Destiny Stream

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Sep 16, 2014

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 61 comments

Since Twitch has decided that having deep archives is bad, (Spoiler: They are wrong.) we’re uploading our stream to YouTube. So now it is preserved forever:


Link (YouTube)

We played Destiny for the first couple of hours, then played Counter Spy for the last hour.

Josh said we’ll be doing this from now on, but I dunno. This was a hassle. It wasn’t a lot of work, but it was excruciatingly time consuming. Recording, editingI don’t mean proper editing, like removing boring parts. Heck no. We left all that crap in. Have fun sitting through the parts where we have nothing to say. No, I’m talking about basic stuff like balancing and syncing audio., encoding, and uploading three hours of video is a huge undertaking. I think Josh’s computer was working on it for over twelve hours.

 

Footnotes:

[1] I don’t mean proper editing, like removing boring parts. Heck no. We left all that crap in. Have fun sitting through the parts where we have nothing to say. No, I’m talking about basic stuff like balancing and syncing audio.



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61 thoughts on “Destiny Stream

  1. Daemian Lucifer says:

    “I don’t mean proper editing, like removing boring parts. Heck no. We left all that crap in.”

    And thats why destiny is left in there.

    http://www.badum-tish.com

  2. Mondroid says:

    Forever being until YouTube is cut off from mankind as part one of SkyGoogle’s six step extinction plan

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      No,the plan is to cut off USEFUL information,and leave only the stuff that make people dumber.

      1. Joakim Karlen says:

        SkyGoogle is powered by cat videos.

        1. Jokerman says:

          I do a double take every time i read your name, since its my name… and you don’t exactly see it all that often.

      2. Mondroid says:

        Is this video not useful information?
        I think it’s important for survival in a apocalyptic society to understand the issues one might have about their character development and leveling possibilities.

  3. Humanoid says:

    Any chance of the same treatment being extended to the few streams that survive on the Chocolate Hammer Livestream? The Sleeping Dogs New Year’s stream in particular is pure gold.

  4. Akuma says:

    People have told me they have no idea what the story of Destiny is, and after watching that I have no idea either. What is this? Who writes like this?

    Even the bits that somehow surface “The moon wizards are hacking the life energy from our good death star!” (???) are either beyond stupid or convoluted all to hell to make it seem like your making a difference when it’s absolutely clear your not.

    The darkness is attacking? Is the good death star actually Kingdom Hearts?

    I was not prepared for how bad this story was.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      ” What is this? Who writes like this?”

      The answer is actually quite simple:
      http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2014/09/15/circa-1991

    2. Ringwraith says:

      Apparently none of the plot is actually in the game, it’s elsewhere. Where you won’t care to look because it’s not even supplemental material that’s missing from the game, it’s everything.

      1. Lachlan the Mad says:

        So exactly like the “story” of Halo then?

        1. Nyctef says:

          Halo by itself has a pretty decent story, although it’s pretty lightweight. It’s true there’s a lot more story in the books and associated materials though, and it’s actually not half-bad in a lot of places.

          1. Lachlan the Mad says:

            Yeaaaaah no. This is the story of Halo (the first game):

            – Aliens attack spaceship
            – CORRIDORS
            – Shouty computer lady
            – CORRIDORS
            – Zombies for some reason
            – The fucking library with that floaty bastard
            – REALLY BIG CORRIDORS
            – Oh no, the floaty bastard was a traitor!
            – More shouty computer lady
            – More zombies
            – Explosions
            – CORRIDORS

    3. Canthros says:

      The story is mostly a lot of fairly ordinary nouns turned up to 11 by being capitalized. Your character is a Guardian of the Traveller, who uses the Light to combat the Darkness, and is guided by the Speaker, who … It’s nearly a word salad, salvaged only by reliance on overworn cliché.

      The Fallen are four-armed aliens who are non-specifically evil and organized into Houses.
      The Hive are magicky aliens who are evil because dark magic and they worship and dark god and they kind of look like they might be undead or something. I don’t know.
      The Vex are a robot hive-mind that are possibly from a different part of time and space. And their weakpoint isn’t their heads.
      The Cabal are spehss mareens, basically. Including the Roman Legion imagery.

