicksilver Storm before Lightfall released and... that was it. What happened to Neomuna being this place of high-tech stuff that enabled them to survive the collapse and hide for hundreds of years?
Not enough resources to work on that
I honestly don't think live service games make good vehicles for story content, but Bungie really don't do themselves any favours. Lightfall, ignoring everything else that was wrong with it, built an entire story about people we either couldn't see, or didn't care about, to find and protect a thing we'd never heard of, while be asked to care about it all, at the same time as treating us like we already should know how and why we should care. Neomuna is still dead, Nimbus might as well not exist and the veil might as well still be a macguffin. The seasons across the expansion have in no means resolved any of that.
The way they talk about how theyve done seasons and expansions makes a lot of sense and its something i never considered. I can't think about Witch Queen without considering Hunt, Chosen, Splicer, and Lost. They were all parts in Savathuns master plan that culminated in WQ. It used to feel like you were rewarded for paying attention, not just WQ but other expansions, too. I havent felt that all through Lightfall and its seasons and now i know why. Lightfall is the beginning of a narrative arc and not the culmination of Risen, Haunted, Plunder, and Seraph.
Risen: The Psion Conclave are stated to be allied with Calus but this goes nowhere in Lightfall. They arent even mentioned past this season i dont think
Haunted: Calus is using Egregore to imprint his mind into a Pyramid ship. He even projects himself in the HELM and leaves a vague threat. Egregore are nowhere to be found in Lightfall and we dont even know if Calus can control things with his mind, let alone his ship.
Plunder: The Curse of Nezarec is breifly mentioned but nothing has happened yet i dont think. Im aware Mithrax's arm hurts but its been a year and a half. If it is Curse of Nezarec related, it isnt timely at all
Seraph: Honestly cant think of one here. A lot of this story is pretty self contained. Id say The Veil is still kind of a question mark, but that feels like cheating
There has been a narrative shift in the way that Bungie tells stories, from darker overarching grand stories, to a more grounded personal narrative surrounding relationships and family. This *can* be done well, but I think it doesn't fit Destiny very well, and I don't think Bungie is very good at it. Ever since Beyond Light with Elsie and Ana, to Crow and Mara, to Osiris and Saint-14, everything feels very formulaic and poorly written.
I like Crow, and I *really* liked the twist of Savathun possessing Osiris, but other than that, most of the "family" beats have fallen flat, at least for me. I don't care about Zavala's dead wife I'd never met, I don't care about Osiris and Saint-14's relationship, and I *really* don't care about Mara Sov and Crow finding each other across the universe like the stupid fable of the two birds that they literally made up to be an allegory of themselves. There was like two seconds of interesting interactions between Amanda and Crow, but that was a cheap setup to immediately turn around and kill her. Unforgivably terrible pacing.
I just don't find the characters compelling enough to base the entire story on their interpersonal drama, it feels like a poorly done copy of the MCU.
I actually really liked Haunted because it was something different and something they'd never really expanded upon before. Then Plunder did the same thing. Then Seraph did as well. I will personally give a pass for Seraph because Rasputin, Ana, Elsie, and Clovis are literally family and it'd actually be awful if one of them was missing. Witch has an emphasis on Hive family. Wish is the culmination of Mara and Crows relationship, which is absolutely needed, but its kind of hamfisted(?) into the main story arch when it should probably be a B plot
So I see what you're saying. Especially looking back at older seasons like Arrivals, Worthy, Splicer, Chosen, etc.
I’ve never cared about the story any less, I feel the same about all the stuff you mentioned.
i actually think bungie did make a few compelling characters, but unfortunately, they are/were clovis and rasputin. clovis's clear self-interest and disregard for the well-being of anyone else is a compelling contrast with his goal of becoming the most important thing in humanities existence. his suggestion during the moon heist to "blow up the moon" was refreshingly blunt, absurd, and yet contrarily reasonable considering the circumstances as he has come to understand them. the man is one of the most rational individuals in the story. and then we kicked him back to his ice apartment and stop taking his calls because we were too busy killing our new friend.
rasputin was a third party interested in serving our interests but incapable of working together. he was profoundly afraid of the greatest threat the darkness could muster but could still reasonably counter any other piece our enemies could try to throw at us. and then they iced him to make him a surrogate family member for ana to kill because his role in the story became counter productive to the marvelesque good guys vs bad guys setup they were making.
