{"id":4248,"date":"2017-10-27T17:47:16","date_gmt":"2017-10-27T23:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/?p=4248"},"modified":"2017-10-27T17:47:16","modified_gmt":"2017-10-27T23:47:16","slug":"forming-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/?p=4248","title":{"rendered":"Forming Notes"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been living in no-thought zombie mode for a while, just making stuff without thinking too much about what I’m consuming or producing.<\/p>\n

Here’s some little insights into my world lately:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

With this third book I’ve been trying to emphasize smaller moments over big plot points. Originally the page to the left didn’t exist until I realized I needed to sink deeper into the comical dread of this scene, with poor Apam being chased around by these ruthless killers. It’s an ongoing challenge to remember that a story isn’t just about plot. Finding that line between overly tangential, and pure plot service is a tricky one. I think that if the moment serves to enrich the thrust of the story, then it’s usually helpful to include it, unless you’re derailing a certain rhythm you’re trying to hit.<\/p>\n

Speaking of plot service, storytelling and keeping an audience engaged, I’ve been playing the shit out of the most mediocre game franchise of all time: Destiny 2. You could almost say I’m hate-playing it, but that can’t be true since some aspect of my spirit compels me to log mad hours on it. I wouldn’t do that just to hate it. Maybe it’s the OCD part of me that won’t feel complete until all my armor, weapons and power levels are maxed out?<\/p>\n

I’m also kind of obsessed with watching youtube videos of people complaining about how bad it is. Fuck, I really don’t know what’s wrong with me. Here’s a small list of what’s shitty about this game:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Same exact enemies from Destiny 1<\/li>\n
  2. Majority of the weapons\/armor you grind for are unimaginative in their design and variation. It all looks\u00a0 basically the same.<\/li>\n
  3. The ships and sparrows you grind for also all look the same. They look like they were all designed by a single person who graduated from the Art Institute.<\/li>\n
  4. The supporting characters are atrociously written. They all have the same personality profiles except for Cayde-6 and the wacky scientist on Io.<\/li>\n
  5. There’s almost no strategic element to defeating enemies.<\/li>\n
  6. At a certain level, most open world activities won’t help you advance. So there’s no reason to participate in them. Also if you want to do them anyway, you have to overlook the mental dissonance of knowing you’ve already defeated these enemies. It doesn’t make any sense.<\/li>\n
  7. The world building lore embedded in the game is overly cryptic to the point of being incomprehensible to a passive player. Much like in Destiny 1, you really have no idea why anything is happening. You essentially have to watch youtube videos made by super nerds to figure out why you’re fighting any of these aliens and why they fight with each other, and what they want exactly. In a game like Witcher 3, each side mission was super clear about what your goals were, and what your enemy’s goals were. That helps ground yourself in the stakes of the conflict. Destiny was built by lore dork engineers who don’t know how to communicate.<\/li>\n
  8. The main quest story is stupid as shit, and has a weak, self-contradicting throughline… although it’s better than the non-existent stories in Destiny 1. Bungie should pay me $500,000 to help them write story, dialog, and jokes that weren’t picked from the trash bin of the Agents of Shield writer’s room. Holy fuck.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    It’s amazing that a huge company like Bungie can’t accomplish the thing that mainstream entertainment focuses completely on: telling a coherent story with characters you care about.<\/p>\n