Destiny

*Sight* This was the last thing I was expecting from Destiny, and more importantly, the end product was something I would never have expected from Bungie. I have been on board with Destiny from the very moment I knew of it's existence. I've seen Bungie do a lot of good work and I knew what they were capable of, so having a first person RPG Space adventure fantasy shooter (Just saying that gives me goose bumps) made by a company I liked was an amazing deal from the get go. I moved across multiple forums, argued with people who thought the game looked dull, and basically defended it from start to it's actual release. Now I have to get on my knees and eat my own words because Destiny is in many ways vapid, but it's also not. Wait, that doesn't sound right, does it? The thing is, Destiny, as evident by the worlds reaction, has a lot of mixed views, so take into considering the fact that liking Destiny may be determined by what you were looking for in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the game is bad, it just can't live up to the hype it created, no matter how hard it "tries".

In order not to end things on a very sour note, I'd like to open with most of the negative aspects about the game. It's biggest flaw, not only by my account but everyone else's, is the narrative and lore, or better yet the absence of it. There is no simple way to put this, Destiny has no story. At all. Right now, for thous who have played the game, might argue with me by recalling the few cutscenes that we were provided with. Well, let me put it this way. If these cinematics were removed from the game, what would change? The correct answer is nothing. Destiny only has a few moments where single, specific characters appear, do something relatively inconsequential and vanishes. The non-existence of the story is absolutely baffling, for 90% of the time, you have no idea what the hell is going on. Each mission only has a five second summary of WHAT you are about to do, but we don't want to know the "WHAT", because that'll be clear either ways; we're interested in the "how" and "why", which as you may have guessed by now, is never answered. Literally, your first encounter with a "pivotal" character starts with him saying how he COULD tell you about the great war, the state of previous worlds, Humanities golden age, etc, but he simply shrugs off the concept completely. In fact, the narrative doesn't even try to explain the current events which are taking place during the game. Hell, one of the people even explains the given situation like this: " I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain."At this point it just fucking feels like they were specifically avoiding a fucking story, which makes it worse. Moreover, the lore is absolutely pathetic. Bungie seems to be unaware of the fact that when you make an RPG game you need to create a cohesive, well tied universe in which you plug different creatures. Destiny's world feels empty. Not in a literal sense however, you'll meet a lot of enemies along the way, but these enemies have no motivation or reason for fighting your or doing what they do.

To be fair, I can understand how the Darkness, one of the main antagonists in the game, may not need an explanation, considering that the game shows through numerous encounters that they are simply a force of chaos. But what about the others? The Vex? The Fallen? The Cabal? You, the player, don't know why you are fighting these creatures, nor why these creatures fight among themselves; the game literally tells you that they are evil, and that you should kill them. That's as much information you'll probably get from Destiny. Instead of subtly and carefully planting out the small details of the world and story, Destiny forced you to go to Bungie's site and read a bunch of Grimoir cards, which is supposed to answer the multiple questions spawned during the game. Now I don't mind reading cards or scrolls in a game, in fact, I avidly collect them most of the time in order to broaden my perspective on the universe in which the game takes place; however, there's a problem with this concept. Enriching the lore is fine, but placing the complete package on some cards is just bad fucking design. The game should provide most of the juicy details itself, or at the very least, it should have the decency to put these cards in the GAME itself. What makes the situation worse is that these cards don't even provide you with the information you required in the first place.

This, my friends, is a real shame, and I mean that in the best way possible, because once you get past these flaws , you can clearly see that destiny could have been a wonderful experience as a whole. Why? Well for starters the enemy design is awesome in my opinion. Every class of foe you encounter has it's own unique design set of abilities. Sure, it's true that they share some of these abilities, but I guess what I was trying to say is that they utilize them differently. For example, some of the fallen can teleport, but they don't use it in the same was as the Vex too, which means that fighting them, together or separately, feels versatile. Not only that, but the damage intake is completely different as well, each enemy is designed in a way that forced the player to come up with new strategies in order to fight off group attacks. That all being said, while it may be fun to fight, it would have been fun to see a little diversity in level design as well. Most of the levels play out as follows: "Enter and abandoned place of which we know nothing about; allow Dinkledrone (your ghost) to scan or hack a computer system(or old ruins), and fight off waves of enemies. You know, in a Fantasy space adventure, I'm just disheartened that there wasn't more to do.