      Honestly, their names don’t even seem to match terribly well. It might work better if the Cabal had been named the Vex (to capitalize on the Latinate stuff), the Vex were the Hive (because they’re a hive mind), and the Hive were either the Fallen (because evil necromancers, amirite) or the Cabal (because evil necromancers, amirite), and the Fallen got whichever name was left over. (Or maybe the Awoken become the Cabal, and the Hive becomes the Awoken? That might work, too.)

      Maybe all the information that makes this interesting is in the Grimoire, but I’ve been through the stuff I’ve unlocked in there, and I don’t particularly buy into that argument.

      All that said, the gameplay is … not bad. Really. The competitive multiplayer doesn’t particularly appeal to me, but it seems OK: I just don’t much care for competitive multiplayer shooters. I’ve been doing all the story stuff alone, but the ambient multiplayer stuff has been pleasant! and the mechanics seem solid, if a bit underexposed. It could never match the hype that preceded it, but it’s actually pretty good, and seems very polished.

      So far, it sort of looks like the opposite of Star Wars: the Old Republic’s big problem. SW:tOR was a mediocre MMO with a solid single-player RPG story bolted on. Destiny is a solid (if uninspired) loot-shooter with the barest bones of a story.

      1. Mephane says:

        Your description of the various antagonists makes me feel even more sad that they took the cliche approach “humans = good = PCs; aliens/robots = bad = NPCs”. I’d totally want to play as a four-armed alien or a robot from another dimension of time and space.

        Seriously, MMO devs out there. If it includes aliens or robots, and they are there for more than just a minor sidequest, let us choose to play as one of them.

        Yeah, it is very rare that I ever play a human in any fantasy MMO/RPG, either.

        1. Canthros says:

          Oh, there are choices for player characters! You can be either male or female, and one of the following three races:
          * Human: bog standard.
          * Awoken: blue human (not to be confused with Smurfs, the Na’Vi, or the Blue Man Group)
          * Exo: human-shaped robot

          Each race has a selection of faces, facial tattoos, hair (or cranial greeblies, for the robits) and skin, eye, hair, and lip/mouth colors. Customization at chargen time is OK, but doesn’t strike me as impressive. A substantial measure of flexibility is unavailable here to keep things in the PvP section of the game balanced and minimize graphics and data overhead, I’d wager.

          Bodies seem to be the same for all characters of a given gender, with no discernable difference between, say, a robit lady and human lady until their helmets are removed. That only seems to happen in the Tower (the ‘social’ hub area) and cut-scenes.

          This part really only bugs me because they chose to have multiple racial options and two of the three are human. Given how little any of this seems to matter to the game or the lore*, I don’t think it would have hurt to throw something more alien in. It seems reasonable either that the Traveler would have had some hangers-on or the Darkness would have some benign races fleeing ahead of it, but the setting feels pretty phoned-in.

          So, I’m playing a robit guy. I dinged 20 and got a free shader, so, now my armor’s green.

          * Why are the Awoken blue? Because spaaaaaace, apparently. Why do the Exos exist? Um … uh … it’s a mystery! Why do the robit people have genders? Heck, if all Guardians are resurrected from the dead, do Exos have souls? Are they part biological? Seriously, what?

    4. newdarkcloud says:

      I think even non-Kingdom Hearts fans would agree that comparing Destiny’s plot to Kingdom Hearts would be an insult to Kingdom Hearts.

  5. Re: “fantasy crap for ‘the hive.'”

    I’d lay odds that they started with the name, “The Hive,” logically equated it with bees, bees have a Queen, Queens = monarchy, monarchy turned up to 11 = fantasy tropes.

    1. Chris says:

      Except there’s already a character casually referred to as “The Queen” and she’s not even related to the hive! She’s an Awoken who sits in a driftpile! And for some reason that group of Awoken don’t care much for the Traveller, even though you can make an Awoken to play as and defend the Traveller? Nothing makes sense when more than five seconds of thought is applied to it, and the answer is always “Look it up in the Grimoire and stop complaining.”

