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“The Hive has still committed a lot of, you know, genocide.”
As Destiny hurtles towards the conclusion of its decade-long storyline, Bungie has discussed how it all might end – and addressed some recent criticism of how big story revelations have been handled.
Speaking out just a couple of weeks after the origins of Destiny’s space golf ball The Traveller were finally revealed – to a somewhat mixed response – Bungie staff have defended Destiny’s storytelling techniques, and said players should not expect to make allies with the game’s villainous Hive.
“The Hive has still committed a lot of, you know, genocide,” senior narrative designer Robert Brookes told Dexerto, pouring cold water on the Guardians and the Hive suddenly becoming besties.
The topic has come up because Destiny is now drawing its battle lines for next year’s concluding expansion – The Final Shape – with its goodies and baddies now becoming increasingly clear. And yes, the heroic Guardians have now found allies amongst the races Destiny originally painted simply as enemies: the Fallen and the Cabal.
There’s also reason why the Hive could be swayed on-side – they too have suffered at the hands of the franchise’s Big Bad: The Witness. But don’t expect to be riding an Ogre into battle anytime soon.
“It’s gonna be really hard to walk that back from anyone’s perspective,” Brookes said, discussing the Hive’s history. “Even if that ever became a possibility, there’s a lot of ground to cover to make amends for that.
“Even when you look at someone like Savathun, who has the Light and ostensibly should be our ally, it’s really hard to look past the billion years of bad that they’ve done.”
It’s a fair point.
Brookes went on to discuss the recent late-game reveal of The Traveller’s origins – something fans including franchise loremaster MyNameIsByf criticised for coming far too late – with answers better suited to the game’s main Lightfall expansion.
“These are some of the most serialized and interconnected seasons we’ve ever done,” Brookes told GamesRadar. “Just narratively, I think there’s more swing toward the fences in that regard.
“Usually our expansions are kind of the capstone of a year of seasons, and like I kind of said before, this was a middle piece instead. It was the capstone of what we led up to in Season of the Seraph, and then it was also starting something different that tapered off into the new year.”
In one of the best descriptions of Destiny’s labyrinthine lore I’ve heard, Brookes continued by stating that Lightfall was designed to contain: “a lot of narrative threads that were left very intentionally unresolved to dig into and expand upon and feel the impact of”. Yep, that sounds like Destiny to me.
“From 22 and 23 onwards, it’s the ramp up and lead into the dive into The Final Shape,” he concluded. “It’s a very different shape than what we’re used to, so some of the narrative arcs might be done in a different way, and that’s very intentional.”
