Guardians... (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Monday, February 29, 2016, 13:38 (3030 days ago) @ Ragashingo
edited by CruelLEGACEY, Monday, February 29, 2016, 14:03

So one thing I felt was strangely missing from Destiny was the complete lack of getting to witness what Guardians were capable of. Aside from running in to higher level players in patrol during the first 10 hours or so, the player is always the most powerful thing we see in action. I'm not much of an RPG player, but just about every RPG I have played gives the player the opportunity to see great power in action. You might encounter a foe with incredible abilities far beyond your own, only to meet them again down the road once your own powers have grown to match them. Or you might see a friendly NPC show some awesome display of abilities which you can then slowly learn for yourself. I always enjoyed these moments, because they gave me a dramatic visual example of what I was aspiring towards with my character. It's very empowering to meet characters with seemingly Godlike powers, only to grow over the course of the game to the point where you match or even exceed them.

But in Destiny, we never get any of that. There are tidbits in the Grimoire that give us hints of how powerful some of the great guardians of the past were. It stands to reason that the Vanguard are capable of some incredible things. I want to actually SEE some of that.

I think TTK took some baby steps towards that. The mission where we acquire the Voidwalker's bow has us following in the footsteps of a powerful guardian. We see the remnants of his foes, destroyed by power that was at the time beyond us. But the weight of that experience is somewhat deflated by the fact that you acquire the bow moments later and instantly unleash insane levels of devastating power, easily trashing the Vex troops who had just killed the "powerful" guardian we had been tracking.

We also got to see Eris use her spooky teleportation spell, which was a cool moment. And the "encounter" with the Titans on Mercury hinted at guardians far beyond our own level of power, although we didn't get to actually see anything.

We also had the climb towards Oryx himself, although that didn't feel as satisfying as I would have thought. Probably because our guardians are pretty much fully-powered at the start of TTK. We acquire new gear with higher numbers on them, but that's not as satisfying as seeing real growth of our abilities. We got the new subclasses, but that felt more like de-powering our already powerful guardians by reverting us to an empty skill tree. (Don't get me wrong: I'm not complaining about the new subclasses, just saying that the way the were added didn't scratch the specific itch I'm talking about).

I hope we get to see more NPC guardians in action in the future. I want to see them do incredible, "legendary" things.