In the Comedy Central documentary, “Six Days to Air: The Making of South Park,” the show’s creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker comment on their frantic writing process when rewriting a story. When rewriting and improving the show’s script, the South Park narrative team follows the “Therefore & But” rule. The goal is to replace transitions such as and with either buts or therefore, to avoid describing events as “this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened….” as it is not engaging storytelling and fails to generate momentum. Having each event occur directly because of the previous event is the key to creating a well flowing engaging narrative.
With Bungie releasing the Destiny Forsaken expansion this September and promising darker and more serious storytelling, I thought it would be interesting to review the evolution of Destiny’s story all the way from the initial release. Starting with the vanilla campaign critiqued under South Park’s “Therefore & But” rule, as establishing and maintaining flow is one of the original campaign’s biggest weaknesses. It’s not for a lack of interesting ideas or plot elements that Destiny struggles with plot fluency. Various enemy factions, ancient super computers, and mysterious forces we don’t yet understand; the components for a compelling space opera are all there, just not all connected properly.
The lack of focus present in Destiny’s campaign is the result of a deemphasis on a linear narrative, and this is by design. Most story driven games follow a linear narrative, a plot that guides the player through specific events. According to an interview by Kotaku, the Bungie project leads scrapped the linear narrative that was the original Destiny story, and it shows in the jumbled mess that shipped in 2014. However, there is a decent story hidden amongst the plot elements and cut content that culminated in vanilla Destiny’s final product. I have no intention of writing a completely new story, for I am one young person and it took Destiny’s writing team 2 years to develop the narrative that would later be chopped and frankensteined together a few months before launch. Channel Cousin is simply the writing center on this project, and the writing center says, “your work lacks flow and transitions. Come see us tomorrow, we close at 5.”
In the spirit of South Park’s writing philosophy, I took it upon myself to apply the “Therefore & But” rule to Destiny’s campaign narrative. What would Destiny’s campaign look like if it had followed this philosophy? Can the current story assets exist as a more fluent narrative and compelling narrative? After breaking down the plot points for each act I was able to summarize the main narrative points and their flow, this being the result:
The game begins with the player’s revival on Earth and the need to locate a ship and escape the Fallen, a race of cloaked spider pirates, and retreat to the Last City where you are introduced to the Traveler, a giant magic golf ball, the source of your power and in need of some protecting. Then you set off to find a warp drive, so you can travel between planets. Back on Earth you discover the Hive, a mostly humanoid race of chivalrous insect-zombie hybrids, fooling around on Earth when they shouldn’t be, and the Warmind Rasputin, and ancient ultra-computer AI because the word “super” just doesn’t cut it.
After finishing the mission of a downed fire-team you travel to the Moon, discover that you are being watched by a stranger and that the Hive are gearing up to attack Earth. The Stranger tells you to come to Venus and find her if you survive. After destroying some Hive artifacts and stopping the Hive from draining the Traveler’s light, you don’t tell the city about the invasion like a responsible trooper and instead head to Venus to chase after your mysterious robot lady.
On Venus the Stranger tells you that the Vex, ancient evil teleporting robots, are a greater threat than the Hive and that you must destroy the Darkness in the Black Garden, the birthplace of the Vex, to stop them. Your Ghost, your floating metallic Rubik’s Cube companion, tells you to seek the Awoken, grumpy blue humans, for aid. Therefore, you visit the Awoken, but they need you to get the head of a Vex Gate Lord to make a key and prove your worth. After locating a Gate Lord, you deviate from your primary objective to stop the Fallen from breaking into a research facility and kill the Fallen leadership that has apparently been causing some trouble.
After finally fighting the Gate Lord and acquiring its head, the Awoken tell you the Black Garden is on Mars. Once there you fight the Cabal, a military race of large turtles that learned how to walk on two legs and carry guns, and steal information on how to enter the Black Garden, but before doing that you, go destroy some Vex teleporters and stop the Cabal from messing with Rasputin’s shiny new toys he found in the Mars sandbox. Only then can you Destroy the Darkness in the Black Garden.
I then took these plot elements and reorganized them according to the “Therefore & But” writing process, reconstructing them with minor creative liberties, to follow a more streamlined sequence of events.
Your Ghost revives you on Earth, and you escape the Fallen, retreating to the Last City. Upon arrival you are greeted by the Vanguard, the City’s military leaders and introduced to the Traveler. The Vanguard are surprised by your reports of the Fallen’s presence and order you to investigate. Therefore, you discover the Fallen bothering the Warmind Rasputin and a surprise Hive infection but are unable to inform the Vanguard due to a jammed signal. To boost your signal, you access a nearby array resulting in Rasputin’s access to the rest of the system.
Finally making contact, the Vanguard then sends you to the Moon, the source of the Hive invasion. Therefore, you discover the Hive plans to attack Earth, but you are also being watched by a mysterious Stranger.
After slowing down the Hive by disrupting their rituals, you head to Venus to find the Stranger, per her request. Stranger tells you that the Vex are far more dangerous than the Hive and only by destroying the Darkness at the heart of the Black Garden, will the Traveler begin to heal. Therefore, you investigate the local Vex research facilities. After digging through archives for information on the Vex and the Black Garden, you stumble on information about the Awoken and determine that they might be able to help. Therefore, you go to the Awoken for aid, but not without the exchange of a Gate Lord’s head and the debt of a future favor.
You are given the Black Garden’s coordinates on Mars. Once there, you stumble onto a war between the returning Vex and the invading Cabal. In the chaos you seize an opportunity to steal information on the Vex from the Cabal and learn how to gain passage into the Black Garden. Once there you confront the Darkness and destroy it, initializing the Traveler’s recovery
With just a little reconstruction, Destiny’s plot becomes much more focused, and maintains a steady accumulation of momentum. While I did cut many of the plot deviations such as, Destroying the Shrine of Oryx on the Moon, dealing with the Fallen presence on Venus, or Hunting down the Psion Flayers on Mars. I did so because of how much these objectives deviate from the main plot points of each act, and because the “side quest” feeling of these missions is painfully overwhelming. Yes, I understand that the Fallen hanging around the Archives is not great, but they can’t even get the doors open and I’m in the middle of stopping the teleporting alien robots from turning two planets into industrial factories of evil.
As the story stands now, we’re constantly being pulled in every direction, even after establishing a sense of urgency by giving us a primary antagonist, the Hive, and furthering that by providing a supposed greater threat found in the Vex. Despite this we end up puttering around, running errands. If Destiny’s story had implemented South Park’s, “Therefore & But” philosophy to its narrative design the campaign would have transitioned from one plot point to the next, more smoothly. In conclusion, by applying “Therefore & But” rule, Destiny could have been a more comprehensive story that warrants players’ investment and greater narrative experience, akin to the quality storytelling that Bungie is known for.
Channel Cousin 