This started as a reply to a comment made by @kellygreen2 here: [url]https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/243051479?sort=0&page=0[/url] and I got a little carried away. Hope you enjoy.
[quote]You are dealing with people who live for 2 or three CENTURIES if they are "simply" human, or are IMMORTAL if they are Guardians. So you may being seeing how these people were several hundred years ago....and they've had centuries to grow up...and grow wiser by the time of the events of Destiny 1.[/quote]
Osiris' banishment is typically portrayed as being decades, if not a few centuries, before our Guardian is Risen. I think the most jarring thing about the comics, and I've said this before, is that there is [i]zero[/i] visual distinction between the characters' design in the comics and the games. They all look the same. As a result, having these characters who look completely identical to the ones in game who we already know act completely different creates a vast disconnect, and it's confusing to the reader.
This is, at least I think, because humans grow and change over time. It's part of life. We get taller, we gain weight, we lose hair, we gain hair in other places, and so on. Guardians don't change. They're functionally immortal. They don't age, or change size or shape. There's no way to subtly hint at the passage of time with a few extra wrinkles. In fiction, physical growth is usually used as a method of showing a change in who a character is as a person at the same time. Think of Zuko with his short hair in Avatar: The Last Airbender, or Soldier 76 in Overwatch. These characters physically change to reflect their mental state.
We don't see this with Guardians and the visual similarity despite their significant difference in character is something that breaks from their established 'look.' As a result, it grinds with our general perception of the way characters develop in fiction. It's tough to suspend disbelief that after all this time, the characters haven't changed at all. But if they had gone an extra few steps with the way the characters look... say, given the Speaker a different mask, and given Ikora a different hairstyle and tunic, the characters would be visually distinct enough to represent different personalities while retaining the same character.
What do you guys think? Would having characters visually distinct from the game have made the Fall of Osiris comics more acceptable to you? Let me know what you think, and thanks for reading my ramble. :)
Edit: [spoiler]I [b]don't[/b] suggest that the characters be aged, since I notice that there are a lot of you taking that away from my post, rather than a general idea about characters being visually distinct in order to make it make a little more sense that these characters are acting differently than normal. As I ask in the post, would having characters visually distinct from the game have made the Fall of Osiris comics more acceptable to you? I'm not trying to talk about how Destiny sucks, I know that the games suck and Bungie screwed it up but the story deserves better.[/spoiler]
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The real problem is destiny has no officially established timeline. Ageless guardians who change relatively little isn’t as much an issue if actual durations between events are known. Early on I felt the vagueness was an effective tool, helping reinforce the unknown world we found ourselves in. Now, it’s a weakness. As the story matures, details are needed. The story is starting to suffer as a result