I’m not saying that we need unskippable lore dumps or a new cutscene every week, but a little more integration of the most important events in Destiny‘s ongoing story into the game itself would go a long way towards making it feel more alive.XCOM 2: War of the Chosen is here, and by all accounts it’s the best version of XCOM ever made. There’s no reason why we couldn’t have gotten a cutscene like this at the beginning of the season giving a bit of information on Caiatl, or one last season showing Sagira’s final moments. It’s a simple but effective scene that allows Zavala’s excellent voice actor Lance Reddick to shine, unfettered by awkward in-game dialogue animations. This week, Destiny players are greeted with a simple cutscene in the game’s spare, line-drawn style showing an encounter between Zavala and the Crow, formerly known as Uldren Sov. Thankfully, there are signs that this may be changing. But without allowing players to act on the information that the lore gives us, all this really amounts to is winking references to how psychotic and unpredictable we as Guardians are from the perspectives of our enemies. You could say that this is intentional, that Destiny makes explicit only the bare minimum of narrative and that reading the lore allows for new perspectives on the game’s action.
You’d think that one of the game’s most important characters becoming mortal and losing his lifelong companion would be worthy of at least a cutscene, but you wouldn’t know how it happened unless you read the story on Bungie’s website. The Season of the Hunt was kicked off by Osiris losing his Ghost, Sagira, to Xivu Arath’s High Celebrant. But it’s become especially noticeable in the last couple of seasons. It’s not a new problem, of course - Destiny players have long bemoaned the disconnect between the rich lore of the game’s world and the actual storytelling it conveys through play.
What do these Destiny moments have in common? They all happened offscreen, relegated to lore books - or worse, web-only short fiction. The Exo Stranger’s journeys into a dark future. The heroic sacrifice of Osiris’s Ghost, Sagira. The fall of the Cabal homeworld, Torobatl.