If everything's a dream,

(What's this? It's Zalia with a steel chair of lore thoughts regarding a mobile game that only she cares about after like... almost a year of failing to post here!)

I played through Ning Fei’s story in Destiny Rising (the Destiny mobile game) recently, and I enjoyed it! They’re doing some interesting stuff with a lot of the characters and poking at bits of Destiny lore that the main game hasn't touched.

But it is definitely a story that, by the end, had me squinting at the disconnect between the story that the writers thought they were telling, and what we actually get in the game.

Characters

Ning Fei

“With a rebellious soul and a penchant for defiance, this handsome young Lightbearer possesses the heart of a maverick and an overwhelming sense of justice.”

Ning Fei is a young Lightbearer who is arrogant, flirty, massively overconfident in his own abilities, and kind of a dick at times. In his first life, he came from the Golden Age and was a prisoner who was an unwilling human guinea pig in experiments to attempt to communicate with the Traveller. These experiments involved wiring a headband into his brain, which was used to link him to other experiments, and also to administer punishment in the form of massive pain right to his brain.

Claudia

“A stern Ghost who tirelessly guides her Lightbearer, hoping he will one day grow up. When Ning Fei steps out of line, she shows no mercy in disciplining him, yet whenever peril finds him, she serves as the unwavering shield at his side.”

Claudia is Ning Fei’s Ghost. She’s described and mostly portrayed as kind of stuffy, put upon, maternal but caring. She’s meant to be strict but really caring of Ning Fei.


The Headband

In the game, we are shown and told that the headband causes Ning Fei a great deal of pain. He gets frequent migraines, neurological problems, and also hallucinations which during his quest are actively dangerous. He essentially gets pulled into a shared mental space. Claudia has built in a method for her to lead him out.

As mentioned, this headband also has a punishment function whcih causes debilitating pain. In his first life, people fitted with them were driven insane or killed themselves rather than deal with it and the experiments.

When she resurrected Ning Fei, Claudia gained control over some of the headband’s functions, including the punishment option. A lot of the quest is them trying to hunt down a chip to disable it.


The Problem

What the game wants us to think about Claudia is that she is strict but fair, exasperated by her Lightbearer, but ultimately that she cares deeply about him and wants what is best for him - for him to meet his potential as a brave Lightbearer who defends humanity.

And this seems legit for the first part of Ning Fei’s quest. Right up until part 2 where Claudia uses the headband to ‘discipline’ Ning Fei.

And she doesn’t do it because he’s trapped in a hallucination and, say, about to hurt some people because he can’t tell what’s real or not. She does it because… he’s being rude to some people.

We are told that Claudia loves her Lightbearer and wants what is best for him.

What we are shown, is that Claudia is just fine with torturing Ning Fei for being rude. Torturing him using a device that actively causes him harm, and was used to torture him in his first life. She basically has a shock collar on her Lightbearer.

And this is never really addressed in the game, beyond an off-hand comment where Ning Fei thanks her for not torturing him again.

The most we get about it is in Ning Fei’s character description where what Claudia does is described as 'drastic measures’.

Ning Fei’s recklessness has been a source of headaches for Claudia ever since she resurrected him. It wasn’t until she resorted to some rather drastic measures that she could even begin to reign in the rebellious young man.

The description doesn’t really do justice to what is, after all, actual torture. And nor does it, or the storyline, really ever seem to grapple with the fact that this is torture, and that while Claudia may indeed care about Ning Fei, and think she wants the best for him, what she is doing is immensely abusive and horrifying.

What she does is kind of treated as justified.

And I don’t think the people writing this realise it.

It’s quite possible that the people writing the storyline, and the people writing the little lore tabs are different and have different ideas, but even the storyline doesn’t really ever go 'hey, this is fucked up and Ning Fei has every right to be angry at Claudia’. It’s all tied up neatly at the end with everything being *fine* between them.

It’s just kind of a fascinating example of a disconnect between what the story thinks it is doing, and what it is actually doing.

I am extremely curious to see if it is every addressed in future content.


I need to write a whole post about my thoughts on Rising honestly (tl;dr they are doing some interesting things especially in the character stories, some of the writing is great, some of the writing draws way too much on Joss Whedon style dialogue, the player character Wolf sucks, and also it is, in the end, a gacha game with all the problems that entails). I have been enjoying it more than I expected.