At its core, it's a game. Shooting guns feels good, many abilities are really fun to use, and the unique traits of exotic weapons and armour are mostly all really cool. There's a genuinely interesting world with fascinating lore involving complex cosmic powers that have mortal morals thrust upon them and the various species involved with them.
But it's all enshrouded in MMO grind hell, bland storytelling, and somewhat obnoxious epic badass characters.
The idea of Light and Dark not being good and evil is being sloooowly explored as our characters gain access to useful Darkness powers. But it's hidden behind background chatter during gunfights and platforming, or optional dialogue. Or worse, tucked away lore articles unlocked via grind-y challenges.
The idea of the Darkness' "existence is the struggle to exist" philosophy enforcing metaphysical social darwinism to create a perfectly self-sufficient culture (called a "final shape") is really cool. The idea of the Light going around seeding life and giving people powers willy nilly because it wants to see endless "novel patterns" and then just leaving because it doesn't actually love you or anything is INTERESTING. Especially since the Dark is very willing to be your personal god.
I am by no means a new player. I got suckered in by an online friend a couple months ago, so my knowledge is somewhat limited, to be fair. But the "main" antagonists, the (deliberately evolved to be) fearsome and macabre alien Hive race, are so fucking cool but so little of their brutal and fascinating "sword logic" culture is given heavy exploration, even in a campaign where they're the main focus (the Witch Queen campaign, exploring Light-powered Hive, would have made a great excuse to explore the differences going on!). They become strong because literally, metaphysically, might makes right for them, and this makes them "sharp", allowing them to just cut holes in space to teleport their ships and do weird sorcery.
I can't stop thinking about what if Destiny wasn't a grindy MMO with shit tier sweatlord PVP, and all those cool exotics were your base gear to play around with in a tightly constructed linear adventure across the cosmos battling and making allies with Fallen/Eliksni, Cabal, Awoken, all leading up to a big fight against the Hive and their Taken stuff. Throw the Vex robots in there somewhere I guess. Add to that the breaking down of the strict dogma of Traveller/Light good, Dark bad as you unlock new powers in a desperate war against alien god-kings and witch-queens, bam, good stuff.
Give me some Ahamkara DLC! Let's hunt down a wish-dragon, get granted some stuff and find out oh no this actually makes us its slave and go on a quest to free ourselves. Throw all this really cool stuff you've made at us! Use the word paracausal as many times as you want!
And yet here I am, still gonna grind Iron Banner PVP just so I can unlock some leg armour cosmetics I will then have to further grind for to be able to even equip.
Sobbing uncontrollably reading through a dissertation about the college experience of students with ADHD. It is like reading a report about my life that just says over and over "My experiences are real. My hardships are real. I am not lazy, I am not dumb. My struggles were not my fault, and they were not a moral failing. The failure was with the system, not with me."
Here's a line that got me in particular:
"Hotez et al.(2022) compared the health, academic, and non-academic capacities of a nationally representative sample of U.S. first-year college students with ADHD and without ADHD. Students with ADHD self-reported lower academic aspirations and more feelings of depression and overwhelm, ranking themselves lower in their general emotional health. The fact that students with ADHD scored in the highest 10th percentile for many non-academic traits, such as artistic ability, computer skills, creativity, public speaking, social confidence, self-understanding and understanding of others, compassion, and risk-tasking, suggests that this population has strengths that are frequently underappreciated in academia."
(the paper is a thesis called "Understanding the Collegiate Experience for Students With ADHD" by Gia Long, 2022)
Does Eggpire Dream remembers that he is Dream? Or does he falls into Hubert’s habits? Does being around the Egg again makes him confuse Techno with Billiam?
“Why does it matter? The Egg welcomes all who seek refuge, be it past, present or the future. Alas, I understand that it is not time for you yet. I patiently await the moment you accept the Egg’s blessing. The Egg provides all.”
The door to the hidden room closed on you.
Note: He remembers, he is all. He does not hold grudges or bias towards anyone. Techno or Billiam might as well be anyone, truly. The Egg is fair and welcomes all.
this is supposed to be a professional art account, but i cannot handle the way this man just looks. THOSE GODDAMN FUCK ME EYES I AM FOLDING GNAWING AT THE IRON BARS OF MY ENCLOSURE
and when i tell you im sweating like a sinner in church
the way i don’t know if i want this to feel more like stalker price or if it feels more like lawyer price or if i’m just in a complete crossover episode right now
"what do you MEAN character x looked at character y like this and they're not In Love" [the image is literally the man's face mostly obscured by an oxygen mask and someone else's hand and his eyes are mostly closed as he is passing out from blood loss and he just... looks like a guy who is passing out from blood loss]
i complain about this sort of fandom behaviour a lot but this one is just. fucking spectacular. great job guys.