Early impressions of Destiny. (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Wednesday, April 06, 2016, 15:41 (3247 days ago) @ Kermit

I just recently played through the entire game on my Xbox Hunter. It was a strange experience, playing through all of Destiny's content in a single run (Dogcow, we should compare notes!). Because I didn't have to wait through the months between content releases, I didn't need to replay a single mission or strike, or spend any time grinding/farming out in patrol. I just made my way through all the missions, strikes, and Raids (still need to do King's Fall, but that's it).

On the one hand, it is a real drag. Because I don't have countless hours of grinding and replaying content under my belt with this character, she is still largely under-developed. By the time I beat the final TTK story mission, I still hadn't completely unlocked my ability tree for my starting subclass, much less even touched the other 2 subclasses. In a sense, it sapped some of the fun out of the later story missions because I felt like I was still engaging with early-Destiny combat; slower, more limited, less exciting. On the other hand, there is something to be said for going through all of these missions and making do with the gear that I had available. My weapon and armor selection was limited, and I often didn't have the ideal tool for the job in front of me. I really enjoyed that sense of replaying the game.

I'd love to play it with all the new questlines in place. They brought much-needed structure to the story. The burden of releveling those subclasses, though, is too much.

The questlines are a nice touch in a lot of ways, although I did find the overall experience is still a bit off. It helps add a little more focus to the narrative threads that tie the missions together, but it doesn't make the missions themselves any more enjoyable, at least not for me. Plus there's the issue that Destiny pre-TTK doesn't have much of an in-game story to dig into, regardless of how the missions are chained together. There's also at least 1 major plot hole that is actually created by the new quest system. The TTK missions start at level 26, but the Crota's End raid is still a level 30 activity. So in my playthrough, by the time I faced Crota, Crota's dad had already shown up seeking revenge for the death of Crota. As someone who has already played through all the content, it wasn't a big deal at all. But I could see it being a major "WTF?!" moment for new players who started with TTK.

If nothing else, I came away thinking "I'd love to see more of this quest system built into future incarnations of Destiny right from the start, rather than tacked on after the fact". It definitely has lots of potential, IMO.