I meant to ask you- (Destiny)

by Usul, Thursday, June 25, 2015, 20:57 (3252 days ago) @ CyberKN

If the Taken King was $20, I would definitely be more willing to consider picking it up.

At the same time though, the reason I included those *new* features in my list is because I find Destiny's feature-set and content to be wholly underwhelming, and to get me to continue playing it at all, Bungie needs to shake things up in ways that they have not shown they're willing (or maybe able) to thus far.

I agree that the DLCs could have stood to have more content.

I'm not actually one that's bothered too terribly much by missions reusing environments (I.E. running backwards through an area you've already had a mission in), but even I think they overdid it.

I really enjoyed Crota's End, but it was no VoG, and I think it suffered by comparison.

I'm still enjoying PoE (possibly because I still haven't killed Skolas), but I sometimes find myself wishing the mechanics of the rounds were more robust and thoughtful as opposed to the "fight standard adds, now do this objective in a random location while not dying to these standard adds, now do it again, OK, next round" system that currently stands.

I'd like to think that they'll periodically tweak PoE or add new bosses/mechanics and use it as a kind of real-world playtest to see what's neat and works and what isn't and doesn't, but, realistically, I guess that's doubtful.

I guess what I'm saying is that I haven't been overwhelmed by the DLC, but I can't in all honesty say I've been underwhelmed. I've been... whelmed. I guess.

And that's not what I've come to expect from Bungie, which is greatness or at least good-with-occasional-moments-of-greatness. Instead I have Destiny, which is, to me, solidly decent with occasional moments of greatness. To be sure, there are worse crimes. Faint praise, I know.

I also find your comparison of Destiny's campaign to Halo CE's in your other post above to be offensive and absurd, but that's not what this conversation is about, so I'll drop it.

I wasn't really comparing Destiny's campaign to Halo's as much as I was noting that that particular set of criticisms (lack of variety + campaign brevity) also used to be applied to Halo back in the day. To be clear, this actually means that I think it's possible to reuse environments in a relatively short game and still be a great game. I think Halo managed this where Destiny didn't.

I enjoyed the hell out of Halo CE's campaign, and I still do, but it was criticized early and often for having incredibly monotonous environments, reusing what was essentially the same room over and over and over, even running through an entire level in reverse. And even a casual run-through of the campaign would be hard-pressed to take more than 10 to 15 hours.

The difference (to me, at least) is that even though Halo CE was obviously a part of a greater story, its campaign felt self-contained and stood well on its own.

Metaphor: Halo was basically a nice, comfortable, well-constructed wooden chair with some interesting woodwork that I hadn't seen before. It needed a dining room table and a couple of other chairs to really reach its full potential, but it was perfectly serviceable on its own, and I still love sitting on it.

Destiny, on the other hand, basically launched as a really fancy chair with very comfortable seat, but the seatback isn't finished, and one of the legs is missing. It was designed as a bigger chair and designed to use more wood than my Halo chair, so even though the vanilla version used just as much wood as my Halo chair, it remained obviously unfinished even to the untrained eye. The carpenter has come in to work on the seatback a couple times, and he assures me he'll be back soon to attach the new leg, add some cushions, maybe even finish the back.

In that sense, what Destiny's campaign really reminds me of its Halo 2's, not CE's. Halo CE's campaign was not long, and had some serious issues with monotonous environments, but it was well-crafted as hell. Halo 2 tried to do more and ended up accomplishing less. It tried to add nuance and depth and variety, and it did to some extent, but it was also short and felt unfinished. When I survived the Maw run in CE, I felt like I had accomplished something, and I had, because CE was a self-contained arc within a larger mythology. Halo 2, on the other hand, was basically just an extended prologue to Halo 3.

That's similar to how I feel about Destiny's campaign as well.