      1. rofltehcat says:

        I read some theory about the humans either being the evil ones or the pawns of the evil Traveller and everything that isn’t explained is intentional to keep the players in the dark.

        I could totally see them do something like “we’ve finally defeated the aliens and kicked them out from Sol!” just to find an alien data pad around the corner explaining how The Traveller is actually The Interstellar Antichrist.

        As someone who can’t play that game, it only really interests me from a distance because of the hype, the review scores topic etc. I’d love for the story to do a completely weird 180 and blow up the nerd rage like Mass Effect 3’s ending did.

        1. Canthros says:

          That thought occurred to me, too. I don’t see it happening, as things currently stand. It would be too interesting, and everything about the game’s design is conservative and safe. Pulling something surprising out would be a good change! but, it would be a change.

          1. Kana says:

            Something had to have happened either during development of or just after Halo 2 released. That game had some very ambitious ideas and themes that were ultimately either mishandled or didn’t play out terribly well, but they at least tried.

            And then Halo: ODST, 3, and Reach all went right back to the same formula the first one had, more or less. None of those themes ever came back, Bungie never really reached for anything else.

            Destiny just seems like another step back since the Halo story actually made some sense if you had out-side knowledge of it. Nothing I hear about Destiny really comes together, or sounds really dull.

            *Disclaimer: I loved the Bungie Halo franchise (1, 2, ODST, 3, Reach), but they’ve always really sucked at telling their story in the game. Sure it makes more sense if you read the books and whatnot, but you shouldn’t need to.

          2. Ivan says:

            There’s also the fact that even with that twist everything would still feel really contrived. I mean, if this were true then you would want to investigate it in the world or potentially even help the aliens, but you do not have these options. Suddenly turning around and saying to the players “HA HA! I fooled you! I had you dancing on strings the whole time!” is only clever if the players had the ability to disobey, otherwise it makes me less interested in the story because look at you, you’re so clever that you railroaded me into doing exactly what you wanted.

            I suppose that tricking the players superior is ok if you want to do this sort of thing, but this obviously isn’t the case if the idea is to withhold information from the player in order to manipulate them directly.

            1. Mephane says:

              I agree but with one exception: it would work if directly following the revelation that you’ve been used in some sort of evil scheme, you have the choice to turn against your masters or to keep following them.

      2. Given that stories really go off the rails towards the endgame, if this kind of confusion is front-loaded, what must the rest of it be like?

        1. syal says:

          They time-travel back to the beginning of the game and show it all from an even less-sensible angle.

          1. Is that when they reboot the universe or does that come after X number of plot contradictions due to time travel paradoxes?

  6. Ranneko says:

    Thank you for spending the time and effort on doing this Josh. I prefer watching recorded streams on YouTube because I can use the HTML5 player and play it back at double speed! More video in less time!

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Without sound,or with the chipmunk voices?Because I get people listening to these without watching,but I dont get why one would watch without listening.

      1. Ranneko says:

        No, you get both sound and normal (non-chipmunk) voices, the faster playback also automatically compensate for the pitch shift.

        Sound is more processed obviously, but I am really insensitive to that, so works fine for me. I am in fact mostly after listening over watching.

        It isn’t just video I like to speed up, also listen to podcasts and audiobooks at 2-3x speed. It is one of the reasons I also appreciate the efforts that others went to to give Diecast a proper feed, because then it ends up in my podcatcher and I can use the faster speed settings in it.

  7. 17:20 “Imagine if there was a horror movie starring Superman. It’s a bad idea. Why are we supposed to be scared when evil demon whatevers are attacking Superman?”

    MUMBLES IS ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL…

    Awright, bitches. You call yourselves nerds? I guess y’all just are watching too many movies about Superman to remember one of his weaknesses is magic! What are demons? MAGIC! That’s why you’d be scared, apart from not knowing basic crap about Superman. Damn, you guys need to take a class or something! Stop watching stupid Bryan Singer movies and pick up a damn comic book! Jeez…

    RELEASING CONTROL…

    …and that’s why the wizards on the moon thing makes total sense if… um…

    I don’t remember putting on a Batman shirt this morning…

    1. krellen says:

      The funny thing is, I was thinking this exact thing, but mentioning it wasn’t really worth it because the general jist of the point was still true.

