The Consistency of Destiny (Gaming)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Monday, April 08, 2019, 00:17 (1838 days ago)

Yesterday, on a whim, I gathered up all my favorite exciting Crucible moments that I still have access to and tossed them into iMovie in a random order and threw some rock anthems over the top of them all. Eighty-five kills later, I noticed something pretty neat: Unless I paid close attention, it was not immediately obvious which game I was looking at. Sure, some tactics from one game might not translate perfectly to the other, but for the most part clips from the two games felt very consistent with each other. It really felt like I was just watching a bunch of clips from the same game... even though those clips were actually spread out across several years.

That got me thinking about how interesting it is to have a series remain so near identically consistent over such a long period. Unless Bungie makes massive changes to Destiny 2's base gameplay, we will probably be playing with the same fundamental gameplay for a period of over five years! I tried to think of any other series that has remained anywhere near so consistent over such a long period...

Halo hasn't. Halo 2 feels pretty different form Halo 1. Halo 3 altered the gameplay feel quite a bit again. Sure, ODST was the same, but Reach shifted back towards Halo 1, and while Halos 4 and 5 changed things up to a new 343i style of gameplay.

Mass Effect might be even more drastic. ME1 plays very different from ME2 while ME3 and Andromeda built on but also changed up the ME2 style of gameplay a good bit.

All the Call of Warfares and Metal of Dutys feel the same to me, though maybe someone who actually likes them could give more insight if they change much year to year.

The one series I came up with that has remained pretty consistent was the Batman Arkham series. The basic punching, dodging, countering gameplay has remained largely consistent across six years of titles. Other than the Batmobile in Knight, you can almost swap between games and remain equally potent with just some small adjustments to a few specific enemy classes.

Are there any other series you can think of that have remained very similar to each other? Also, do you see that consistency as a strength or weakness?

I largely see it as a strength. To me, Destiny has always felt like the final form of the gameplay loop that Bungie first gave us in Halo: Combat Evolved. It seems like changing it too much might break what makes Destiny Destiny.

What do you think?