This is such a good articulation of thoughts I've been trying to put out there into the community. Bungie stories are best when they're about the larger conflict at hand, but we still have some fun or deep characters in the mix. Focusing too closely on interpersonal issues is whiplash-inducing; it's like watching a squad of firefighters take a break from putting out a burning house to have a group therapy session on the front lawn. It's really sad that Deborah took the kids and Andy's drinking problem is really worrying for his new girlfriend, but now's NOT the time!
@@xXx_Regulus_xXxbungie was never good at telling stories anyway. I became complacent and surprisingly, I had fun... Shocking I know.
This game will never reach the narrative quality of something like Spec Ops The Line, but that is something noone should expect. I atleast want a good story, you don't need money to make a good story but I guess you need money for competent writers.
I feel like Osiris relationship with Saint-14 felt forced because there was no build up to it, and litterally gave no hints to them being romantic partners at all. It was added for the sake of inclusion so people can rag on it and have a bunch other players hop it cause it is LGBTQ 'friendly'
I don't play anymore, but in keeping up with all the content the last few years, it hasn't seemed to me like the content has been disconnected (although, interesting to get an expert's opinion to say it is)...my issue, and a big reason I don't play anymore...is that the EXPANSION stories, WITHOUT the seasonal content to act as connective tissue...don't form any type of flowing narrative. Like, take a moment to yourself...think about "Destiny 2's story," from the time Ghost resurrects you (which, essentially, is Destiny 1's beginning, so what am I supposed to think if I played Destiny 1 before?), up through Lightfall, ONLY describing the CURRENTLY AVAILABLE D2 expansions to form that narrative.
It honestly resembles Destiny 1 levels of storytelling, with jumbles of disjointed moments, nothing to serve as build up or tension or develop any emotional investment. Even if we look at the last 4 seasons, and say "well, some of it felt connected" or "some of it had some running narrative" or even "some of the new activities were more creative," that's fine, but...what happens when Final Shape releases and the only way to catch up on all that story is to hang out in the Tower reading everything in the timeline?
That's what I think the larger problem is. The seasons not actually being too terribly connected is a big enough problem, but the fact that the expansions make little to no sense and, in and of themselves, feel almost like "seasonal" burps of content WITHOUT the actual seasons to build them...that's the disaster going on here, and how Destiny 2 dropped so far off.
Season of the wish feels like filler. I remember doing the story missions every week and thinking “this is just a rivens lair again, isn’t it”.
I agree, I haven't even been playing it and I already know what's going to happen
More or less
The whole lightfall-era's been quite "meh". I liked the last season because Savathun, but the one before that was just awful with the constant running below. That made the dungeon such a drag that I won't touch it again no matter what. Sure this season's been quite nice, because I do like Ahamkaras. But the best thing about this season is the fact that finally Crow's sulking somewhere else!
Bungie has always tried to figure out ways to cut content and make smaller expansions.
Lightfall was literally announced right before witch queen and was clearly cut content from final shape.
Neomuna is just Europa without the snow and instead of going down you go up buildings woo, it’s only purpose was for the campaign..which also looked like it got cut too
No wondering Sony scolding their management now
I really wanted to see the Destiny that Bungie envisioned back in 2013. It would have been interesting if we got 10 years of D1 instead of 2 seperate games
Nah, Destiny 1 would've had the same issues as Destiny 2 if that happened, maybe even worse if you think about it.
This wasn’t the way it was going to happen. Hate to break it to you, but Activision had a 10 year plan for 5 Destiny games with Bungie.
Basically every off year you were suppose to get a dlc and then a game the following year. The entire contract and everything for it is out there.
So if you want a similar example is Warzone and it’s CoD games one release every year with a bunch of junk that’s overly priced.
Destiny 1 released far too early. I can't imagine playing something built on the limitations of the PS3 and 360 into 2024.
@@jasonhernandez730 this is why the engine has the problems that it does now. It was only designed to handle about 2 years worth of assets, and they would be able to start fresh with each numbered sequel. It would have also let you go back and play every expansion as older titles went into maintenance mode and wouldn't have needed anything removed. Instead we're stuck with the DCV, and with the playerbase dropping off after TFS, there's not going to be much reason to invest in a new engine at this point. They'll probably have to pull a Cataclysm and use a big story event to reset the whole world down to a manageable size, then add back new and recycled locations at a slower, more manageable pace.
