Beta Thoughts, Strategies, Stories, and A Bug. (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Monday, July 28, 2014, 11:52 (3563 days ago)

The Destiny Beta was fun. Writing about it is… kinda hard. I tried to do sections but kept spiraling out of control as one thing linked to another and another. Destiny is very interconnected! Instead I went with a largely chronological approach. Imagine there’s lots of pictures and video… There’s not, because 360, but imagine! :)

• From the beginning the visuals and music were great. I loved that pan over the nice mountains and river then the “oh, things really aren’t so good here” music kicking in as the camera comes across the burnt out cars.
  
  
• Starting out at the wall of the E3 beta was pretty awesome. Somehow I think I should have expected it, knowing Bungie almost never shows us late or even mid game content, but I didn’t. I was thrilled to run through the red lit corridor, fight in the Archon room, walk down the fan tunnel with the water actually reflecting things. 

The only oddity I noticed here was that my Ghost’s glow when he goes to switch on the lights seemed a bit pixelated and “texture-y” on my 360 vs the footage from two E3s ago. Also, the Fallen don’t actually attack you there, they kinda scurry off to the right. Probably for the best since you don’t have a gun just quite yet. :)
  
  
• I found the starting gun to be quite enjoyable. It was aimable and satisfying while still leaving a ton of room for future improvements. Fighting through the Fallen was a lot of fun. My first time through I decided to test how dangerous the trip mines were. I expected a mild amount of damage… Instead I respawned! :p
  
  
• Getting outside to the area where the E3 devil walker dropped was pretty glorious too. The Fallen ship jumping in was still impressive, though I don’t think I got the dust flying up as the shockwave reaches you effect on the 360. :(
  
  
• Retaking an old Jumpship was pretty cool. I’d guess, from the way it was suspended, the Fallen were trying to restore it. Leaving with it, with the mysterious stranger looking on, was quite interesting. We later see her on the Moon watching us, and in one of the cutscenes from the E3 trailer. Seems she’ll be important. Probably someone from The Reef, but who knows at this point.
  
  
• Landing at The Tower made me wonder about all sorts of things. Is it common for new Guardians to appear? Maybe. Ghosts don’t seem to be directly under anybody’s supervision. I guess my Ghost was responsible for IFF both to let my Jumpship through The Traveler’s shield and to prevent The City or The Tower from shooting me down? If so, isn’t it kinda a bad idea to let Ghost fall into enemy hands as we’ve seen happen in two story missions so far? Maybe The Traveler is smart enough to do it’s own IFF based on ship type or even who’s flying it instead of relying on its Ghosts for that task? Or, maybe The Last City has just been lucky so far?
  
  
• The Tower both does and doesn’t seem to be hurting for resources. Apparently AI controlled robots are fairly common place, a Jumpship can be refurbished, at no cost, in a short period of time, and weapons and armor are quite plentiful. On the other hand, there are water leaks and talks of supply and personnel shortages and even worker strikes. 

Perhaps, a new Guardian is so valuable that fixing up a ship and equipping them is a small investment in comparison to the return they are expected to bring The Tower and The Last City? Certainly, I scouted and explored and collected enough to pay my way. That, and I seem to have made a major discovery of one or more intact Warminds.
  
  
• Heading back to Old Russia, I had my first great Destiny Beta story. I had just gotten over to the crashed Jumpship and started scanning when another Guardian, who I’d been vaguely following, came up to me. I initiated a fireteam with him and he said exactly the right thing. “Thanks!” he said, “You came just in time and saved me!” Blam! Destiny promise #1 fulfilled. For the next fifteen minutes or so we did our best to take back the NLS drives we needed for our Jumpships. It was awesome, having someone who could help me flank the Archon guarding the warp drives. It was great that it all happened organically and seamlessly. ‘This is what Destiny is all about,’ I remember thinking!
  
  
• Over the next couple of hours I got to explore Old Russia and the various shops at The Tower. My first few minutes at The Tower were a bit confusing. I was getting rewarded for doing things, but didn’t quite understand that. I expected to get a (slightly) upgraded full set of armor but was only given one piece of my choice. Being given my choice of free guns was more understandable, but it didn’t seem to be very well explained WHY I was getting these things for free. None of this was a problem next time around as I’d bought and sold and decrypted and gotten mail… but the first time it was a little confusing. :(

My initial ventures into Old Russia went a lot more smoothly. Even on the 360 just getting from point a to point b was a lot of fun. I wondered a bit where my Sparrow was but figured someone would give me one when it was time. The world looked great… in its own way. It’s not the prettiest game to run on my 360. Textures are a bit too low resolution to get up close to. For whatever reason, it lacks that “next-gen” feel that Mass Effect 3 and Halo 4 have. That said, everything was nicely detailed, and there was a lot of it! Practically everything you can see has an inside. Every inside is detailed in its own way. There are books and chairs and skeletons and all sorts of great doodads in every room. Destiny isn’t Halo or Oni where each room gets a generic computer terminal, or maybe TWO GENERIC COMPUTER TERMINALS. It felt far more real and lived in. 

