I'm in the early missions of Venus, currently, and at level 14 (I'm assuming that this is about a halfway point), and I've been wondering to myself today, [i]what's wrong with this game?[/i] The answer isn't really obvious and is hard to put into adequate words. Anyway, I love most things about this game. The world, the mechanics, the enemies, the multiplayer... but what I find lacking is the story. This isn't something I'd expect from a Bungie game. It's not that the story is bad, it simply isn't there, at least not in the magnitude I would assume to exist for a game that's nearly an MMO. Aside from your Ghost and a couple others that barely have anything important to say, where are the characters? Where's the narrative, aside from constantly repeated vague information regarding Light vs Darkness? Is this a consequence of Staten leaving Bungie during the game's development? I'm not trying to sound like a downer; I just want to see if anyone has similar thoughts. I'm no stranger to games with a make-your-own-narrative approach, such as Dark Souls, but Destiny doesn't strike me as implementing this very well, if that's what its goal was. Where Dark Souls had little-to-say NPCs that at least conveyed a strong sense of beaten-down foreboding, Desitiny's are pretty emotionless. It's hard to get a sense of urgency in terms of the ominous Darkness threat when the general responses an NPC will give you makes you think that they don't really care that much. Even Dinklage, as much as I love him in movie roles, is a little too emotionless in his delivery of Ghost lines to make me really care for my little companion. Perhaps that's the point, since he's a machine, but that fact doesn't really help. I find myself wishing that there were things to read in this game, even if the NPCs remain poorly developed. I have plenty of imagination to assume what little the game offers in terms of narrated history (pre-Collapse glimpses based on landscapes and bits that must of happened during the war that caused the Collapse), but it would be nice to stumble across some readable terminals that give at least a little detail. One thing that Destiny's "story" will certainly bring is some really good fan fiction, I'm sure. Regardless, I'm sure that this game will be plenty of fun to continue playing for a while. The grimoires do help, but it's not quite enough for me; am I asking for too much? I just hope that I don't have to shell out a buttload of cash for expansions later on, if THATS where Bungie decided to hide their story. I would say please don't post any spoilers, but somehow I don't think that this game actually has anything to be spoiled. Edit: Here's an [url=http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2014/09/10/destiny-leaves-the-storytelling-to-its-players-and-its-a-better-game-for-it/]article[/url] that offers a clear counterpoint to my argument above. I agree with the author on the possible point to an over-simplified narrative, but I guess the implementation in this case doesn't work so well for me. Update: Now that I've "finished" the "story," I know I've never been this disappointed in a game. It is FUN to play, and that is it. Everything else just makes you feel like being on the interior of an empty, albeit very beautiful, shell. I'm relieved to see that reviewers are giving the game 6/10 for the same reasons. I don't understand how you make such an expensive game and put very little effort into detail, unless you're just money-grabbing from your consumers; I expected more from Bungie... Marathon was a better game than Destiny.