Go watch the movie Oblivion from 2013. That's pretty much it. Post-apocalyptic Earth, floating geometric object in the sky, things aren't what they seem, etc. (It's pretty clear they didn't actually have some ten-year plan back then... hence why they've returned to the plot points of the Supercut, like Crow being turned into Uldren, only to become Crow...)
We all know what is gonna happen. 2 weeks before TFS drops, we will have to do the finale mission to go into Riven's Lair to kill 1 to 3 bosses to finish a ritual to connect mara to crow. There may be a final reveal of Xivu to further tease her episode, but even that I doubt. We did this in Lost and Seraph and Arrivals.
Also the seasons being "the middle" means that the middle of this story will vanish when the final shape drops.
It is funny because when the Bungie guy talked about their business model "the most dangerous thing is when players become apathetic". Unfortunately a game I loved, I have become Apathetic towards. There are no stakes, no ramp up, no one meeting talking strategy, and this is before the final shape. How can I, as a player be invested in something that Bungie itself seems indifferent towards. These are just story issues, not mentioning gameplay issues.
I will play and enjoy the final shape. I hope its an amazing send off for a universe I used to absolutely love.
Love your commentary. You're right as usual. Considering sun-setting etc, the whole DLC requirement model from DLCs past possibly needs looking at as well. Imagine coming into D2 now for the first time and trying to work out what is going on and then realising you haven't purchased the correct DLCs etc to progress through the story.Then try and work out what is going on and why.
THANK YOU!
Defiance had no story. It didn't connect to Lightfall or Season of the Deep. Deep was only connected to Wish because of exposition. You fight back Xivu Arath to talk to Ahsa, who tells you to seek out Savathun, who then bargains with you to deal with Xivu Arath. Deep and Witch were connected like circular logic. And Witch barely connected to Wish because the Ahamakara egg is how they connected, but you don't do anything with that egg in the helm, we just go conjure Riven. This year was ok in quality, but terrible in connectivity.
Congrats on holding Bungie to their own standards. Personally, I think the year from Beyond Light to Witch Queen was far more connected than Lightfall to Final Shape.
It’s incredibly clear that these seasons were undercooked narratively speaking must like Lightfall itself, likely because they were rushing to fill the time until Final Shape.
Defiance sees us freeing prisoners from the Shadow Legion. Neither Calus, the Witness or any other lieutenant are present. We don’t have an antagonist and Amanda Holiday dies in the most dumbfounding way possible, why is she not allowed to die in the air?
Oh yeah, also the major flaw, WHY ARE THE SHADOW LEGION TAKING PRISONERS?
It’s never explained within the story of the season.
Deep sees us link up with Ahsa to learn what we can from her. Most of the story is character stuff with vague build-up to the Witness cutscene, then we get the Savathûn name drop. Some questions though.
How does Ahsa know the Witness’s origins? And how does she know that Savathûn knows how to follow the Witness?
Xivu Arath is also further sullied by failing utterly in her objective to secure the heretic Worm.
Witch sees us strike a bargain with Immaru to revive Savathûn. Starts off strong with each week building until Xivu Arath invades and it turns into 4-5 weeks of ‘Oh boy, we really need a plan’ with us not being privy to this formulation until out of nowhere Eris produces this plan to kill Savathûn (makes sense) for her tribute only to then banish Xivu from her Throne (makes less sense).
Xivu has now been defeated in back to back season with no victories under her belt at all. She wasn’t established well as a villain and utterly wasted, now we’re likely going to be expected to treat her seriously despite already having been crippled.
Wish sees us striking our second bargain of the year to achieve our end goal. We’re also brought full circle, with no actual antagonist. The Scorn and Taken are back in mindless violence mode and the Vex have just shown up to secure more paracausal material. We spend every week securing eggs, no break up in that fetch quest, only to then send Crow into the Pale Heart and we’re done.
The Seasonal Model, narratively, went out with a fucking whimper. It’s pathetic, especially after the highs of Seraph.
