So I was able to finish the Vault of Glass a couple of days ago and I have oddly mix impressions of the experience.

The Good:

- The raid was easily the best teamwork based gameplay I've experienced, ever. Yeah, you sorta have to work together to do a vehicle based flag cap in Halo, but even the best, toughest, most well executed flag capture was nothing compared to the raid. Yes, it got a bit frustrating at times failing over and over, but looking back it's clear that we were failing because we weren't working together as a team. The way that teamwork was required to win felt both surprisingly natural and kinda amazing.

- The sections of the Templar fight were very interesting departures from standard Destiny game play, and sometimes a lot of fun to die at. It's funny remembering the times where we all got marked by an oracle and ran for the central glowing pool only to realize it wasn't glowing and we were all doomed. We really struggled against the final Templar encounter wiping over and over but then we regrouped and came up with a plan to spread out more and we took him down in one or two more tries. It was awesome to get stomped, identify why we were getting stomped, correct our mistakes, and very quickly see the results.

- We had a very humorous moment after the Templar fight where Kermit... well first he fell to his death... but then he took the wrong path. Instead of ending up at a loot chest with the rest of us he wandered into the Gorgon area and those of us who knew what was down there were practically yelling for him to "stop moving that direction" and to come back to us. Lots of laughing and talk of kindergarten single file lines ensued. :)

- The Gorgon's sneak area wasn't nearly as bad as I feared. We only got caught maybe five times and even then it never felt like an "...again..." type thing. We were lucky to have someone who knew where to go so that helped.

- The jumping puzzle was not nearly as big or as hard as I feared it would be. I had imagined it would go on a long long way when really it went out a bit then spiraled back in on itself. Amusingly I was the second to make it across then fell and was one of the last to make it. Luckily I was wearing headphones and I noticed that the puzzle was actually an audio puzzle instead of a visual one. You could try and watch and memorize the sections as they rezed in and out, but it was so much easier to listen for the next piece and jump blindly as it appeared beneath your feat. The directional audio even on simple $30 stereo headphones was an amazing help and it let me ignore Beorn's advice (where "left" seemed to mean turn a 180 then go left :p) and complete the puzzle in one go.

- We bogged down again at the retrieve the two relics section. Mostly I think our problem was people worrying about their teammates on the other side of the portal and everyone forgetting to defend the conflux. After a while we decided to tackle the past first using three people since it was a bit harder and then only send two into the future. It finally worked out when our two person future team went through the portal, nuked the Gatekeeper, then one of them (who was carrying the first relic) would cleanse the other then returned to the present to help defend the conflux.

- The Atheon fight wasn't all that hard... except we'd been playing for too many hours and kept wiping. When we returned a couple of days later it went much more smoothly. Still took us a few tries but we beat it fairly quickly. It did become clear that those not used to the Relic are going to have to practice up once the teleport change happens. Watching people flail off the edge of the map with the relic was pretty amusing. :)

The Bad:

- The Vault of Glass was kinda like Destiny summed up in one activity. It was very fun to play but almost completely failed at creating a sense of relevance or importance or connection to Destiny's larger world. Why were we as Guardians attacking this Vex stronghold? We aren't told one peep about it's importance. There was such a missed opportunity to emphasize both the Vex gaining some sort of important advantage via their time manipulation and the urgency and importance of our desperate mission to try and stop one of our most powerful enemies in their tracks by beating them on their home turf.

Maybe Destiny's MMO nature combined with the high level, and fireteam, and time requirements makes it so the VoG can't be directly in line with Destiny's main story, but surely it could still be made up as a big deal with proper cutscenes and intros and hints at the Vex gaining an unusual advantage in other parts of the game. Just saying something like "only a select few Guardians can be trusted with this mission" during a briefing could distance it from the main story while making you feel all the more important that you were one of the relative few to be chosen for such an important mission. Instead you're just dumped in the middle of Venus without so much as a standard Ghost voice over...

- If the build up and importance of the Vault of Glass was badly done then the way it ends is worthy of repeatedly and painfully banging your facepalm on your desk. We go through all these challenges and destroy all these presumably important Vex systems and minds and we get... a standard mission ending countdown?! There's not a final door that beating Atheon gives you access to or even something as simple as a final chest revealed for beating Destiny's hardest challenge? There's certainly no bigger in world results from completing this daring raid! Sure, finally coming together as a team and executing a strategy well time after time was great but the apparent result was such a depressing letdown.

If beating the Vault of Glass can't really affect the rest of Destiny's story or gameplay I would have loved to get some tremendous in-Vault effects. Have those huge shards of glass shatter in spectacular fashion! Or have something time-travel-y and advantageous to The City or The Traveler happen! Basically do anything other than leave a successful team of six standing around with a bog standard countdown that freezes on zero!

Worse, for me, was I didn't even see Atheon die. I was the designated Relic Guy and had my back turned since I was jumping towards the back of the room for the next trip through time. I started my jump right when people started yelling that we got him. By the time I turned around there was nothing left to see. I was glad we won but I also had this crappy feeling for having missed our victory. The raid which had been so much fun ended with an unexpected whimper for me.

- Finally, I didn't enter the Vault of Glass for loot. My Titan who I was playing already had legendary or exotic everything. But even though I was happy with my current gear, not getting anything from the final battle but some shards and a shader when I had just completely missed the final kill felt pretty dang bad. I actually made out decently in the raid since I got a full set of raid armor (chest, arms, boots) via the rewards and loot caches leading up to the final room... but at the end others were getting awesome one of a kind ships and great primary weapons and I got three shards and the same shader that everyone else got. If anyone noticed I was almost completely silent at the end it's because I was feeling pretty down but didn't want to ruin anyone else's good time.

A couple things could fix this uneven rewards problem:

- First, and maybe it's just me, but the Chatterwhite shader is not nearly unique enough of a reward for completing one of Destiny's hardest challenges. It is far too close to the Iron Banner shader and to Gilgamesh (I think) which all three outfiting me in mostly white armor. If the shader is going to be the one thing that everyone gets it needs to really pop visually or glow in the dark or pulse with strange temporal energy. Right now it is... white. And that's all.

- Second, the final reward needs to be more equal. Not everyone needs to get the exact same thing but certainly everyone should get something tangible to show off. Whether that's a ship or a gun or a Sparrow or class item doesn't matter so much, but handing one person one (or more!) tangible items while the other person only gets energy or shards that will soon be used up felt very uneven to me.

In the end, I had a ton of fun playing the raid and would love to do it again, it was easily one of Destiny's highlights. But, at the same time, its significant lack of story integration (other than a few Grimoire cards), its "so now what" anti-climatic conclusion, and its uneven final loot distribution left me in something of a negative mood. :(