A bunch of (undead, vampire) super-soldiers have to protect humanity (the white race) from hordes of invading aliens. The threat is everywhere and omnipresent, even though the actual baddies are underwhelming and you can readily slaughter tens of thousands of them. They're almost all uniformly evil, apparently just for the evulz. They're controlled by the all powerful yet unseen (((Darkness))) and the only thing protecting humanity is a giant white golfball. A white golf ball. Violence is the only way to interact with anything, and violence and death are goals unto themselves.
I keep trying to play this game and keep ending up frustrated by how empty, brutal, and fashy it is. Your characters, based on their actions, would be complete pyschopaths IRL, and the bad guy factions are all empty caricatures of evil evil baddies including Alien Invaders (Cabal), dirty illegal aliens who steal things (Fallen), Space Muslims (Scorn, Hive), and whatever the taken are (lazy writing so they can re-use assets).
Idk, I'm kind of done with it. Grinding for loot so you can grind for more loot is fun, but the story is so dumb and unselfconscious, and not even fun. Like with WH40k it's fascist and it's glorious because it revels in the excess and stupidity of fascism, it's all a huge fucking joke that's completely over the top. But Destiny plays it straight and it's so... dour and boring and unpleasant. This is the second time I've tried to play it and the second time i've given up in disgust.
Yeah, I feel like the world of Destiny is kind of at odds with the actual game.
The lore is establishing that we're making inroads of diplomacy with the Fallen and the Cabal, that we actually have large groups of them working with humanity.
But in game, we have no interaction with them outside of a few vendors. Hell, in the new expansion there's an activity where you help friendly Fallen flee the tyrannical House of Salvation, but you never actually see or speak with any of the allied Fallen.
It feels like the genre itself is just incredibly limiting to the concepts they want to convey.
Destiny is also the worst offender of the "show don't tell" rule in, like... ever. Having everything hidden in obscure background lore worked great in Dark Souls because everyone who could explain anything is dead or insane and dead. But in Destiny Zavala just stands there staring in to the distance and could literally just explain the state of things... but doesn't.
Bungie has always made the mistake that Cryptic Bullshit is the same thing as world-building.
Pathways Into Darkness was like this Marathon was like this Halo was like this
Like, they've gotten a little better about explaining stuff in game, but there's still too much that's only available if you grind through content that 5% of the player base will ever attempt
It was cool when Marathon did it because the story-telling capacity available in 1995 was extremely limited and the number of title's available was very low, so playing the same game over and over to find secrets and because there was nothing else to play made sense. And Durandal was a cool new idea in 1995.
But they're on the same bullshit in 2020, and it just comes off as bad, lazy writing. There's no reason to make basic background information about the setting difficult to find.
Aside from vendors we see Spider's Fallen 'associsates' and fight alongside them in Forsaken and a mission in Beyond Light after the campaign. We also get to see Mithrax (or as Variks calls him, Misraaks) in the Outbreak Perfected mission. I do agree though. I just want to see my four armed buddies milling around like in the tower. :(
Maybe we'll get to see Eliksni guardians or something down the line in D3 or a later expansion, as Mithrax is building a House of Light.
By this point I am honestly surprised there's still Fallen willing to keep fighting us, considering every attempt of theirs to fuck with humanity ends with thousands of their side dead.
Kind of surprised the Scorn haven't completely taken the place of hostile Fallen at this point.
I just feel bad for them at this point.