Team speedrunning Destiny is very different and very fun. (Destiny)

by Funkmon , Thursday, December 03, 2015, 07:24 (3072 days ago)

I was probably one of the biggest fans of Halo speedruns. Starting with the GNF competition, then moving on to High Speed Halo, I think I watched every single Halo and Halo 2 speedrun that broke any others' records. To some, this is boring, often because of the mechanics commonly used to beat the levels.

For example, on Keyes, a really fast way to beat it is to use shields to pop you into the ceiling, and then you jump around on the invisible walls. It's not only weird, it's barely playing the game. I found this interesting. Most speedruns are like this, exploiting game bugs for speed, though I think Rockslider(?) on HBO does very cool "kill all the enemies" speedruns which are neat.

However, in Destiny, while glitches can definitely be used to get past certain areas, due to how the game works, most of the time these don't result in a massive time benefit like they might in Halo. In Destiny, the biggest thing is trying to complete all the objectives at once.

Normally in Destiny, you go to an objective. Then you go to another objective. Then another, all as a team. When you're three guys trying to do a level as quickly as possible, you have to have a game plan. You have constant communication. You're really working as a group.

To illustrate, if you're speedrunning level 2, from the start, one guy goes to the crashed ship, one downstairs, and one to the hangar. Ship guy scans the ship, then goes to the hangar. Downstairs guy is killing bad guys while the sounds from the ship scan play, and right when it's done, he's just killed the bad guys and immediately scans the computers. Meanwhile, hangar guy has been killing vandals and Gregs, and right when the ship guy gets there, it's time to synth and kill the archon rising with gyllenhaals. Morpheus, GV and I did this today and had great fun.

It's a beautiful ballet of teamwork, communication, planning, and efficient playing. It's like it's really a whole new game.

I strongly suggest giving it a try if you have a few friends who like playing the story missions.