Me playing Season of the Wish... Ah yes I too have read Elric of Melnibone Revenge of the Rose.
it's a good day when a Myelin video releases
It's also good day when the Shadow of the Erdtree trailer releases
That thing about having to "buy Lightfall and all its seasons and buy Final Shape to get the whole story", that's likely the main motivator behind the narrative "links" in my opinion. Because that induces more people to buy everything which leads to more cash for Bungo (in theory).
The more that Bungie leans onto temporary content to expand their world the worse this is going to get imo. You can't write a story then take out the first half and demand anyone unfamiliar with the now missing context to be invested in a game that is only a template where 4 seasons will change it only for that to be wiped away next year.
If Lightfall was the Infinity War moment then I worried about Bungie’s Endgame
8:12 that was the weirdest thing about the veil containment stuff. Somehow I completely missed that it was a thing, and I literally didn’t know there was a node on the map for it through most of that season. It was completely detached from everything and yet super important narratively for the DLC. I really liked the last 3 seasons, although defiant was completely weird.
11:27 “Story quality is still high”
A bit of a self-pat on the back there. I for one think the fragmented nature of Destiny’s story telling eviscerated its quality, for me, that I cannot even remember what happened before, nor really care for what happens next. Everything is a chore with no real payoff, as the game has just become grinding for shit patterns and cheating haven pvp. The Final Shape is the mail in the coffin for me just to get closure then gladly close this book for good. The memories and friends I made along the way I will cherish, but disgusting layoffs of the hardest working people including the composer has really soured my want to even touch the game anymore.
When I started playing, they had already shunted the main story (Red War) off to the side, and I very nearly quit playing within a day or two. I found it with Amanda as an optional quest and doing that saved my patronage and I kept playing. Now, I'd probably not even try to understand the mess that Destiny 2 has become. Speaking of Red War, it was a good, classical story that wasn't hard to grasp. Now, though? It's just a lot of incredibly esoteric mumbo jumbo that one can barely follow and as a consequence I've seriously lost a lot of drive and investment into the story part. And since I'm a story driven player, that's a real issue.
I think the interconnected thing and the weekly veil logs were just Bungie bullshitting their way out of lackluster content delivery. It felt more like they were just recording the voice recording this week and putting it in next week, just to play into the narrative that it was all planned.
Have not watched yet as I wanted to put my thoughts down first. I consider myself a writer and as a reader I am damned picky and harsh when I pick up new books. The writing in D2 has been deteriorating since Witch Queen and that was one of the few high points since Forsaken. There is too much hand waving and what my wife calls ‘ya ya’ writing. Also I am seeing a disturbing trend towards the ‘gotcha’ moment that twist out of nowhere that is supposed to surprise us but has had no actual set up and usually very little payoff.
I am not sure if it is the editorial control from higher up or they are running out of….no I figured it out. The seasons seem to be planned and written in a vacuum with no actual end point other than, next season they go into the Traveller. How? Why? Who cares, just put in something teasing, keep the player ‘interested’ and we will figure it out later.
Writing is damned hard and plotting and planning a story line this long and convoluted it double tough. I just don’t see that they have a clear direction or consistent tone.
Great analysis. My takeaway is that whatever Bungie meant by "interconnected" (or thought they meant) isn't what people want. Looking back, the seasons that stand out had a strong narrative of their own (including a conclusion) - but ended with implications for the larger destiny setting. I think that's what people want, strong traditional narratives that stand on their own within their respective season/expansion, and that build on the evolving destiny setting. Not whatever the artificial, unsatisfying experiment that Bungie tried with Lightfall and its seasons.
I still feel that The Taken King was the best expansion as a whole in terms of narrative beginning, middle, end *AND* post Oryx.
Forsaken could have taken that gor me but the Dreaming City storyline has been lazily dangling there and Bungie confirmed it will literally never see a resolution.
But anyway, you kill Oryx but then you have the Shades of Oryx who effectively continue the spread of the Taken and the Taken War didn't end just because Oryx died. *THAT* is how you do an expansion.
Couldnt agree more with the sentiment here. Fragmentation of the Story is, and should be seen as, absolutely NOT the way to deliver a story.
Looking at Steam charts for the year, the player-base has absolutely collapsed through 2023 and the start of 2024, which shows more people than ever before feel disconnected from events in the game.
Personally, even with watching all the lore videos on the seasons since I stopped playing toward the end of Season of the Deep, theres still a lot of connection missing.