    2. syal says:

      Red Letter Media addressed that when they were talking about Robocop; yeah, the bad guys have superweapons that can supposedly kill him, but you’re not worried about him because he’s still Robocop.

      It’s why Lex Luthor never feels like a major threat even when Superman fights him in the Museum of Kryptonite or whatnot.

      1. To be fair, that’s more to do with what the writers do with Superman more than the nuts-and-bolts of what makes Superman tick (both as a character and as a superhero). I’m not sure if DC has noticed that its best and most popular Superman stories are the elseworlds or one-offs where fundamental things change about the character.

        And even if RoboCop couldn’t die per se, in the hands of a director as messed up as the ones on the first two original movies, it was quite easy to have a situation where you almost wanted to put RoboCop out of his misery than let him bounce back.

        1. syal says:

          More that situational disadvantages aren’t scary, unless all of the advantages are also situational. Superman is the Man of Steel, so to be a credible threat you have to be stronger than steel. Having a magic steel-softening formula isn’t good enough.

          1. Magic IS stronger than Superman’s “steel.” Wonder Woman has hauled out a sword that can cut him like butter, and he’s susceptible to spells as well as any physical attack from a supernatural source.

            The only thing stopping this setup from being a decent horror story would be if the writers (or more likely, the marketing department) not playing by their own rules.

            In the end, a better metaphor would’ve been “Superman vs. a bunch of axe murderers.” There’s no question who’d come out on top in that setup.

            1. Ivan says:

              Yeah… didn’t they do that before too? Like when superman threw an entire CONTINENT of kryptonite into space?

              1. That would be all of “Superman Returns” or as some call it “Superman Lifts” (since that’s how he solves every problem). That’s a prime example of entirely avoiding the problem of tackling Superman as a character by making an overpriced homage to the first Richard Donner movie, not giving Superman a real challenge for his abilities, blowing the chance to make Lex Luthor an actual character and not a real estate con man, and making Superman a deadbeat date-rape dad.

                A lot of the worst examples of Superman in media are the movies where whoever gets a hold of the character really has no interest in making a movie about the character, Superman. The animated shows/films do the best job, since they often pull from GOOD stories in the comics, like “All Star Superman” or “The Man Who Has Everything.”

      2. Daemian Lucifer says:

        The problem with superman(and for that matter robocop,or plenty of other superheroes)is that he doesnt care about his well being as long as he can help someone else.The best threats to superman arent threatening him personally,but people around him(the metropolis,for example,or the whole earth).And while you can make good drama with this(who will superman choose to save?),making good horror around it would be almost impossible.Horror needs to be personal,happening to the protagonist,not to the supporting cast(horrific things can happen to the supporting cast,but its usually in the “this will happen to the protagonist next” sort of way).

        The only way I can see a horror story involving superman,is if something were to invade his mind,and make him do bad things to those he protects.But even then I doubt it would be actually frightening,no matter how suspenseful or horific it would get.

    3. Lucithana says:

      Real talk? When they said “Think of Superman in a horror movie” I got totally the wrong end of it and imagined Superman as the villain. And then I got distracted thinking how awesome that could be, especially Justice Lords Supes.

      1. Otters34 says:

        If that’s something you’re interested in reading about, it’s a concept explored in, to name a few, Mr. Waid’s Irredeemable, Injustice: Gods Among Us, The Boys, Marshall Law, Invincible, most things involving Mr. Majestic, Supreme Power, a smattering of Miracleman, recent issues of the new Earth-2 series, Reign of the Supermen, the New Krypton Saga, multiverse stories involving Ultraman, Overman…

        And yes, agree that an inhuman entity with all the powers of Superman would be a horrifying threat in any horror movie.

        1. Not just Superman. “The Boys” is another series about power corrupting (both super-power and wealth/political power).

  8. Paul Spooner says:

    Everyone makes a big deal about the blue human race… but what I want to know is “Why are there male and female robots?”
    Also, what do they eat?

    Opening cut-scene… what kind of an orbital insertion to aerobraking is that? The pod is headed straight down in the first shot, and practically 30 degrees down in the second. KSP is, like, $30 Bungie! Get a copy!

