You might have heard Destiny is sort of a thing lately. Given that the game is too huge to offer in depth thoughts about on a short timeframe, I though I would make a journal of my experiences and opinions as I play through the game. Contained below is a diary of my experience playing through a few hours last night. I plan to update this some more as I get farther into the game.

EDIT: This has now been updated for easier reading. The table format was a really bad idea.

EDIT: I have placed the daily summaries up front, before the more detailed stuff, in case you don't want to read an entire wall of text.

Daily Summaries

Day 1 Final Thoughts:

After a single day playing, it's hard to say what I think. There's certainly something about Destiny that I find compelling - I wouldn't have played for almost five hours straight otherwise. That said, it's hard to escape the sense that it should be something more. Most of the individual parts work fine taken in isolation - the shooting feels awesome, it looks really nice, the music is good, etc. - but it doesn't seem to mesh together as well as it should. I don't know if that's a fundamental flaw with the game, or if I just haven't gotten far enough in the game for all of the systems to work together yet.

Tomorrow should be more telling. I plan on doing playing through the Moon and then playing the Earth Strike mission.

Day 2 Final Thoughts

After two days playing, I get the sense that Destiny may be sort of a rorschach for gamers. Some people are going to look at it and see a shooter, other people are going to look at it and see an MMO. How successful you think the game is will depend on your viewpoint. If you view it as a shooter, you will probably be satisfied. The shooting feels really good, and the action comes fast and often, especially if you are in a group.

On the other hand, if you look at it as an MMO, you will probably find it lacking. The social options are non-existent - you can't invite people in your Clan without also being friends on PSN with them for example - and a lot of the story is so threadbare it is extremely hard to keep track of what'a happening, and so far there have been exactly zero memorable NPC characters to care about. The mission structure is also disappointingly rote. It all amounts to "go here and kill these things." Since you do a lot of that just walking around, the story isn't exactly offering a new experience.

Tomorrow I will presumably reach Level 15, which is when my second sub-class opens up, so I'll see how that changes the gameplay, if at all. I have also unlocked Venus and a strike mission on the Moon, so I'll see where those take me as well.

Day 1

Day 1 - What I Did

• Character creation
• Levels 1-9
• All available Earth story missions
• Earth Patrol mode
• Crucible - Control and Clash modes

Day 1 - Character Creation

The important thing to know about character creation in Destiny is pretty much that nothing you do seems to matter beyond choosing your class. The character creator looks robust when you first boot it up, but the actual substantial options are rather limited - there are no beards or body type options for example - and all the characters I tried to create ended up looking mostly alike. My humans always ended up looking like a Winklevoss twin. Therefore, I have decided to name my Warlock Topper, because that seems like the kind of old-money East Coast name a Winklevoss twin would have.

Day 1 - Story Missions

The game starts with a brief intro cinematic of astronauts landing on Mars and encountering the Traveller - that big orb that features in all the concept art. This is followed by my character being awakened by Ghost, aka Dinklagebot 2000. I have decided to name him Castamere. Apparently, my character has been "dead for a long time." However, the exact method of my resurrection is never explained or expanded upon, beyond it being Necessary for the Plot.

So, to summarize, the story so far: There is an Orb, called the Traveller, which is Good. It was fighting/running away from Another Entity called The Darkness, which is Evil, and which represents an Existential Threat to the Last City, which is where all the Guardians live.

So far, it's all a lot of Nonsense. Also, Proper Nouns.

Day 1 - Patrol and Character Advancement

Outside the story, I also partook in some of Destiny's free roam mode called "Patrol." It seems that this is the primary arena to advance your character. It mostly involves picking up missions from beacons or performing meta-tasks called "bounties" you pick up in the Tower. Right now, it's pretty repetitive. There is no real plot attached to any of the beacons, which is disappointing, as it really draws attention to the fact that this is a Task needed to Level, rather than being a meaningful action within the universe.

Honestly, I'd rather Bungie just ditch the beacons entirely. They don't give enough experience to be worthwhile, they aren't interesting story wise, and you can only take on one at a time. Honestly, I'm having a lot more fun just exploring looking for secrets, primarily in the form of Golden Chests, which contain pretty good gear, and Dead Ghosts, which give you a Grimoire entry.