With that and my feeling of disconnection, I dont see myself paying £80+ for an expansion and the seasons for that "full" story, when theres no guarantee they dont tell the story in the same way this year, and with things so disconnected I massively loose interest and motivation to play.
Its a tough one to watch happen to something I absolutely loved, and made lifelong friendships in, so seeing it decline in such a way is heartbreaking. And while I hope those still playing are having a blast, despite how good it looks and how good the gun-play is, its just no longer for me, and I feel i'm not the only one in this particular boat at this moment in time.
I couldn't agree more, this pretty much exactly sums up my feelings on this season. To be fair though, since they butchered the beginning of d2, brought d1 in, swapped out the red war, took all the planets away, took the story that they spent years crafting the one i fell in love with narratively and just chopped into pieces and took most of it away for literally no reason. I mean, they killed off Cayde for no reason other than to hook ppl back in, now they're bringing him back for the same reason. Then it was like they had an idea of where the story was going, but everything was all cut up and a mess. When the unveiling book came out and retcon'd things i had just given up and stopped playing after signing on every single day. They talkin about trying new things in the last couple years? No, stick to the formula and just write better narratively. Don't tie the story to meaningless tasks. Tell a good tale and have those things be a part of the world for us too discover what you're talking about.. Anyways rant over, still thinking about getting the final shape, but Myelin your words have resonated with me. Spot on lad. And thank you.
Veil Containment was such a letdown. I feel like most of the story indulged in their relationship vs the story around Clovis where it had much more meat on its bones.
That’s kinda my issue with the story ever since Bungie committed to focusing on it in game: the majority of the time it’s focused on the least interesting aspects of the narrative it’s trying to tell.
Clovis's journal was refreshingly good scifi, and a really fun glimpse into the mind of an (occasionally well-intentioned) megalomaniac. I have a weird soft spot for out-of-touch geniuses who think they know what people want better than the people know themselves, so for me it was a very fun read, plus getting context for a lot of the unsolved mysteries of CB corporation, the exos, the vex, Maya Sundaresh, and a freaking DIRECT CONVERSATION WITH ALPHA LUPI! That's how the stories leading up to the endgame of this story should feel more often, but they buried this one in a lore entry while a lot of the real screentime was devoted to the Bray sisters catching up and reminding each other about "grandpa bad." And the House of salvation, which I don't care about in the slightest, though I guess Mithrax did need somebody to oppose him so some of the Fallen wouldn't stop being an enemy faction...
Couldn’t agree more. Great video breakdown and feedback!
Is that the sword “sting” from the hobbit/lotr on the book shelf behind you? That’s wicked 👍
The lack of urgency is a major point. I’m sure there will be more buildup by the time The Final Shape comes, but so far this season the urgency has been much lower than leading into Lightfall.
Saw this on aztecross's channel, wanted to come over and say YES. I don't want to pile on etc but yeah. Been feeling this all year. It's been felt really scattered and I can't decide if it's because of unexpected changes to D2s road map, or a desire to drive players to buy seasons so they can 'experience the full story'. Probably a bitmix of both because life is messy like that. Anyway. Fierce beard man. Keep the content coming.
In my view, spending $150 for this story is probably not worth the price. I just don’t think they are hitting at a caliber that’s warranted of that. I think it’s insane how little happens week to week, and while there are always interesting high points, there’s been way more expensive misses than hits in the long run.
This experiment is not something that makes any sense to do in a seasoned game. “Imagine that we have the same exact mission, every week, and you get to stay a while, and listen”. Sorry, why would that pass as novel?
It actually blows my mind how many different leads at Bungie are able at overselling and under delivering. It’s clearly a result of the company culture. Why am I paying so much money for stuff that feels like it’s delivered through what feels like bare minimum possibility?
Just really hope they can get things together before the FS
As a counterpoint, I feel that there should be a place for "long form" storytelling. I could liken this to serials of old, comic books, and soap operas. Lately, perhaps first exemplified by Babylon 5, more series have told a multi-season story.
Maybe the world has changed in that most don't want to wait that long anymore. But I will agree that Bungie has never really been strong with translating lore into experiential gameplay too.
