I have yet to finish reading the review, and I have yet to finish the full campaign, but I've had such a blast the entire time that I'll get around to it whenever I do.

We've been given the keys to Disneyland and I see so many fewer people than I expected wandering around agog at everything. The gameplay experience itself is gorgeous and butter-smooth. Sure, connection issues happen at times, but that's a slim fraction of the time. Maybe one PvP match I've played was severely affected by lag.

There's a long ladder to climb with regard to loot, and that's just fine by me. I plan on being around for a while.

I think everyone can agree that there are some issues with the chosen method of lore delivery. Going to the Grimoire for so much of the content does bug me, but only slightly. What I can't for the life of me figure out is why everyone is confused as to who Rasputin is. Sure, I hope that we'll see more of him in the future, he's certainly a character ripe for all kinds of development, but did nobody listen to the dialog? Did it not impress upon anyone the grand moment that the array opened and Rasputin began to reach out to the other human worlds?

It seems there are a whole bunch of places where people are confused or upset by design choices, but I just don't see it. I feel that at the very least, the intent comes across, even if in execution there are places where it could be better.

I think the bar has been raised yet again, and everyone is just jaded. There's been so much bar-raising within the industry that if people's brains aren't perpetually blown out their ears, they decide they can't be happy. A wide, wide net has been cast. They've delivered on everything they've promised so far. People want to club them for "being deceptive", but I think PR-wise (and gameplay-wise), they've done a masterful job.

There are definitely blemishes here and there, and I'm confident the long view of "we'll see how things develop" will see those things set right.

But I've gotten everything I wanted and expected so far, plus some. And there's more yet to come.

I just don't understand why so much of what I'm hearing is less than positive.

~m

On Rasputin: I think it helped me a lot that I came in with a background in Bungie AIs. Durnadal, Leela, Tycho, Traxus IV, Shinatama, Cortana, 343 Guilty Spark, Mendicant Bias, Offensive Bias, and all the ones in the Halo novels who's names escape me... the two at Harvest, the one who ran The Rubble, etc. From the moment I saw Rasputin reach out to the other worlds I went, "Oh crap! We've got a Bungie AI with its firewalls up who is talking to other worlds!" This was backed up when Rasputin took over that... thing... in the tower on Mars. Bungie AIs from Mars spell T-R-O-U-B-L-E, if you know what I mean. But most people don't have decades of Bungie knowledge. Most people won't read the Grimoire where it appears that Rasputin lead the defense of Earth and then possibly abandoned it at the end:

I survived alone. I cast off the shield and I shrugged my shoulders so that the billions fell off me down into the ash. They made me to be stronger than them and to learn and I learned well.

Did humanity and The Traveler have some defense against The Darkness that was holding until Rasputin disabled it?! If so, how long until I get to put that Warmind down for good? Keep in mind that we still have to collect the pieces of Charlemagne, a Martian Warmind, at some point. Could he be Destiny's Leela? Or maybe a Tycho out to stop Rasputin for his own selfish reasons?

What excites me is all of the above is just one tiny corner of Destiny... What frustrates me is only the few like me will want to connect those dots. The average gamer will be thinking: What's a warmind? Certainly, the gaming press asked over and over, "Who is Rasputin?" since they clearly weren't paying any attention.

On PR Deception: I don't see it. Honestly, I think a few people around here are letting their legitimate disappointment in the story's presentation extend way too far into claiming (or at least implying) Bungie lied about Destiny. Yeah, we have the video like two years ago where Saturn was mentioned in one sentence. We have a scarce few pieces of concept art that show places we aren't (yet?) going. (Those places are mentioned in in-game dialog by the way. Mumbai, Europa, etc all get lines of dialog in the tower so they aren't totally forgotten.) But beyond that, Bungie didn't say too much or build too much hype about this game (well, maybe than the line about something being bigger than Halo) if anything they said way too little about this game leading up to it.

Why did everyone suddenly get the basics of Destiny when they played the beta and not before? Because Bungie never told us or showed us the basics! And even when they did, there was no context to it. No visuals to link it to. We didn't know about Patrol Mode until like two months out for instance. We didn't really see anything of the vast play spaces other than two small sections of Old Russia. Things like passing level 20 were only detailed after the beta. This wasn't like Halo 2 where Bungie showed us a demo that it could not deliver, and they certainly didn't tell us much of anything. Almost all the hype was generated because 1. This was Bungie's next game that they'd been working on a long time, 2. The "...bigger than Halo..." comment in the Pathways Out Of Darkness video, and 3. The supposed 500 million dollar budge and Activision being so optimistic about the game's prospects.

I'm disappointed in the story like a lot of people. Bungie seems to have this fantastic universe with many, many corners to explore and they just didn't do it. At least not yet. At least not in game. I too hope they are laying a foundation than they can build something amazing on top of. As with Rasputin, I think the foundation is in place all ready. Now we just need everything else...

On Positivity: I've actually deleted my DBO bookmarks at this point. I used to stop in several times a day and read everything, but right now I can't stand all the negativity. I've given my balanced, miniature review. I'll stop in once or twice a day to make sure nobody has found some neat story bit that I haven't. I almost always respond to speculation or story info threads. But other than that I'm not here anymore. Reading people endlessly complain about having to rush through the game over and over so they can be the first to rush through the raid so they can tell us how bad it is too? No thanks. I've already suffered through two years of that. Instead I'll be playing (not grinding!) Destiny and having fun. Maybe I'll check back in more frequently after the inevitable, probably already half written "Here's Why The Raid Sucks" thread has run down...

I think the bar has been raised yet again, and everyone is just jaded. There's been so much bar-raising within the industry that if people's brains aren't perpetually blown out their ears, they decide they can't be happy. A wide, wide net has been cast. They've delivered on everything they've promised so far. People want to club them for "being deceptive", but I think PR-wise (and gameplay-wise), they've done a masterful job.

Paragraph of the week. Last night, I had the thought "Wow, this is as much fun as Titanfall." You, of all people, should understand the importance of that statement. ;)

Video game players need to stop worrying and love the bomb.

Yep. I haven't felt this way about a game since the first Halo. I don't know why the reviews are bad, since people seem to agree that the game is fun.

I think the bar has been raised yet again, and everyone is just jaded. There's been so much bar-raising within the industry that if people's brains aren't perpetually blown out their ears, they decide they can't be happy.

Untrue. Look at The Last of Us. Great game, and rightfully praised. I loved it and still do and I'm super jaded.

They've delivered on everything they've promised so far.

Are you kidding? That is demonstrably untrue as we can't go to saturn even though they said we can. They didn't deliver on the social. They didn't deliver on the end game. They didn't deliver on the shared world part. They didn't deliver on the story.

Tomorrow we'll see if they delivered on the raid.