Speaking of the that Grimoire, I haven't really interacted with it that much. For one thing, it isn't accessible in game, and I'm not dying to pick up my phone just to launch an app that lets me read a bunch of random lore. The game is constantly popping up information about entries, but it's just sort of obnoxious. There doesn't appear to be a way to turn these notifications off however.

Day 1 - Crucible

The Crucible is Destiny's PvP mode. There are a total of four modes to choose from based on the graphic you get when selecting it. Strangely, however, Bungie has made the decision to force you to play one mode to unlock others. You being by having to play Control, which as the name suggests, is about capturing and controlling points. I will be honest and say I hate this mode. I'm not very good at PvP, and I tended to get killed in a single shot without even seeing my opponent. The 3d damage arrows don't help in this regard, as they make it hard to see exactly where I'm getting shot from. Needless to say, I feel like a liability and my team gets crushed in all three matches we play.

My suffering however, does unlock Clash mode, which is team deathmatch. I found this significantly more enjoyable. In Control, I found myself frequently confused about how I should be contributing - should I be capturing a flag, hunting enemy players, or defending a position? In Clash, there is only one objective - kill enemy players. Being part of a team helps too, since someone can pick up the slack for my suckitude. After a couple of matches, I feel like I am improving significantly. Rather than finishing last, I finish third on my team, and within spitting distance of second. We actually win the two matches we play as well. Definitely a mode I could see myself coming back to.

Day 1 - Statistics

• Time Played: 5 hours
• Character Advancement: Level 1 --> Level 9

Day 1 Final Thoughts:

After a single day playing, it's hard to say what I think. There's certainly something about Destiny that I find compelling - I wouldn't have played for almost five hours straight otherwise. That said, it's hard to escape the sense that it should be something more. Most of the individual parts work fine taken in isolation - the shooting feels awesome, it looks really nice, the music is good, etc. - but it doesn't seem to mesh together as well as it should. I don't know if that's a fundamental flaw with the game, or if I just haven't gotten far enough in the game for all of the systems to work together yet.

Tomorrow should be more telling. I plan on doing playing through the Moon and then playing the Earth Strike mission.

Day 2

Day 2 - What I Did

• The Moon patrol mode
• All available Moon story missions
• Levels 9-14
• Crucible - Rumble and Skirmish modes
• Devil's Lair strike

Day 2 Statistics

• Time Played: 5 hours (10 hours total)
• Character Advancement: Level 9 --> Level 14

Day 2 - Story Missions

Today I played through all of the Story missions on the Moon, and so far, all of the missions follow the same structure: Go to waypoint A, kill things along the way, and then hold off/kill/destroy thing B. Except for one mission that had me using a big ass sword, there wasn't a lot of variety. It gets repetitive, and it's sort of disappointing Bungie couldn't come up with more creative encounter designs.

I am getting the sense that Bungie intended for the story missions to link together in some sort of loose meta-plot for each planet; for example, all the Earth missions revolved around the Fallen, while the missions on the Moon have you fighting the Hive. However, Bungie didn't do a very good job of providing much context for the missions, and everything feels sort of disjointed as a result. Because there are next to no cutscenes or NPCs, none of the missions have a good through line to connect them. For example, I think the Moon missions were supposed to involve me stopping the Hive from invading Earth, but that's just my own conjecture based on what the missions had me doing. Going forward, Bungie needs to make an effort to connect each story mission in a meaningful way. Cutscenes might help with this.

Day 2 - Devil's Lair Strike

I also took part in the Earth strike mission, called Devil's Lair. The matchmaking for this mode worked quite well and was relatively seamless. The strike itself was also mostly fun. One thing I am finding about Destiny is that the game is significantly more fun when you have larger firefights with a group of people than when you fighting isolated groups of enemies by yourself.

This is the mission with the now well-known "Spider Tank" enemy, and it still suffers the same problem that it did in the beta in that it is far too much of a bullet sponge and takes too long to defeat. My team even seemed to know what to do (shoot it's legs until it exposes its core) and it still took almost five minutes of pounding it before we could kill it. That said, the final boss fight was much better and did offer some tense moments when I was the only team member left standing and had to rush to resurrect the other two.

