With 'House of Wolves,' 'Destiny's' Story Finally Gets Going

Destiny’s new House of Wolves expansion went live at 10 AM Pacific time today, and hordes of eager Guardians are in luck: unlike the curious and underwhelming Dark Below, House of Wolves is hitting the right marks so far. I’ve torn through the story missions and the first strike, and there’s a spark here that the game hasn’t necessarily had before. The gameplay has always been strong, but between opaque writing, repetitive design and the Peter Dinklage’s constant half-conscious droning, the story and world-building aspects were confusing at best and a punchline at worst. That’s changed now: House of Wolves takes us out of the Tower and into The Reef, the territory of the mysterious human-offshoot Awoken. And the game is better for it.

House of Wolves concerns itself with Skolas, the Kell of the eponymous Fallen house. The Fallen have been enemies since day one, but we see a little more of them this time: Skolas is trying to subjugate the other Fallen houses and become the Kell of Kells, something like the Great Khan of fallen mythology. I never had a clear handle on the inner workings of human society in the game, and the focus on the grand cosmic story in the original campaign fell flat without any real characters to ground it. This time around we’ve got Skolas, silent save for a few incomprehensible if threatening shouts, and we’ve also got Petra Venji, servant of the Queen, and Variks the loyal, a friendly member of the Fallen house of Judgement. Each one of them has more personality than the entire game thus far — it brightens the story missions up to have someone with a little life in them talking to you.



It helps that the story itself is focused and better contained — a far cry amorphous and confusing Dark Below missions. There’s a Kell, he’s up to no good, and we’re here to stop him: fair enough. But the focus on the Fallen also turns out to be a great move for the game: their politics and character turn out to not only be far more interesting than the either the relatively static human world or the tiresome religiosity of the hive, but also goes a long way towards giving the average enemy a little bit of character. I always had the feeling that Destiny had an interesting world that we just weren’t seeing — it’s finally starting to come into focus now that we’re outside of the bubble of the tower.

What’s even better is that the story mode is starting to incorporate some of the more interesting level design that used to be locked up in raids and strikes. For one thing, that makes it available to players without people to go on raids with, but it’s not just about gameplay. It also gives the story weight by avoiding the sort of repetition that gets gamers to tune out.

While I still feel like a good story mode shouldn’t blow by in a few hours, the writing here just feels alive in a way that it didn’t before, and it has me excited about what’s to come. Check out Paul Tassi’s piece for more on the mechanics and other modes.

Cr  :  Forbes