Destiny

For better or for worse the gaming public has been anticipating Destiny since early 2012 when the name and vague details we leaked through Activision’s litigation with the founders of Infinity Ward. A week after Destiny has finally been released the question is how is the game itself? Never before has answering this question been quite as difficult and nuanced in my own head, but what I can say for certain is that Destiny failed to live up to expectations. Bungie, Activision, and Sony have worked together for nearly eighteen months at this point to paint Destiny as a massive game in a living world and in my fifty or so hours with the game across both current generation platforms that simply is not the case. The largest failing of Destiny, in my opinion, is the content delivered seems to diverge from the promises of Destiny at its very core. Most notably Bungie promised players at the PlayStation 2013 E3 Press Conference that the story would be successfully told through every aspect of the environment including the guns, which would certainly account for the absence of any meaningful plot in a traditional sense. If Bungie believed that they succeeded in creating hundreds of unique firearms that tell a unique visual story, they either failed or forgot to include those guns in Destiny because as I see it Destiny includes four primary weapons. With that being said Destiny is certainly not all bad.

After getting into Destiny you’ll quickly find where Destiny thrives: the minute to minute gameplay. The shooting Bungie crafted will not be unfamiliar to fans of the studio as the guns feel very Halo-esque, but with a Call of Duty inspired iron sights reliance. Bungie takes this Call of Duty infusion into their Halo formula beyond the shooting paradigm into the control scheme as among the half dozen control presets available there are two preset schemes that will be nearly identical to that of Call of Duty and Halo, respectively. The remnants of Halo’s design philosophy extend to the terrain and enemies of Destiny as the “open world” can just as easily be viewed as interconnected combat arenas which one can survive and progress through mastery of headshots and vertical movement, clear artifacts of Bungie’s past. With that said Destiny does have a few mechanics not intrinsically required in the modern shooter.

Any familiarity with the preview cycle of Destiny will remind players of the heavy influence of loot systems from the likes of Borderlands or Diablo and the quest/narrative path set up of World of Warcraft. Even without this familiarity, every waking second of Destiny’s PvE content will force these comparisons to the forefront of the player’s mind. Don’t get me wrong, these systems borrowed from these particular games is not an absolutely bad thing, but it is too obvious and pervasive not mention. In my opinion adding a robust loot system into game that may not require it can possible extend the life of a game by as many as one hundred hours (see Borderlands). The loot system in Destiny is definitely worth discussing because it is neither horrible nor impeccable. Personally I view Diablo as the pinnacle of loot systems due to the franchise’s innate ability to supply the player with upgraded gear that is unique at just the right time. Destiny seems to take a different approach where they reduce the total amount of loot drops so that when the player sees a green or blue orb come flying out of a dead enemy it is exciting regardless of how small the upgrade may turn out to be. In Diablo III the suspense of if a piece of gear is a sizable upgrade will last for a matter of seconds, especially on console, but in Destiny this suspense will often last much longer as higher quality drops although exceedingly rare will often force the player to return to the town hub of “Tower” to decrypt, compare, and potentially equip the new set of gear. This system although wildly different from its competitors is not necessarily bad or wrong, regardless of my preference for a more straightforward Diablo style loot system.

Typically when a developer tells me that ‘our game doesn’t really start until the level cap’ I roll my eyes and make some snarky remark about how the developer just admitted to having twenty plus hours of mundane filler between the player and the ‘fun part’, and in this sense Destiny both succeeded and failed. Bungie truly created systems that make post level cap play rewarding by allowing additional leveling to be accomplished through rare or legendary loot carrying “light” which not only increase dealt by all player attacks and abilities, but allows them to continue to gain levels up until level 29. When players begin to gain light levels they will be able to take on Vanguard Playlists, which puts players into striketeams to take down harder strikes giving players increased rewards. This set up creates a gameplay loop which features challenging yet enjoyable group based cooperative gameplay which nets players more light infused gear allowing them to tackle increasingly challenging Vanguard Playlists and eventually the extremely challenging six player raids which if successful will result in massive rewards for the player. If more coop content is not what you are looking for at the end game players can always grab Crucible Bounties and take on opposing players in the Crucible, which is Destiny’s PvP content. Players can engage in Deathmatch, Capture, and other game modes to increase their Crucible Rank and amass Crucible Marks, the PvP version of the Vanguard Marks, which can be used at special vendors in The Tower for special Legendary Gear. Although these loops and systems are great fun, the fact remains that this content is hidden behind twenty levels and at least as many hours of mundane and tedious leveling, in boiler plate cliché Science Fiction story gameplay, something that is not negated by an enticing endgame.

Balancing out the rewarding loop of challenging encounters that garner the player enticing loot is the fact that the story and weapons used to push through the aforementioned story are equally boring and disappointing. Knowing what Bungie is capable of in their art department, and seeing that potentially get shown off in the world design only increases the amount of disappointment I felt from realizing the difference between a level 2 pulse rifle and a level 2 pulse rifle is often three or more unlockable abilities that are usually mundane stat boosts. Furthermore upon completing Destiny’s narrative I sat and pondered what my Guardian actually accomplished in the self-serious twenty-five story missions and I was left to wonder when Bungie comes calling for more money in three months will I be fighting more waves of Fallen to take on the King of the Fallen or will I get to fight waves of Fallen until I get to Fight some badass members of the Awoken to prepare me for maybe, one day, taking down the Queen of the Awoken and her jackass of a brother. But hopefully the two expansions coming within the first six months of release will increase the experience based level cap from twenty up to an absolute minimum of forty, because that low of a level cap seems odd to me in light of the level caps of World of Warcraft, Wildstar, Skyrim, Borderlands 2, and Guild Wars 2.

Destiny is an undoubtedly refined shooter with interesting loot mechanics that separate it from much of its competition. With that being said, Destiny would be an incredible game if my first twenty plus hours with it weren’t a slog through some of the most tedious story content in recent memory. The fact that the superbly interesting world Bungie created for Destiny is wasted with a mostly absent story relegated to a handful of cinematic cut scenes and Grimoire Cards, which deliver truly interesting story beats and content through an App and a website, which for some reason is impossible to access through the game itself. Typical a subpar story would by a deal breaker for me, but in certain cases the gameplay loops are enough to keep me coming back. For some reason now that I am in the end game content I will keep coming back to Destiny just as I did with Borderlands 2 and Diablo III. Being able to continue to level up through increasingly badass gear, occasionally found in unimaginatively named loot caches, and unlock additional skills in two swappable subclasses that keep my class of choice feeling fresh and evolving, Destiny has yet to feel completed, a feeling that might be different if the story of Destiny ever felt at all important to anyone including Bungie. Never before have I enjoyed playing a game so much yet, had so many issues with the game itself. When I’m told that someone hates the story, characters, and feels uninspired to continue playing I cannot help but nod my head in total agreement, while anticipating tonight’s heroic mission with my Hunter. My final score of Bungie’s open world shooter Destiny is: a three out of five.