As I played more I was also fairly impressed with Destiny’s draw distances. Maybe somebody could make a video proving me wrong, but I can’t recall any instances of ugly geometry or texture pop-in. Everything felt like it was there at all times. Zooming in on enemies or objects way off in the world felt very seamless.
  
  
• The story missions on earth were all a bit short, but were interesting in their own subtle ways. For instance, I don’t think The Hive used ships to send all the forces we saw fighting the Fallen on the surface. Instead, I think they bombard an area with those glowy space maces which grow that strange circular, squishy sounding fungus which I suspect produces Thralls, at the very least. My Ghost said something about Hive breeding and spilling onto the surface… 

Also interesting was finding a Warmind, but especially finding that it had a way to contact the other colonies and potentially other AIs left in the solar system. We now know of two Warminds, Rasputin on Earth and Charlemagne… or pieces of him… on Mars. I can only grin and imagine what devious trouble long forgotten Bungie AIs might have gotten into over the past few centuries of neglect! It’s too early to use the word rampant just yet, but Marathon, Oni, and Halo all dealt with Rampancy… Why not Destiny. This could be very very fun. Ghosts and potentially even The Traveler are AIs too… :)
  
  
• A second thought about Warminds though… If they couldn’t stop Humanity’s destruction the first time then what good are they now? Does having Guardians and Light make defeating The Darkness ourselves feasible this time?
  
  
• For my second landmark Beta story, I want to talk about the Strike and the DBOers I played with. Beorn, ZackDark, Malagate, Levi, and whoever I might be forgetting… The strike was certainly a highlight of the beta. It’s like Firefight except it doesn’t suck and grind to a jerky halt when one of our connections isn’t transmitting quite fast enough. The fluidity of Destiny makes playing with friends something worth doing instead of something that you only wished worked well. As for the strike itself… part of Destiny’s magic is pulling off something amazing and getting instant praise for it. Pulling off a perfectly placed grenade, a devastating Super, or killing two wizards with one rocket by accident and having the others marvel makes Destiny worth it. :)
  
  
• The Strike itself was always a lot of fun. Yes, it was the same thing over and over, but so is any video game. I loved the snipers supporting the midrange units supporting the melee guys who got all up in your face. It felt very well paced and executed. The other thing that made it good was that it was challenging and you had to play well or risk starting a checkpoint over. Like the praise from friends when doing something awesome, the groans from you and your fireteam when you all die is some of the best motivation to play better. It’s something I haven’t experienced before and it’s awesome. 

Pro tip on the Spider Tank. Have everyone pull out a sniper rifle and pump a few rounds into the blue mortar launcher. It’ll blow right off after twenty or so shots and make everyone’s lives significantly easier. :)
  
  
• My hour and a half on the moon trumped pretty much everything else though. The story mission itself was pretty good. I loved the frantic defense of the accelerator and the surprise of the pikes attacking us as we headed to the next objective. The best part of the mission had to be opening that door at the temple and having all those units spill out… and then Fist of Havocking the heck out of them. Even taking out several of them, that battle remained frantic and all the more surprising since I was expecting a singular high level knight or maybe an Ogre. The Hive swarm was just awesome and thrilling, and once again defeating it along side friends in a game that remained perfectly fluid the entire time made it all the more special. 

Two other things struck me about the Moon mission:

 First, that “we”, presumably meaning The Last City, gave up the moon to The Hive. Apparently we did so because Crota, who’s temple we blasted into, had killed “a thousand” guardians with some kind of fabled sword. So it was less us giving it up and more us being driven back? Perhaps that was The Last City’s first attempt at retaking our worlds and it went poorly? 

Second, was the fact that the dead Guardian who had taken back control of the accelerator and discovered the Hive building an army had been so killed to death that not even his light remained… That’s not a good sign. That the Hive can neutralize or eliminate the Light entirely seems pretty scary. Remember, Light is not only our super powers, but it’s also how we defend ourselves. We are specifically told, in item descriptions, that both Warlocks and Hunters infuse their robes and armor with Light to bolster their defense. Surely Titans are doing something similar…
  
  
• While the actual Moon mission was fun, exploring the Hellmouth with Malagate and Levithan was the best part of the entire beta. I didn’t expect to even get in to the Hive fortress and yet we did. Then, each room was a new challenge that I thought would be our last before heading back up… and yet it kept going and going! Every time I’d thought we’d reached the end one of us would find a new doorway or set of stairs and we’d keep going. 

