That is the beauty of the game! You could have just leveled up the abilities you like, and focused on the augs that enabled the playstyle you want if you weren't into the weapons.

I mean, I loved it, but I still wish it didn't take skills to even begin to use them right. I'd expect a trained agent to not need nano-upgrading to be able shoot at least the first shot straight...

That's why you have enough points at the start of the game to put points into some weapons :-p

In fact you start out proficient in the pistol by default, which you can downgrade and put into another weapon group if you want :-p If you really want to, you have enough to master a few types right off the bat, at the expense of all your other skills.

That is the beauty of the game! You could have just leveled up the abilities you like, and focused on the augs that enabled the playstyle you want if you weren't into the weapons.

I mean, I loved it, but I still wish it didn't take skills to even begin to use them right. I'd expect a trained agent to not need nano-upgrading to be able shoot at least the first shot straight...

Lol. Someone has never played Deus Ex :-p

Heh. To be honest, though, the shooter aspect of it was about average for the time. Leveling up weapon abilities to be able to use it relevantly wasn't very compelling to me either.

That is the beauty of the game! You could have just leveled up the abilities you like, and focused on the augs that enabled the playstyle you want if you weren't into the weapons.

I for one enjoyed headshotting foes with my master pistol, augmented with stealth abilities. But you can forge your own way!

Truly a game ahead of its time. STILL ahead of the time since nobody seems to be improving on it; not even Human Revolution.

Mandatory.

Lol. Someone has never played Deus Ex :-p

Heh. To be honest, though, the shooter aspect of it was about average for the time. Leveling up weapon abilities to be able to use it relevantly wasn't very compelling to me either.

That is the beauty of the game! You could have just leveled up the abilities you like, and focused on the augs that enabled the playstyle you want if you weren't into the weapons.

I for one enjoyed headshotting foes with my master pistol, augmented with stealth abilities. But you can forge your own way!

Truly a game ahead of its time. STILL ahead of the time since nobody seems to be improving on it; not even Human Revolution.

That was actually Hedge that said that.

Oh, sorry.

But either way, you're trusting the words of people who watched a trailer of a game and said it looks "boring" or "Halo with a little bit of Borderlands"

I'm not trusting any of their words. I actually disagree with a bunch of the excerpts I quoted - like the one idiot who didn't think RPG and shooter mechanics mixed. What I was showing, however, was that the general sentiment is a big 'meh' - at best.

Ragashingo and I also pointed out two articles of people who obviously enjoyed the game a lot and said so without using PR terms. In fact I've only really read two things negative by people who actually played it, one of which was it was boring from Kotaku, and the other is from a lot of journalists saying they didn't get to see enough of Destiny. Virtually ALL of the negative is coming from people watching the trailer, which is fine for them to think, there is no problem with it, but my opinion of the game or the footage that I saw is not affected by their comments on the same thing I saw.

I take what I see coming from the 'journalists' with a grain of salt. You really should, too. Frankly, I was more surprised that a single journalist (Kotaku) actually said up front that they didn't like it. These are people who practically subsist on bribery and kickbacks from the large publishers. They consistently rate games 2-4 points higher on a 1-10 scale than the average gamer does, and they almost never give a game a score under 5-6 out of 10.

Believing anything they say is plain foolishness. I don't trust the videogame 'journalists' nor their blatant advertisements that masquerade as 'opinions', and I frankly think you would be better off doing the same. Gaming 'journalism' is a joke.

As for as the comment on fanboyism, I am unashamedly a fanboy. I haven't disliked a single game Bungie has made, so I tend to trust them until I at least get my hands on the game.

I'd consider myself a Bungie fanboy as well, but if anything that's what drives my extreme examination and criticism of them.

At the risk of being ridiculed and and vilified: the above is what I fear. Hold on now - haters gonna hate and all that, but I can't shake it. Here's a list of what's bothering me:

• Reach lost me and my friends, very quickly, very abruptly
  
• Bungie's partnership with Activision (potential meddling)
  
• A pretty bland initial reveal - how is Destiny different?
  
• Departure of some core Bungie personnel
  
• Delay in schedule
  
• Courting of PS owners at expense of XBox owners (admittedly irrational)
  
• Departure of very core Bungie personnel
  
• A new reveal that had almost no impact on me

The Beta will serve as an instantaneous market correction, and all of the above will be rendered irrelevant. I wait, however uneasily.

I respect this forum and its users greatly, and I hesitate to express my sentiments here. But...I can't shake it. A prediction is silly; an expressed sense of unease seems reasonable.

Here's my own thoughts:
Gunplay wasn't spectacular, it actually feels like a step back from the well defined character of Halo's weapons. I really don't think we'll be seeing something like the quirks of the Plasma Rifle or Needler. Not just in style, but in actual weapon mechanics and interplay with character mechanics (Plasma pistol overcharge vs shields for example).

The art direction is uninspired. The game is almost a Mass Effect look-alike. Everything is desaturated, there's this awful chromatic aberration effect on stuff, high reflection surfaces seem to have massive bloom, probably the most egregious art issue of all is that there's so little contrast. When I'm watching a firefight everything looks muddled together, the enemies and environment don't really stand out. The character designs really... don't do anything for me. They're like Spartans-but-not-actually-spartans and bland looking on top of it. The 'robes and cloth' aesthetic could've been awesome, but there's almost nothing done following through on that concept at all.

