(no subject)
May. 2nd, 2020 07:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidewaysEvery time I flick through the latter Destiny 2 Shin-centric books I get the hopeful idea that maybe I will finally vibe with them, and every time it turns out that no, I still don't like the direction they took. Every time.
I can admit it: some is the petty irritation of having a big rock lobbed into the sandcastle I built over the span of years when lore was thin and the pit largely empty and I could do whatever I wanted. It's not like I didn't know perfectly well that sooner or later canon could upend things, but three odd years is a long time to get comfy with your own ideas and it's hard not to feel a touch of resentment at having the lords and masters suddenly decide they feel like telling their own story in a way that messes with your own.
Beyond my own subjective grumpiness, I just... don't think it one of their stronger expansions on old lore. It's one thing to write a story with an unreliable narrator; it's another to so clumsily have the big reveal be "well 80% of what you've read over the past year has been a bald-faced lie, have fun with that". I am not having fun with that. I am sitting here with a timeline that makes no sense and a huge and significant period in a character's life that I can't easily parse because there is no way to tell what actually happened, because 80% of what has been written about it is a bald-faced lie. And not even a good lie. Not even clever foreshadowing. We're just expected to accept that a weird number of people were in on maintaining this lie that half of them didn't even really approve of because ????? plot I guess.
At the end of the day it mostly feels like they had a PvP mode to roll out so they carelessly crunched some lore around it for flavour, and thus does Shin nonsensically join the long list of people who have decided the best solution to a complex problem is yet another battle royale. Maybe if I'd ever played Gambit I'd jive with it a little more, but on paper the entire Shadows of Yor conspiracy feels like the most unnecessarily convoluted way of dealing with the issue of shady Guardians he could possibly have landed on. Also, kind of immoral? Which I can roll with on an individual scale but, again, the Vanguard and Shaxx and various others are allowing this aggressive baiting, however grudgingly. That's... uncomfortable, y'all.
I'll deal with, mind. I'll grit my teeth and find a way to make it fit with what I've got. I just wish they'd gone a different route on this one.
I can admit it: some is the petty irritation of having a big rock lobbed into the sandcastle I built over the span of years when lore was thin and the pit largely empty and I could do whatever I wanted. It's not like I didn't know perfectly well that sooner or later canon could upend things, but three odd years is a long time to get comfy with your own ideas and it's hard not to feel a touch of resentment at having the lords and masters suddenly decide they feel like telling their own story in a way that messes with your own.
Beyond my own subjective grumpiness, I just... don't think it one of their stronger expansions on old lore. It's one thing to write a story with an unreliable narrator; it's another to so clumsily have the big reveal be "well 80% of what you've read over the past year has been a bald-faced lie, have fun with that". I am not having fun with that. I am sitting here with a timeline that makes no sense and a huge and significant period in a character's life that I can't easily parse because there is no way to tell what actually happened, because 80% of what has been written about it is a bald-faced lie. And not even a good lie. Not even clever foreshadowing. We're just expected to accept that a weird number of people were in on maintaining this lie that half of them didn't even really approve of because ????? plot I guess.
At the end of the day it mostly feels like they had a PvP mode to roll out so they carelessly crunched some lore around it for flavour, and thus does Shin nonsensically join the long list of people who have decided the best solution to a complex problem is yet another battle royale. Maybe if I'd ever played Gambit I'd jive with it a little more, but on paper the entire Shadows of Yor conspiracy feels like the most unnecessarily convoluted way of dealing with the issue of shady Guardians he could possibly have landed on. Also, kind of immoral? Which I can roll with on an individual scale but, again, the Vanguard and Shaxx and various others are allowing this aggressive baiting, however grudgingly. That's... uncomfortable, y'all.
I'll deal with, mind. I'll grit my teeth and find a way to make it fit with what I've got. I just wish they'd gone a different route on this one.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-02 02:31 pm (UTC)It didn't jive with me either, and I did play a ton of Gambit.
One of the things that's always worked for me about this title is how the lore and flavor text make it seem like there's so much more to it than there is if you step back and look objectively, but yeah...that can definitely backfire when they do try to fill stuff in.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-03 07:17 am (UTC)I have really enjoyed the lore surrounding Destiny, and even its method of delivery - it's nice that I can still keep up with the story despite not having the dedication to keep up with the game, y'know? c: It's the next best thing to some actual novelisations and it's such fertile ground for fanfic. But... yeah, the fact they are clearly inventing much of this as they go gets a wee bit tangled sometimes. Ah well.
Do you have a favourite niche of the lore?
no subject
Date: 2020-05-10 03:10 pm (UTC)Exactly this, particularly as the game increasingly focuses on PVP, which is not my thing, either.
In some ways, I almost like individual characters as opposed to the lore itself; the voice acting, like the flavor text, intrigues and engages me way more than it by rights should--Shaxx, Saladin, and the Drifter in particular. As far as actual lore goes, I really liked Cayde-6's story arc, even though you knew for awhile ahead of time how it was going to end.