I will say that I found the rewards somewhat disappointing. Part of this is the RNG, but I had hoped for a more significant upgrade to my gear than what I got. I did have a very good time, but going forward, I hope later Strikes offer more varied encounter design that just "shoot the boss in the weak spot for five minutes."

One thing I did discover, however, is that all those Grimoire cards I've been collecting and paying next to no attention to are actually sort of important for providing context. Going through the Devil's Lair strike for example, I was super confused about why I was doing anything I was doing and the boss didn't appear to be anything more than a great big purple orb. Reading the Grimoire, however, you find out that that Orb is both the central focus of the enemy religion and also controls all the smaller orbs you see out in the regular game world, so by killing it, you presumably kill those too (except not, because MMOs). That information provides the necessary context to actually care about the story. I just can't figure out why Bungie didn't put that in the game. The information is way too important to stuff into some companion app most players will probably never use.

Day 2 - Patrol and Character Advancement

Day 2 and it's more of the same from the patrol mode. Get beacon, go to point, kill things or use Ghost. I have to say the lack of variety has become a major problem. Since this is primarily where you need to grind out levels, there simply isn't enough to keep you distracted. All MMOs are fundamentally about repetition. The good ones hide the repetition behind interesting scenario design, story, or side activities. Unfortunately, Destiny has none of those things at the current moment and as a result you are very, painfully, aware of the grind to the next level.

It might help if it felt like the leveling was worthwhile, but I'm not feeling it right now. Since I got my grenade upgrade, I feel pretty happy with the way my character plays. Looking at the skill tree, I don't feel like there is an ability I am absolutely dying to get my hands on or particularly want to work towards. It seems like a lot of grinding is necessary to unlock later upgrades as well. This might become a problem later. For now, I'm only one level away from unlocking my second sub-class, so maybe that offers up some variety.

Day 2 - Crucible

Today, I soldiered on in the Crucible and played through the final two available modes; Rumble and Skirmish. Rumble is just straight up deathmatch, so it's relatively straight forward. Generally, I found this mode to not be as appealing as the team deathmatch Clash mode. This is because without a team backing you up, you cannot concentrate fire with your primary weapons. As such, they are pretty useless and everyone uses their secondaries instead. However, these weapons tend to kill other players in one shot, so firefights are almost entirely determined by who saw who first, rather than any particular strategy.

I don't know what to think of Skirmish. This is a 3v3 mode where the stated objective is to "kill and revive other players." I'm not entirely certain how this is different from the objectives of any of the other teams modes. I mean, shouldn't I be doing these things anyway? Regardless, I have a visceral dislike of this mode. Each game went more or less the same way - one team would pin other in a corner and start a cycle of kill/resurrection/kill that didn't leave much of an opportunity for the other side to fight back. All the matches ended extremely lopsided. Not something I'd play again.

In other news, I am also frustrated by the randomness of the Crucible reward system. You are awarded items at the end of each match, but it seems random and I've never received anything good. In one match, everyone received a blue item. Except for me. I got nothing. The most frustrating part of it is that it didn't seem tied to my performance - I finished 3/6, but the other players got the items, despite performing significantly better/worse than me.

Day 2 Final Thoughts

After two days playing, I get the sense that Destiny may be sort of a rorschach for gamers. Some people are going to look at it and see a shooter, other people are going to look at it and see an MMO. How successful you think the game is will depend on your viewpoint. If you view it as a shooter, you will probably be satisfied. The shooting feels really good, and the action comes fast and often, especially if you are in a group.

On the other hand, if you look at it as an MMO, you will probably find it lacking. The social options are non-existent - you can't invite people in your Clan without also being friends on PSN with them for example - and a lot of the story is so threadbare it is extremely hard to keep track of what'a happening, and so far there have been exactly zero memorable NPC characters to care about. The mission structure is also disappointingly rote. It all amounts to "go here and kill these things." Since you do a lot of that just walking around, the story isn't exactly offering a new experience.

Tomorrow I will presumably reach Level 15, which is when my second sub-class opens up, so I'll see how that changes the gameplay, if at all. I have also unlocked Venus and a strike mission on the Moon, so I'll see where those take me as well.