Kar15 Korner (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Tuesday, June 16, 2015, 03:51 (3447 days ago) @ car15

For the zero people that care about my opinion - my whole opinion, mind you...

The good: I like this expansion. Everything about it looks great. Even if we don't get new cutscenes or substantial additions to the story (and let's be honest, at this point, does anyone actually expect those things?), all the content looks solid and fun. A new raid, new enemies, new subclasses, new environments... All of these things are good.

Yeah. I got a big grin on my face when I saw the Bridge of Chains in engine. The new subclasses all sound interesting. I like that they are setting this within a timeline up front, similar to what they did with House of Wolves (and what they did not do so much with The Dark Below which had very few ties to what came before it). Also, even with a poorly exposed in game story, it is kinda fun to watch Destiny expand.

The bad: I can't shake the feeling that most of this stuff should have been included in the base game. Destiny, as it was shipped, was an incomplete experience. It really feels like Bungie withheld content for the expansions, particularly given that we saw a lot of expansion content in-engine in pre-release videos. I guess that's becoming the norm in this industry, but it's still hard to swallow.

We split a bit here. Mainly in that we just don't know if things were withheld. Sure, we saw things like The Reef and what looked to be a rendered cutscene of Saturn and so on well before Destiny's release, but even now I'm not prepared to assume the worst. It could very well be that Oryx's arrival was always planned as the first big event of Destiny's second year. A pair of DLC packs and then a bigger "Comet" release are kinda what the old Activision contract and that leaked slide a while back seem to point to that plan more or less holding steady since before Destiny's initial release, for instance.

The ugly: I can't believe Bungie is actually going to sell a collector's edition of this game almost a year after it was initially released. That is blatant double dipping and disgusting exploitation of the die-hards that go nuts for collectible items. I know nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to buy it, but that's beside the point. This is a new low for Bungie.

I'm not entirely opposed to the idea, I support paying money to get cool stuff, but yes, it does feel strange to have paid for the super ultra Ghost Edition only to have a new high end edition come out a year later. I guess my hope is this: That this new collector's edition is even more awesome than my Ghost edition was. That it ties far more directly into Destiny's universe and that it highlights and reveals things we did not know. Not because I'm going to buy it (I'll be sticking to the cheapest version available) but because a stronger new collector's edition will hopefully mean a stronger in game story for Destiny going forward.

I'm also curious how Destiny's payment model will work going forward. This time next year will there be the base Destiny, The Dark Below, House of Wolves, The Taken King, a smaller DLC 4, a smaller DLC 5, and second bigger "Comet" style release on the fall horizon? I suppose if the content (both in game and physical) is good and the price is somewhat reasonable (do we know how much they want for this new collector's edition yet?) then more power to them...