Personally, if rather play a live service with a serialized story, because what falls flat with me is actually the loot and progression chase. If destiny's gameplay went so good, I'd never had played more than the destiny 1 base game.
there is, but that's not what Destiny has ever excelled at. It's better at big cinematic expansions with lulls in-between to work on the next expansion. Looking back I wish people had just found other games to play during the lulls instead of demanding that Bungie somehow stretch out the story and have some gimmick of the week ready at all times.
The issue has been that we become less central to the story in each season of late with focus on peripheral characters lately. Lightfall didn't work - Rohan wasn't around long enough to notice, let alone care about; The veil, the veil, the veil etc; Nimbus was jarring/poorly written and the voice effects made things worse. I can barely remember much of the seasons this expansion. They've been bland.
Going back to what came out from that round table, Bungie have a nasty habit of being loose with their definitions of things and the use of interconnected was another example of that.
Veil containment lore should have been discoverable in the campaign missions on Neomuna
Man, I haven't played for several seasons now. Lightfall and the following season was really just the end for me. Been into it since the beta and it's been my main standby since then. It's you and Byf that really got me sucked in, and y'all have carried me the whole way through. Great job with the grimoire books btw. But I just stopped caring after Lightfall. I got tired of hints of the story with seemingly random, unexplained mcguffins. Grinding for hours for a slideshow "cinematic" and a radio transmission just isn't worth it anymore. Best of luck to all the Guardians sticking with the fight. o7
I still have no idea what the veil is....
I can't hep but think that the live service model is just not suited for telling an engaging story. It kinda works for character development, in the same way a TV show does, but it's less effective because most of that happens as radio messages/chatter, we rarely see or interact with the characters being developed. That disconnection has never been more obvious than the Deep finale, which makes an interesting comparison the to the first mission in the Red War campaign, where we joined Zavala in his bubble, watched Ikora take down a drop ship with a Nova Bomb, then joined Cayde as he Golden Gunned a bunch of Cabal.
The other issue is that Bungie clearly needed more time to take story from the Witch Queen to Final Shape, but it doesn't feel like they had enough to fill an expansion and four seasons. Defiance was 50% of the Lightfall story and 50% of the Wish story Frankensteined into a season. Deep, Witch, and Wish have told a relatively cohesive story, but have been so stretched out that they have become difficult (due to waning interest) to follow. Can't help but wonder what an expansion would have been like if it wove those three stories together, it's a great package but the delivery sucked.
Telling an interconnected story in pieces could work. But not when most of that content is inaccessible a year later.
I look forward to these videos, Matty.
Im glad i experienced forsaken/red war. Was able to enjoy the Leviathan Raid live. Decline steadily onward
It almost sounds like they wanted to try the living world seasons approach that Guild Wars 2 had after season 1. Except did it the worst way possible like example the expansion comes with the seasons that narrative take place AFTER it. The way GW2 visually looks also lets the season and expansion stories to feel the same. Destiny DOESN'T work this way so it doesn't work well.
Bungies story telling has ALWAYS been like watching a Tarantino film. The storyline constantly jumps all over the place, only to give us a little bit of a teaser/refresher a few weeks before the next expansion.
This expansion was a bit more liner, yes. But the storyline and its writings were gawd awful.
I hope the Narrative team was stripped of all the bad writers during the layoffs. If not The Final Shape is going to be the turd that finally ends this franchise.
Season of the Seraph was by far my favorite. Especially in terms of expansion lead up. Then boom. Lightfall.
This is why I think having an interconnected seasonal story that’s overarching doesn’t work
Destiny works best when we know nothing imo.
Lightfalls seasons was comparable to a child asking if he can go to the store.
Deep: hey assa, can we go into the traveler? No go ask savathun.
Witch: hey savathun, can we go into the traveler? No go ask riven.
Wish: hey riven, can we go into the traveler? Maybe but do me a favor first.
I’m not even gonna talk about defiance, that doesn’t exist in my mind
Didn’t buy lightfall, only bought the witch season to TRY to play with my friends, then we all quit and haven’t played destiny in months, with no plans on returning. Instead we will be awaiting the Elden ring DLC coming this summer.
Whilst this chapters seasons have been good. I agree the seasons have not been connected at all, at least not more than the usually are. The veil containment is disconnected from the seasonal story imo on top of it being so out the way and underpromoted.
