Destiny: Wot I finally think (Destiny)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Wednesday, September 17, 2014, 12:38 (3731 days ago) @ Cody Miller

What we had for free in the past, we have to waste time for now. Halo let you choose your difficulty from the start, but Destiny gives mission difficulties levels, and doesn't even let you play until you are within a few levels of the requirement. If you want to play on hard, you have to grind away to get up to level 26-28. Going from 28-30 is literally impossible without gear from the raid, seeing as how those pieces have more defense (and thus light) upgrades. All the modifiers and skulls from Halo you had access to are gone. No longer can you choose what challenge to take on yourself by flipping on a combination of skulls, but are instead relegated to what Bungie gives you in the weekly and nightfall strikes. The raid itself, which is a blast, has a huge barrier to entry beyond simply finding 5 other good people. Even just upgrading your Legendary weapons to be formidable in the raid is incredibly tedious, with common and rare resource collection.

My biggest frustration is that I can't play story missions with whomever I want because of a difference in our levels. A friend of mine and I had to stop playing through the story the other night because he'd gotten too far ahead of me. Another friend had to go out of town for a few days, and now he's too far behind. I understand why it's the way it is, but I'll be glad when I catch up with most folks on my friends list.

There is also a bug apparently where Ascendant Motes are not in the game, making FWC armor impossible to fully upgrade. I imagine this will be fixed, or their upgrades changed to require ascendant shards instead.

In terms of story, I think most people are on the same page in that what was presented in the game was extremely weak, and the grimoire didn't fill that gap, nor should it have been expected to. When people try to make the excuse that it's supposed to play out over ten years, that doesn't hold water. Each aspect and each 'episode' of the story needs to be good and substantial. If over the next ten years all you get each time is what we got with Destiny, or more likely less in each DLC, then it doesn't matter.

I agree. I hope that the DLC is meatier, and does a better job of completing this game before the inevitable sequel. (I'm assumptive about the "end" of the game. I still haven't gone to the Black Garden--the shame!)

It's fine to have mysterious elements and some mystery in your story, but it's not okay to do what Bungie did. One of the big problems is that very little felt connected to other things. Cosmodrome and the moon felt like completely different dimensions. We go from disconnected mission to disconnected mission, often with seemingly important information that is then promptly forgotten about - Raspitin, what the hive are doing on the moon, who this doctor the AI thinks you are, etc. There is a severe case of amnesia in the story, and when we run missions they should be critical, and more importantly propulsive of the story. One should move us to the next aspect of the story because of the actions of our character. Like Halo 1. Instead, we select a mission knowing nothing about it, a blurb comes up explaining that intelligence found blah blah whatever.

There's also a lack of questions. Someone here mentioned they found it odd that your guardian never asks what the hell is going on. This is true. You've been dead for 300 years, and even your ghost says "You're going to see things you won't understand". A lot of times stories with strange unfamiliar settings have characters who are out of their element, since other characters explaining how things work to another character is a believable way for them to convey to the audience what's going on. That's why in Inception you have Ariadne, so that Cobb can explain the rules of dream infiltration to her since she is new, and by extension the audience. So when you have a guardian long dead, that's the perfect way to get the exposition out of the way naturally. Instead, the speaker tells you that he COULD tell you all these tales, but he won't.

Yeah, Guardian school. Military schools teach history. They don't just do drills. The Grimoire cards are pretty awesome, though.

Similarly, the stuff with the Exo stranger onward is also confusion as to exactly how it fits into thing. Why exactly is the traveler doomed if the heart isn't destroyed? Why if that's the case doesn't the speaker send an army of guardians to destroy it? Why is the Queen and her brother being mysterious for no fucking reason? So much is just not contextualized correctly, that the disconnect is as wide as the Hellmouth.

Another problem with the story is that the world is not set up well. I think I made the comparison to it being like the Wizard of Oz if Dorothy just stepped right out of her house into the Emerald City instead of making the journey. We need to see this world, not just be told about it. I get that everything is supposed to be dead after the collapse, but we never see the city as contrast. The very thing we are fighting o protect, you don;t get to experience. All parts of this game feel like tiny little self contained places, as opposed to a big connected universe. The reef exists literally only as a throne room. Small pieces that don't feel connected. Individual threads not woven together to make a tapestry. That is how Destiny feels.

Level design is hugely important in an FPS, and I've already talked about why Destiny has lackluster level design, and how to make strikes more replayable. The raid in particular exposed how the game could be throwing much more interesting stuff at you. I'm not saying everything should be like the raid, because it's hugely demanding and having the entire game require 6 player co-op at all times is unfeasible, but I feel like there should be some middle ground. There should be some 3 player missions that require a little bit of teamwork and outside the box thinking, as should there be a more diverse experience if you are playing alone. The jokes about how Destiny is a game where you go to a place, hack it with your ghost, then defend it are really mostly true. You also sometimes kill a boss. There's so much that could have been done with the game beyond what was there, that it's just a shame whoever designed the raid didn't also create some cool story mission objectives and scenarios.

They're reading this, I'm sure. Let's hope the mission objectives become more interesting. Even for patrol, when I first played the beta, I assumed when someone from the Tower asked me to do something, that there would be some follow up with that person next time I went there. This is something I hope they improve.

We are at the point where I can finally stop grinding, and I play destiny for fun again, albeit infrequently. It shouldn't have come to that though - that should have been the experience from the get go. Literally the only reason I'm going to buy the DLC is because I'm told there is a new raid with every pack. Otherwise, I'm not sure I'd rush out.

Overall a very bad good game, and Bungie's worst since Oni.

I liked Oni.

Many excellent points, Cody.