Destiny's story is terrible! Or is it...?

[L_C_Scipio 395]

So as we all know, Destiny's story as presented in-game is pretty shallow. Sure, there's the grimoire, but they just did that because they were too lazy to put the story in the game. Right? Or...

There are some really fantastic fan-made theories over on the Bungie forums, digging through the grimoire and item descriptions to put the pieces together. Invariably someone will say something a long the lines of "how come Bungie couldn't come up with something this good?" That got me thinking: What If the story is so thin because we're meant to figure it out for ourselves, not have it handed to us?

The game itself supports this philosophy. Throughout the game, you're left to figure out a lot of things on your own. The most notable examples are raids, particularly the Vault of Glass. Bungie even specifically said they purposely didn't tell you how to beat it; they wanted you to work together with other players to figure it out. Other minor things are this way as well, such as: how do you get an exotic bounty? How do you get the Husk of the Pit? The game doesn't tell you; you figure it out on your own or learn it from someone who did.

Why would they do something like this? I've got some theories about that, too. As we all know, the lead storywriter left mid-production. Various people who were in test groups for the game talk about how different the story was, so we know that a lot of it was done, but probably not all of it. Now, they may have had to change the story because they weren't able to achieve an acceptable level of continuity with what was already there. If you read a book that switched authors halfway through, you'd be able to tell and it would hinder your immersion in the book's world. So maybe just finishing the story that was already started just wasn't going to work, especially if key parts of it were still being worked on. They probably didn't have time to fully develop another story at this point (cut scenes, dialog, mission programming, etc) so instead they opted to give us the pieces to put together for ourselves.

"I could tell you..." or you could figure it out on your own. The elements of a great story are all here, you just have to go hunting for them, and it's supposed to be that way.

Or they were just lazy and I'm making something out of nothing. Discuss.

[Plumbers Crack 4,055]

You make a good post here. I seem to remember, possibly during the beta, that the idea was to use Google and Youtube to guide you. I'm not lazy but busy cooking or I would try and find the comment

[GazzaGarratt 11,004]

Like the idea of this, good post. I think depending on how you feel about the game will depend on what you want to believe.

Half full or half empty. I'm certainly the former.

[JsinOwl 644]

I think they aspired to much more but due to various constraints, they couldn't get it done. The Grimoire Cards was the best they could come up with to salvage the lore they had created but couldn't include in the game. The story may or may not be terrible, but I will never know because I'm not going to go through the effort to piece it together. What I do know is that the game itself has a woefully inadequate campaign no matter how you look at it.

[Sennex 1,903]

all I know is they have been working on Destiny for 5 years.

[techno 3,496]

TBH I've never been invested in story mode unless it's basically the whole game like black rain, cod or destiny its just something I either choose to or have to do then forget about.

Destiny not much to forget

[Ryan Pedro 0]

Story? Pshhhh... Who needs a story... I just want to shoot and blow shit up...you want a story??? Read a book....

[Plumbers Crack 4,055]

Story? Pshhhh... Who needs a story... I just want to shoot and blow shit up...you want a story??? Read a book....

^this! That's why I only ever did the CoD campaign when PSN was down!