Speaking of vexing level deigns, the boss battles are still really cool and fun, albite not that unique and diverse. Sure, you encounter different mega aliens but the main ways on how to beat them boils down to the same strategy: Utilize the surrounding area, grind small tier enemies for supplies, find cover, throw everything at the monster, and repeat. Creatively it may be a little disheartening, but I can definitely say that each fight, for me at least, has been very intense and entertaining. On every strike, or raid if you want to call it, you're paired with different people, and while I cannot fathom why they would remove matchmaking, it's not an aspect of the game which has disappointed me, in fact, I've enjoyed most of the strikes I've been a part of. Unfortunately, now comes the tricky part. A lot of the aspects of the raid of the raid is flawed. First of all, the loot seems to be, for the most part, random, or based completely on one's class, because there were moments where I had the best statistics(kills, death ratio, etc) and I still got less then my other teammates, and then there were times where I hadn't done much but I still received a very generous prize (And I'm not the only one who has noticed this). This seems, yet again, to be a design flaw. I'm not sure what the people at Bungie were trying to do, but in the end, this spontaneous reception of loot will most likely limit the players zeal to try harder. Look, the game itself is already a grind-fest, meaning that you spent the majority of your time destroying a bunch of enemies to get new stuff and evolve in power, so when you're a part of a strike, and you know for a fact that your performance has no valid or objective result, you'll probably try to pull through rather than try to fight of waves of enemies.

What is more, why is it that I can't trade loot with my comrades? I would understand this choice if the prizes were received accordingly, but when people attain loot not assigned to their specific class, why shouldn't I be able to give it to a friend, who would probably make better use of this specific object. Hopefully they'll fix this in the future. Which brings me to my next point, the multiplayer is pretty great, but yet again, it's not as good as it could be. It is, for the most part, balanced, allowing every player to get their chance to shine from time to time(even the lower level gamers), but the major hiccup is that that some weapons are able to decimate other players in a single shot, which would generally be fine, but considering the fact that these exotic weapons are really hard to get, it's may take you out of the whole experience on a few occasions. And since we're talking about exotic and legendary gear, I might as well mention how the game changes once you reach level 20. It's basically the same only certain aspects of the leveling system is altered. Now instead of gaining experience points you have to gather gear with light points in it. This seems like an interesting addition, but it makes customization much more irksome, because, if you remove parts of armor you lose the light, and thus you'll be downgraded to a lower level. So if you like how some some piece of amour looks, you might not be able to use it, because it'll most definitely lower your light points.

I've spent a good chunk or this review ranting, but I'd really like to focus on something much more positive. The gameplay in destiny is absolutely fantastic. Sure it may not exactly be innovative, but it's engrossing, fun, smooth and overall really well executed. What struck me the most about this game is the relationship between Melee combat and the Gunplay itself. I've found myself using both tactics in such a constructive way that it felt almost natural. The enemies are designed to allow this great collaboration between punching things and shooting them( not a joke). So as you imagine, playing as a Titan was really fun. Speaking of which, I've heard a lot of people say that the classes aren't really that different from one another, and while on some level that is true, in either case, all classes have special and sub tier abilities. Plus, the latter can be upgraded in any way you like; so in the end, my character will most definitely be different from yours.

Furthermore, the areas in which most of these battles take place allow the player to control the environment ; once you grasp the strengths and weaknesses of a specific adversary, you'll be allowed to exploit these weaknesses with the help of specific weapons and your surroundings. I can't tell you how many times I could have been slaughtered had the levels been less structured and more field-like.

Which brings up another important point, the graphics are absolutely stunning. I could talk about the character models, but I don't see any point since it's pretty obvious at this point that a next generation console game will probably have stunning visual characters. What I really want to focus on are the environments in destiny. Throughout the story, you'll visit four distinct places: Earth, the Moon, Mars and venus, all of which are masterfully crafted. The areas are so diverse and beautiful that occasionally I had to stop and simply bask in the glory and beauty of what was in front of me. The creative team really outdid themselves on this one, which, funnily enough makes me a bit sad, because when you wonder around you have this feeling that some interesting tale could have been told or incorporated about a specific location, but it just simply wasn't.

And last but not least, I can't finish this review without stating how much I loved the score. Due to the lack of story, I really wanted to watch something on my laptop as I played(something I only do when I've absorbed the games content completely), but I just couldn't break away from the engrossing energetic music. Every single raid and/or mission was, for me at least, enriched by the fantastic score; in fact, I'd even say that the soundtracks played an enormous role in making some of the boring segments of the game so much more meaningful and fun. Bungie, firing Marty O'Donnell may have been the biggest mistake you could have made, because this man knows exactly what he is doing.

In conclusion, Destiny wants to be and wants to accomplish many things, unfortunately, due to it's lack of focus and seriously bad design choices, it is a pale reflection of what it was meant to be. That bing said, Destiny isn't really a bad game, it just takes a specific kind of person to play it. If you enjoy good FPS gameplay, great visuals and a ridiculous amount of grinding, then this is the game that you'll love without a problem. However, if you love strong, compelling and interesting narratives with rich lore and background, chances are that Destiny won't be able to win you over with it's gunplay. As for me, well, I like destiny, I mean, it certainly has it's moments. Plus, above everything else, it's fun way to spend a free afternoon, however, for some, these reasons aren't justified by a 59.99$ price tag, and you'd be absolutely right to think so. Cheers.

3/5