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      “Everyone makes a big deal about the blue human race… but what I want to know is “Why are there male and female robots?””

      What,you think that everyone wants their sexbots to be hermaphrodites?

      “Also, what do they eat?”

      Babies.

    2. Eruanno says:

      Also who started this helmet fashion trend? How does anyone see ANYTHING with those buckets on their faces?

      1. I’m sure the conceit is that they’re kind of like Iron Man’s helmet or the cockpit of an advanced plane: The windows (if any) are largely decorative or for user comfort. A HUD displays the actual data involved.

        But yes, they do look dippy.

  9. Jokerman says:

    I hope you do upload these, i normally find it hard to get to your steams, but always like watching them after the fact.

  10. KingJosh says:

    Yay! I don’t usually get to watch live streams when they’re actually, you know, LIVE. So, this is wonderful for me!

    1. Doomcat says:

      ^^ My situation, my internet is just slow enough that twitch.tv decides to die if anyone else in my house does anymore more intensive then read a .txt file.

      And also, Twitch’s archive is slower then molasses for me, and you can’t turn down the quality :/

      In short: Thank you so much Josh! I appreciate the time you put into uploading this, as I wouldn’t be able to experience it otherwise.

  11. Cybron says:

    Re:the conversation about informed consumers and bad games not doing well, I would remind you that Aliens: Colonial Marines sold over a million copies. And clearly the numerous crappy steam games like the WarZ make money or else they’d stop sneaking that crap through Greenlight.

    1. Trix2000 says:

      To be fair, a million is not necessarily a lot for AAA titles.

  12. Yay! I missed the stream and have issues watching things successfully on twitch, so I’m happy.

    Any chance of getting the Monaco stream too, or has that passed into digital oblivion? I hope not, it was hysterical.

  13. McNutcase says:

    I’ve finally figured out why the dance animations in Destiny look so janky. It’s because the camera is rock-solid fixed to your character’s head, when it should be fixed relative to the ground.

    And because I was unavailable for the stream, some belated chat stuff: I’m 5’10” and about 200lb (need to burn off about 10% of that, would like to burn off about 20%)

  14. Tychoxi says:

    “So now it is preserved forever”

    You had to go ahead and tempt destiny!

  15. Steve C says:

    I couldn’t watch the stream full screen. Not due to a technical problem or anything. I just found Destiny unpleasant how the view kept spinning around and zooming in and out all the time. Yes I know that’s Josh playing. I feel I would be doing the same if I was playing.

    Something something Oculus Rift lite.

    1. Josh says:

      It’s also probably more pronounced watching it on a monitor given the limited field of view of most console shooters.

      1. Steve C says:

        That’s a really good point I completely forgot about.

  16. Commissar Moose says:

    I don’t really get why everyone’s calling Destiny “forgettable.” I personally enjoyed the heck out of it, though I was definitely disappointed by the story and the lack of exposition. They created a really interesting universe with a lot of possibility and do very little to actually explain any of it. I’m hoping that they fix that in later releases. Despite all that though, the game world is absolutely beautiful and interesting, the gameplay is really fun and feels really good, and there’s a lot of potential to build an interesting world and story.

  17. Phantos says:

    I think Josh and Chris really hit the nail on the head with Destiny.

    “It’s got the skeleton of a good game”.

    I wonder what it must be like to be a Bungie employee right now. Years of trying to make a game with longevity, only to make a game that would have been a “rental” back when video stores still existed.

    I wonder if the sales so far are an ointment for that sting.

  18. Rodyle says:

    “Women don’t get much taller than 6 feet”

    You should visit the netherlands…

  19. Chris says:

    I have to agree with the earlier statement that it is a shame the alien races aren’t playable.

    Granted the plot doesn’t hold together, but there is one thing that really bugs me. One of the Villains is the “evil” necromancers, not like the good guy player character who was ..brought back from the dead.. huh?
    How about this for a game title: “Peter Dinklage the Necromancer of Future Russia”

    Pretty game, but the dancing animation is worse than WoW, which is just sad..

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