Destiny: Rise of Iron 9.20.16

Okay so from all the preamble and concept art and such its clear that they have some sort of 10 year long mega story that is epic in scope.

It is also clear from the content currently released that what they have right now is a mess. Finished the Story quests after getting sidetracked by bounties and factions and marks and trying to get upgrades and everyone had the same reaction:

What?

We get rezzed by Ghost, go to the City and hear how we've been dead for centuries and Humanity is on its last legs. We need a working ship and so go to get a warp drive. Then we get somewhat sidetracked by the knowledge that the Fallen are looking for something and discover that it is a Russian AI named Rasputin who has been fighting all these centuries and has information about other outposts. It isvery importantthat we raise the last communication array and Hive tomb ships show up to stop us from doing so. We...umm...well apparently we needed to communicate with something but fuck if that plot ever comes back.

So we go to the Moon. I'm thinking Rasputin has a lead which has sent us to the Moon but nope we are going to the Moon to look for a guardian who was checking in on the Hive. On the moon we find the Hive massing for an invasion of Earth using "another seeder like the one that attacked earth". This sort of implies that at some point we were meant to encounter this early Hive expeditionary force landing someplace on Earth and fighting them off prompting Guardians to go seek out the Hive on the Moon. But instead we only encountered the Hive locked up by the Fallen and then encountered them some more when trying to raise the last array. Now on the way to the last array we do see geography of what looks like some Hive stuff that has recently crashed into Earth (note the Cave of Wonders is right there) and there's a big chunk of the Cosmodrome map associated with this geometry but it aint used for nothing.

So anyway we're on the moon now and so are the Fallen. They are attacking the Hive some more and are really keen on getting to the same place that we are but even though we want the same thing we just manage to shoot them in the back while they attack and rush past them to the end of the mission. Hive are making monsters and gonna invade and we find their Shrine of Oryx which is some sort of Dark Matter sphere they use to commune with the rest of their alien necromancy whatever out in the distant reaches of space and we break it. Apparently this is enough to hold off a further Hive invasion for awhile. Oh and the Hive had a shard of the Traveler they were using to torture him and we stop them and now the traveler is feeling a bit better.

Venus baby! YEAH! (from the ad) So before we finish up the Moon the stalker Exo chick phones us and tells us to come meet her because bad things are out there. We hop over to Venus find still more Fallen and this time they are fighting off the Vex who are part of a giant AI network with intergalactic teleporting tech that assimilate whole worlds in ways the Borg would be envious of. Apparently they turned Mercury into the Death Star already and are trying to do the same with Venus. Exo chick is not a guardian but has guardian-like powers. She comments that the Awoken can help get us to the Black Garden (the what now?) and that the Awoken are lost and have no allegiance to either Light or Shadow. So yeah we work for the Light and I guess she works for the Shadow and has others who are fighting off ... something. Anyway she knows more than shes saying but wont share.

We go see the Awoken and the Queen has some Fallen with her as she is now head of some Fallen clan. Oookay. Oh and they are mysterious and changed from the forces on the edge of the solar system and no one has seen one in centuries except for all the Awoken back in the Tower and the fact that your character has a good chance of BEING AN AWOKEN...but whatever. The Awoken are space elves and want to be mysterious and weird so leave it at that for now.

So we go off and hunt down big Vex to get a key that will allow us into the Black Garden (for which notably the Awoken are completely unhelpful and the Exo chick could have just said "go kill a big Vex and use its eye to unlock the Black Garden but I guess she wanted us and the Awoken to chat). We need to charge the eye and then use it on the gate both of which are on Mars so off to Mars we go. On Mars we find the Cabal who are space Romans from some high gravity planet and are here to conquer... but must be not too good at this because they are only on Mars whereas the Vex and Fallen are all over the place but whatever. The Cabal are fighting off the Vex who are trying to convert Mars too and are keen to stop us from going to the Black Garden. At somepoint we should start wondering why all these factions are fighting and if the Cabal don't like the Vex then why would they be stopping us from stopping the Vex...but we don't and just murder our way to the objective.

We get to the Black Garden, which happens to be outside of Time and Space, and we literally cast magic missile at the Darkness. At least I presume its the Darkness... its undulating and looks Darkness-ish. Anyway we attack it and disrupt the Vex and their billions of years old plans and then return to Earth. The Traveler is feeling much better now and we have a party.

What?!?!

Now if you are building a decade long story you want to have teasing elements of a bigger plotline out there and you want to have unanswered questions lingering at the end of your initial narrative. But absolutely no part of this story after "lets go find a warp drive" makes any fucking sense. The whole game comes down to fighting off the Vex who, it may be noted, are not actually doing anything to Earth itself. The actual Darkness doesn't seem to play much of a part other than being supposedly the reason we have more Hive and Fallen and Cabal and Vex running around... yet they all hate each other.

Its clear that there is a lot going on we don't know about and almost certainly true that at least one of the 'enemy' races are going to eventually be our friends but right now we are left with a whole lot of nothing when it comes to the actual story. Oh and the mysterious exo stalker chick gives us a gun "parts of which shouldn't exist yet" so lets throw Time Travel into the mix as well?

Again I feel there is a big story here, but in the process of trying to tease too much of it all at the start with a very limited content release they ended up giving us far too little to work with and no really coherent narrative. Its like there were 3-4 different stories that were competing to be Destiny Episode One and in the end we got 15% of each of them.