I think there's an argument that this year's seasons were the most interconnected, not because they were all that well interconnected, but more because the season's are usually completely unrelated. The one exception is probably the Beyond Light seasons, because the Crow character arc and Fauxsiris were a consistent through line the whole year (the issue is the seasons were entirely unrelated to the expansion, which might be what gives this year's seasons the edge). Frankly, the year of having Fauxsiris prominent in the story, with bits of dialogue and lore tabs subtly hinting at the notion that Osiris was actually Savathun, the clues becoming more apparent with each season until the grand reveal in Lost, was incredible and the best seasonal stortytelling they've done.
I think the fact that the Veil Containment was spread out over weeks and season's doesn't mean it isn't interconnected. I think that makes it literally interconnected. Whether that was the best way to deliver that story, however, is a different issue.
I don't think it's out of line for a game to ask you to buy in to the expansion and seasons to get the full story, conceptually. That's pretty common fare with movie sequels and even game sequels. The idea is just that each piece of the trilogy or whatever should tell a complete story, and the Lightfall narrative was disappointing.
I made a video regarding this "evolving world" idea when they started with Shadowkeep (main worries was the Season of the Warmind story making questionable decisions regarding story and character development), and it did not do well at the time.
It is funny looking back at it and sering that not only wad I right in all my qorries, but it seems things never truly got better. Lots of contrivances and retconning to just get us to where they want us.
Every time Mylin makes a Destiny video after quitting DCP, it feels like the Dad who abandoned you decided to show up one day to take you out for ice cream. Only to be dropped off later, never knowing when the next visit is coming.
Twitch streams are your friend
Considering that I've been playing both games since release, I sometimes compare FFXIV to Destiny. Of course, one's a subscription MMO, while the other one isn't, but they're ultimately both on-going live-service games with on-going stories. FFXIV had its "closure" story in Endwalker back in 2021. This was the conclusion of a decade-long saga (bit longer in XIV's case) that tied a lot of loose ends. Now, whether or not XIV stuck the landing... depends on who you ask, but I got the general impression that it had a positive reception. For my part, I had some issues with the story (mostly relating to pacing) but I liked it. I think that momentum is something that can go a long way in influencing people's perceptions and in this regard, XIV set itself up for success by building some good, positive momentum. Put plainly, Shadowbringers was extremely well-received, and so... naturally, people actually looked forward to Endwalker.
I really wish the same could be said about Destiny. A lot of us are just... tired, man. We really are crawling to the finish line with this one. If I am playing through TFS, it's because of momentum... but not the kind that gleefully looks forward to the story, but the one that just wants to get it over with. Been playing this game for nearly a decade at this point and it has fumbled so many things over the years. I find it utterly absurd to be sitting here, nearly years in, going "well, Destiny certainly has potential..." Holy shit it's been nearly 10 years. I remember playing through TTK and thinking "game's come a long way, but it has great potential and a long way to go...... I just hope I'm not finding myself saying this 7 years down the line."
10 fucking years.
Season of the (I) Wish (Bungie had listened to ATV and created Destiny 3).
They already had a handful of great interconnected seasons through Worthy to Beyond Light, and Hunt to Lost. How did they actually believe they weren’t interconnected enough? They barely are NOW.
This whole year just feels like we’re falling down a staircase when you measure it.
You say that you don't agree with them having Lightfall as a beginning, the seasons as a middle, and Final Shape as an end, but isn't this technically the way things have been for a while? Like each expansion is a pillar of story that usually has some relevance to the core throughline of the narrative. I think how it's been handled with Lightfall and the seasons this year wasn't that great to be fair, and it's difficult to not see LF as filler, but as you mention earlier, having interconnected seasons is kind of what they've been doing already. It sucks they are removed from the game each year, but generally, that idea of having the story play out through the year and culminate in an expansion is one of the game's strongest aspects imo, and it seemed like that's more or less universally agreed. Just LF and Y5 and 6 have been a bit mixed with how it plays out.
Not sure how I feel about Bungie's comments themselves because I do think they are just having to sort of 'PR' their way around certain questions due to the situation - and I'm not sure I fully buy everything they've said - but I do think things have been difficult for them. Y4 seasons and WQ were very good narratively, and I think they've just been dealt a bad hand with the year of Lightfall. Hopefully when The Final Shape gets here, things will be better. We'll see of course, but I do think there's more to all this than just them experimenting with new ideas - that seems like just a result of the situation imo.
