I started a Titan on Xbox, and have been slowly making my way through the campaign. This is the first time I've done this since the game launched--with every other character I just rushed through to get the max level to do endgame stuff.

I've also been playing Halo: Reach again, for the first time in years (probably since 2012). I play a mission every few days or so, when I want a break from Destiny. I just finished Long Night of Solace yesterday.

Doing those things at the same time has been a neat contrast, I think, so here are some random thoughts in no particular order.

Bring assassinations back, please, Bungie! I know they're useless, I know they're unnecessary, but damnit, they are cool. Assassinations in Destiny with neat space magic kills would be incredibly fun.

The campaign in Destiny 2 is really good. Great even. Forget about the story, which is serviceable. As I said, I'm taking my time, doing the adventures on every planet as I make my way through. I'm just getting ready to leave Io, and I'm most of the way to level 17 already. Doing the adventures as you go makes the game feel whole, and actually pretty interesting. The stories of the adventures aren't really connected to the greater story, but it does make the game feel paced much more evenly if you do them.

It does make me wonder, though, about how Bungie will approach Destiny 3. There's a lot of content during the campaign, if you include the adventures. I feel like Bungie definitely wanted people to play the game the way I am right now, but, in some respects, it feels like a complete waste of resources. For the most part, it's a massive amount of content that most players see once (per character, I guess). It's not easily repeatable (please fix that!), and, even when it is, it's irrelevant to post-20 progression. In some ways, it feels antithetical to what Destiny actually is for most of it's life. I'm trying to envision a game that's only Destiny 2 end game content, but I'm not sure how you structure that.

Destiny 2's mission design is actually really good--much better than I had previously given it credit for. The spaces are all mostly really great. After playing Reach, I'd honestly say it's mostly on par with Halo, although it doesn't live up the greatest moments of Halo. It's just easy to overlook, I think, because there's no easy way to replay it, and we spend so much time in the same spaces without the context of moving through them in the way the campaign missions have you do.

I still think Destiny suffers in comparison to Halo in regards to vehicles. The Warthog segments in Halo still feel way more spectacular than the tank sections in Destiny 2, I think, and the variety of vehicles adds a lot of replayability to those missions.

Halo: Reach is still really damn good. Oddly, I don't think it's aged nearly as well as the other Halo games, but I guess it's not a fair comparison since I use the enhanced versions in the Master Chief collection. Its motion blur is truly awful. I think it would benefit greatly from a One X enhancement in the same way Halo 3 did. But I think it has great mission designs, and I do think they nailed the sort of boots on the ground story they were trying to tell. It's really compelling, even if it is light on actual story.

Long Night of Solace still makes me want some space combat missions in Destiny. As simple as it is, it's still a blast. Landing on a beach, fighting into the Saber facility, launching into space, flying around and blowing shit up, then landing on a Covenant Corvette and fighting through it still feels like a impressive piece of level design.

I wish I could put my finger on exactly why, but I still feel like most missions in Destiny lack that sort of thrill.

I wish I could put my finger on exactly why, but I still feel like most missions in Destiny lack that sort of thrill.

Because few missions in Des2ny are based on any meaningful sort of dramatic narrative conflict. The ones that stand out to me, the opening and the almighty, are the ones that had stakes that affected the overall narrative progression. You get thrill when you feel like you are doing something urgent and important. Much of Des2ny's missions are 'filler' full of manufactured temporary conflict.

If you remove any particular mission from Halo 1, the narrative falls apart. Even the Library, which is admittedly the weakest of this, establishes the index as maguffin type object of importance.

But remove almost any mission in Des2ny, and nothing would really change that much…

I wish I could put my finger on exactly why, but I still feel like most missions in Destiny lack that sort of thrill.

Because few missions in Des2ny are based on any meaningful sort of dramatic narrative conflict. The ones that stand out to me, the opening and the almighty, are the ones that had stakes that affected the overall narrative progression. You get thrill when you feel like you are doing something urgent and important. Much of Des2ny's missions are 'filler' full of manufactured temporary conflict.

If you remove any particular mission from Halo 1, the narrative falls apart. Even the Library, which is admittedly the weakest of this, establishes the index as maguffin type object of importance.

But remove almost any mission in Des2ny, and nothing would really change that much…

I think you're right. It also seems like most of the Destiny missions are reactive while Halo missions were proactive, especially Halo 1. In Halo we were learning things as we went, figuring things out, then stopping them from ever happening. In Destiny, everything is already happening and we have to figure out how to stop them...but we don't ever actually stop them until a raid or something.

Destiny campaign missions are merely devices to setup the plot of the endgame activities.

To me, the goal of Halo vs Destiny was totally different too. Halo was a great couch co-op game. It had 4 player split screen PvP. You could actually get together with your best buds and play TOGETHER, whether its campaign or PvP. The multi player games and missions were inspired by the question "know what might be fun?" It doesn't feel like any of this mentality made it into Destiny.

In Halo, the levels are built to tell the story just as much, if not more so then Destiny.

Destiny has strikes, but other then those, there is little narrative advancement and the feeling of being isolated from everyone else in game.

The Assault on the Control Room, the Silent Cartographer, 343 Guilty Spark, Outskirts, The Ark, Exodus, Tip of the Spear, UNSC Pillar of Autumn, these levels are designed to make the player feel like a part of a larger battle.

You have NPCs reacting to you that are directly visible, you are clearly seen as part of a larger military force and feel like you are part of a large, and thus important mission. Halo 2 and 3 had large boss battles and big in game cutscenes to add weight and import to the mission at hand.

Destiny does not do this. With the exception of Warmind and TTK, there is little setup pre or post mission, and strikes have no cutscenes in game. There are no NPCs involved in the missions (with one or two exceptions) So the player always feels alone, and thus the import of their actions is diluted.

This is in part a decision to make the game activities feel more re-playable. I don't think it is a good one. If Bungie were to add frames and people as in game public events, worked in the strikes to make them feel like Halo levels instead of kind of one off long missions, they could do better.

This is the part where they need to be more RPG like, using strikes to tell a big story, while missions should tell smaller, deeper lore bits.

For whatever reason, they didn't want to go in depth story wise, and it still hurts this game compared to Halo.