When death is of little consequence (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Sunday, August 10, 2014, 09:19 (3567 days ago) @ RC
edited by Ragashingo, Sunday, August 10, 2014, 09:48

You've got something of a mix of story and gameplay here, but you're largely right.

In story we certainly have "we've all been dead before" and Bungie has done a very fine job of integrating respawning directly into the story. In Halo, the Master Chief died hundreds of times at my hands, the story just never acknowledged it. In Destiny it does which I think it very neat and clever. This embracing of player death raises quite a few questions like: "Just how far does the Traveler’s light go in healing before it becomes more reasonable to just ‘kill’ the Guardian and have the Ghost revive them?"

At the same time we already know of a minimum of 6+ Guardians who did suffer permanent death. There's the Guardian whose crashed ship we investigated in the first mission, the "fireteam" of Guardians whose Ghosts we had to find for codes to the array (and the game made you find at least three Ghosts), the dead Guardian on the Moon, and the dead Guardians you and the Exo Stranger find on what kinda appears to be the reef via previewed cutscene. The quote there is something like "...many Guardians fell here... strong ones..." Perhaps there is a rule we aren't completely aware of yet? In story, surely the enemy can just shoot a Ghost that's holding onto a dead Guardian killing both, right?

On the gameplay front, I treat a fireteam's complete wipe as not supported by the story. To me, it then becomes like the infinite respawning Master Chief. Something to be ignored for the sake of gameplay. I wouldn't mind a checkbox somewhere enabling a Strict Mode where my Guardian's complete wipe meant permanent death for that character, but I'm not sure how many others would go for it.

In multiplayer, yes, some of the dynamic has changed from Halo, but there are two things worth pointing out. First, while Supers are powerful, their possible kill spread ranges from zero to several enemies. I think it's important to combat this notion that Supers are automatic kill switches when they aren't. I think as we become better at PVP and as we unlock additional abilities of our Guardians (the Hunter's Blink in particular) Supers will need to be used with more and more care. Second, it's important to remember that Control is only one of Destiny's potentially many gametypes. I liked it and thought it was a good variation on territories and king of the hill, but there's no way it's the only gametype, and Bungie has said as much, in the IGN First map previews for instance. This is not to reduce your points about teamwork during Control though. Those were good. :)