Just to give my biases going into this preview:

I have liked Bungie since the PC demo of Marathon 2 and Myth.

Loved Halo even with its ups (Halo3) and downs (Halo2, everything with the Flood).

Followed news on Bungie for ages and before Halo2 saw some leaked information of a fantasy game that they had to put on hold to get H2 finished, that game I think was called Phoenix which might be ironic since it may have been the seed that would become Destiny.

Hearing about Bungie wanting out of being owned by MS and having to push out H3, ODST and Reach made playing them like going to see a band from the 70's as the play the hits while desperately wanting to play 'something from the new album'.

I was happy for them as well as for my Halo fandom to see them go and make something with passion involved.

MS had ages to set up a replacement (the vision less 343 Industries) so I would still get my Halo fix and Bungie could make a more out there, experimental type of game.

As its shaken out I'm also happy that since Bungie went the 'MMO like' route it probably means 343 will keep away from it.

Playing MMO games strike me as like being forced to construct one thousand envelopes at which point you'll be given some thumb pads that with give you better grip and allow for faster envelope construction, but now you need to make a further two thousand envelopes but for that feat you'll be rewarded with pads for all your finger tips that will aid in the construction of envelops, now though you need to have made four thousand in order to get something else and this repeats until either they shut down the servers or you are dead.

MMO is a term that half the people talking about Destiny love to use and the other half hate them for it.

So a better term would be Grouped Online Shooting Saga or GOSS.

Sadly while not a full MMO Destiny does appear to lessened by the few connections it has with them.

It has a safe hub where players are free to run around with each other, taking quests and buying things like MMOs all this really means is there is a bunch of people dashing from point to point making the whole thing look like some Easter egg scavenge hunt.

The people are there to show you that there are people there, nothing more.

Story

Running around a medium sized area is not by itself a problem but the enemy AI is of such a low standard that picking them of from distance is a 'tactic' they have no answer for, even 'put self behind thing' is beyond them. Memories of the map Halo and attacking the Grunts from the first drop ship and how they would flee for cover comes to mind. Destiny's AI has an even bigger problem with the idea of multiple players, if they become aware of one person another can stroll though from a different side and casually blow them into... well not chunks since there is no fun damage modelling. H3 had brutes with armour plates that would lost in satisfying explosions giving fighting them great feedback. Destiny just has the bipedal baddies fall over in ragdolls.

Last thing about the Story mode for this preview would be how average the 'missions' are. They all play like the 'in-between' bits of Halo games. Those things that happen between the good bits.

Those long winding corridors and elevators, those cramped involvements filled with fodder. The open areas while nicer have poor enemy placement and no proper flow to them, feeling more like ODST's horde style mode then a well constructed single player level. This is made even worse when you remember that since H3 those games let 4 people play though the Single Player game together. In trying to add pointless MMO elements they are doing the same thing as before far worse.

I'll talk on the MP / PVP stuff in another post after giving it some more time and hoping it shows something redeemable.