Even better was the promise of more. We must have come across at least three obviously important doors and several more less important looking ones that may very well be functional in the future. I’m entirely sure there will be more to see… For instance, I don’t believe we ever found the room with the blue beam striking the central pedestal that we’ve seen in video and screenshots, or the room with the large sphere being etched into by some cryptic machine! 

Old Russia itself had a some places we couldn’t explore or doors that were closed off, but the Hellmouth felt so foreign and intimidating and BIG that I think it easily fulfills Destiny’s promise of delivering a ton of great, unique content. I was very glad I got the chance to delve down at least part way into its depths!
  
  
• All in all, Destiny is at it’s best when you’re being swarmed by enemies engaging you at ever range and with large enough numbers that it takes you AND your Fireteam everything you’ve got to survive. My favorite parts of the beta were the Strike when the clocked Dreg (or were the Vandals?) rush you all at once, almost getting overwhelmed fighting the Devil Walker public event alone and getting saved by a random fireteam at the last minute, the Hive assault on The Array when I was only level 6 and fighting for my life, the defense of the accelerator on the moon, and the “oh crap” moment when the Temple of Crota opened and what must have been a mixture of twenty plus Hive spilled out to greet us. The insanity in those next few moments was glorious.
  
  
• On to the Crucible. My first two dozen games sucked, bad. I consistently had K/Ds of .2 or .3… Then something clicked and I started doing better. For me, it was getting my hands on a Scout Rifle. I went from blazing away with a largely ineffective Auto Rifle to at least having a chance at range. For me, close range combat is still largely Halo-like. You shotgun people as they run in a door or try to circle the box in the winning direction… unless someone Supers the heck out of you. At range Destiny plays more like a Call of Warfare with very quick kills and very little mercy, but close in it might as well be Halo.

Yes, it’s much faster… but after my “This is total crap” period I found it surprisingly playable. The key, for me, is to pick two ranges you want to fight at, then just concede everything else. Usually I fight at mid and close range with a Scout Rifle and Shotgun, but for my hunter I did Mid-Close and Long with a Hand Cannon / Sniper combo using my knife to help shore up close range combat. The other critical thing is to find the best weapon you can! Constantly compare new stuff with what you’ve got! I finally settled on an Scout Rile that could kill in three head shots even though it fired slower than most of my other guns. 

Then, as others have said, find good lines of sight. You’re always going to have the unfortunate times where you get caught in-between two enemies coming from opposite directions and theres not much you can do, but normally your enemies will be coming from one place. Use your radar and be facing them when they come. This means you fight a bit more defensively, but it works. And, if you don’t land your grenade or aren’t winning by the second shot GET OUT OF THERE. Destiny isn’t Halo, but its Warfare of Duty either. You do have a short period to break away. Do so if you aren’t winning. Maybe they’ll chase you down and kill you, but maybe your grenade or power-melee timer will reset or maybe just maybe you’ll have or acquire a Super. Heck, you might even get lucky and have them make a mistake! All of the above have happened to me and it’s glorious making someone else pay for overeagerness! :)


  
  Another thing to remember is you are no longer bolted to the ground. A double jump can be surprisingly useful, even if all you do is break the enemy’s line of sight for a moment while an ally finished them off for you. Sometimes just staying alive is enough.

Destiny’s multiplayer won’t be for everyone. Personally, I think it will be for even less people that Halo’s was, but it’s also not unplayable and despite how it might feel in the beginning it’s not really as a big a departure as it initially seems. Remember, this is someone who has been dead set against playing anything faster than Halo for a decade… It can be done.
  
  
• I liked the investment system. The leveling system. Seemed like every couple of missions I was getting something new. It seems obvious that we didn’t get to see a crafting system that will be in the final game, and I longed to recolor my Guardian or ship, but beyond that I found entire system enjoyable. Why the Cryptarch is standing in front of his shop mumbling though… yeah, I got nothing. :p
  
  
• Finally, I did encounter one annoying Bug. At least twice, seemingly after long periods of play, Destiny’s audio would start to break down. Both times I think it happened in the Crucible. It felt like I had lost some effects while others, mostly explosions would be distorted and choppy. It was bad enough that I eventually restarted my Xbox each time.

All in all, the Beta was amazing. The core gameplay and enemies are very well done. The engine handles large numbers and distances and concurrent players without breaking a sweat, even on the 360. Yes, Old Russia started to get a bit old after three days, but I think even without anything beyond Earth, Moon, Mars, and Mercury this would be largely alleviated simply by mixing up which world you went to. I even found the PvP multiplayer to be enjoyable after a fairly long ramp from “this is terrible” to “this is great.” I think Destiny is going to be a great game and I can’t wait to play it again.