This comparison has likely been made a thousand times before, but to me the whole expansion+season model has made a similar evolution as that of the Hobbit trilogy as opposed to the LOTR trilogy.
If we replace the LOTR movies with say D1 leading in to The Taken King or D2 leading in to Forsaken, Beyond Light and Witch Queen (with the stuff inbetween) these can be enjoyed in pieces and still stand as a complete story for the most part, but will for sure enhance what comes after having it as context.
With Lightfall and the last few seasons, this feels like the Hobbit. Something got cut up far more than necessary and stretched too far, with each part mostly failing to be its own standalone narrative. Without the surrounding context, none of it would make any sense, as there is no clear beginning or end between each part.
I don’t even want to play final shape at this point, the destiny universe can’t be salvaged imo
we were 1 week away guys 💔
Keep up the good work Matt
You are awesome, keep up the great work and couldn’t agree w you more. Just shows how lost bungie really is and maybe somewhat disconnected w the community.
Bungie has never given its lore/story builders a proper platform. The story team is trying to build a plot in quicksand.
Thank you
this is how i felt with Halo after 343 took over. they had a lot of plot threads created outside of the main game that you needed to know in order to understand what is going on in the game... so the game didnt feel whole
This entire year’s story feeling like such a pointless nothingburger is the single biggest indicator this year of content was not supposed to exist and was not in the original plan for the final years of the saga written back in 2019.
"All human institutions slide downwards like a landslide, unless they are perpetually forced upwards by criticism and reform."
- G.K. Chesterton.
Completely agree. Feel the same way myself.
Final shape isn't the end. The raid is, so if as predicted they are making it super hard in reaction to RON then who is going to experience it without spoilers?
Season of the Wish as usual this has been a pleasure, this is Myelin Games.. peace......
"And I don't like that at all." I get that there is... fatigue with the seasonal model and telling stories this way, but what's the alternative? Drop a mountain of content all at once, then people complain there's nothing to do for X months or half a year or more until the next expansion? And they *did* design it so that you don't have to sign in every week. I'm helping a friend right now who hasn't played all season. They were on step ~ 15 when I hopped in tonight, and I hung out with them through step 22 or so. They're still getting the whole story, on their terms, when they're able to play. 🤷♂
I feel the episodes are gonna follow stories similar to season of the deep and haunted stories. haunted is by far my favourite season
Story is absolutely horrid and I've been playing the game for 10 years. I have no clue what's going on in these seasons. Doesn't make any sense.
It was clear to me after lightfall and deep, they had absolutely no clue what to do with their IP. I feel sorry to say all of us are going to be sorely disappointed with how they conclude this saga, too many untied threads and further promises of slower longer seasons next year with a bad track record. Feel sorry for lore creators like you because when the payoff is bad everything feels like a waste of time(like GOT).
The fact that nobody gives a shit about destiny right before the final expansion tells you everything you need to know about how bungie has planned the story. Mcguffins, dues ex machinas and resurrections of “perma” dead characters, the holy trinity of brain dead writing. Not to mention all the drama in the studio so I doubt even gameplay is going to land. Couple all that with fatigue the community has over this game in general and I can bet there’ll be a lot less preorders, and that’s where bungie makes most of its money.
We were more in love with idea of what destiny could be rather than what it actually ever was.
spot on, and they know it. the PR revolves around telling us they're listening and adjusting things based on player feedback, but Lightfall turned out worse than Vanilla D1, complete with the "why are we doing any of this?" "I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain" style of non-exposition they got so much flak for. If Lightfall is what listening to player feedback looks like, I would hate to see what happens when they ignore it.
haha I remember season of the plunder and haunted and seraph more and rate the stories of those season than defiance and deep since I do not remember what happened in defiance and deep even tho I played those seasons the most this year
"incredibly typical" should be D2's tagline
I still would prefer the story being delivered the way it was with The Taken King. That whole expansion had me hyped for what was coming next. From the beginning to the end.
We could tell a full story for a nice complete package of $40, or we could tell that same story over the next 2 years for $140.
That's probably what the executives thought, but little did they know, people would just stop paying, and then you lose your entire player base.