The music, I just want to briefly touch on: It didn't fit. It was alright, but it just did not fit that video.

The interaction between the players and the AI was downright atrocious. This was what I really didn't like. The AI doesn't seem to have any sort of self-preservation, the combat situations are hand to hand brawls - there's hardly any situation where flanking and maneuver - where thinking - came into play. The players just rush straight into the combat situation, become utterly surrounded, and then use a combination of superpower AoE attacks and some guns or melee to kill everything anyways. As a result, none of the aliens looked or felt dangerous or even a worthy opponent at all, just bullet sponges or easily dispatched grunts - and the one time a player died, he was pretty much instantly revived. It made the game just look... really boring, really easy. Like I could run through the entire area in my sleep, or designed so that I'm meant to run through the entire area in my sleep multiple times for the purposes of grinding (I hope that's not going to be the case).

And then finally, the level design itself. Just a repeat of the corridor shooter aesthetic that Bungie started to get a bad habit with in Halo 2, and just couldn't seem to break out of by Halo Reach. Although there are some open spaces, it doesn't really look that open - It's a slightly wider corridor after a series of corridors. I realize this is a strike mission and intended to be fairly linear - but it really just affirmed that the talk of big explorable environments was just PR-speak. Nothing at all that we've seen yet, has said "big open environment". When I hear those words, I expect something similar to an elderscrolls game. Hell, even ODST. The idea is that the open space provides multiple paths to the objective, not a single linear one. Yet the latter is all we seem to be seeing.

On the good side, I don't really know what I can say.
The graphical quality is good. Not superb or jaw dropping in any way, it's just... about average of what I'd expect from a game on the PS4/Xbone today.

The Lighting was pretty nice in the original reveal, although the latest trailer didn't showcase it as much.

Weapon designs improved from the original trailer to the latest trailer. (Although by the same token, I think the spacecraft designs took a step back)

The fireteams and mutliplayer aspect might be cool.

I mean really, nothing about this game stands out to me at all. I'm struggling to see what Destiny is really bringing around that makes it great. Halo was primarily art design, weapon distinctiveness, storyline, music and engaging combat mechanics. Destiny is lacking by comparison in every category so far.

I want to be hyped up for this game, but there's really nothing that is getting me excited.

I wasn't trying to cherry pick anything, I just am not seeing anything on the 'this is looking good' side, beyond "It's awesome because it's awesome". See the earlier comment from Xeno where a single vague positive comment about the game ("Believe the hype.") was enough to convince him it'll be awesome. I'm sorry, but that's getting into fanboyism tier, and you guys are seriously setting yourselves up for disappointment by latching onto comments like that.

That was actually Hedge that said that. But either way, you're trusting the words of people who watched a trailer of a game and said it looks "boring" or "Halo with a little bit of Borderlands" This is actually pretty common with games these days, like I said somewhere else on this forum a LOT of people said the similar things about Titanfall. The comment by Hedge was suggesting that someone that had actually played the game said to believe the hype. Ragashingo and I also pointed out two articles of people who obviously enjoyed the game a lot and said so without using PR terms. In fact I've only really read two things negative by people who actually played it, one of which was it was boring from Kotaku, and the other is from a lot of journalists saying they didn't get to see enough of Destiny. Virtually ALL of the negative is coming from people watching the trailer, which is fine for them to think, there is no problem with it, but my opinion of the game or the footage that I saw is not affected by their comments on the same thing I saw.

As for as the comment on fanboyism, I am unashamedly a fanboy. I haven't disliked a single game Bungie has made, so I tend to trust them until I at least get my hands on the game.

That is because the gaming press can't talk shit about a game as big as Destiny, or else they risk not getting content from Bungie, or even other Activision games in the future.

Which is an unfortunate problem with the gaming industry today. The media is really just a PR mouthpiece extension for the large publishers. They're about the least reliable source for any sort of - not even unbiased, but just honest - commentary I can think of.

I can't take most of these guys seriously anymore, you could practically have a bot write the summaries and experiences instead and not see much, if any difference.

First of all--how do we know people aren't being candid?

The canned, overly verbose salesman-like language gives it away.

Something tells me you're just a tad biased at this point. Every single opinion you saw on the net or among your circle of friends was negative? Really? And are you claiming your list of negative impressions is a fair representation of what people really think of this week's Destiny info dump?

Yes, really.
Actually, this forum has so far been the exception... Kind of - But you guys haven't really talked about what stands out, so much as you are lambasting anyone criticizing what's been shown so far, and blindly praising what you've seen.

I wasn't trying to cherry pick anything, I just am not seeing anything on the 'this is looking good' side, beyond "It's awesome because it's awesome". See the earlier comment from Xeno where a single vague positive comment about the game ("Believe the hype.") was enough to convince him it'll be awesome. I'm sorry, but that's getting into fanboyism tier, and you guys are seriously setting yourselves up for disappointment by latching onto comments like that.

Look man, I've been a massive Bungie fan for the better part of a decade, for fucks sake I've got a t-shit with bungie signatures on it from the Halo 2 launch in Seattle. But I'm not going to just say the game looks fucking great just because I'm a Bungie fanboy.

To me, it looks technically competent, but uninspired and lacking some kind of weird nameless critical ingredient that Halo and many other games had, and Destiny so far, just does not. Maybe it's combat pacing, or the healthbars plastered over everything? I don't know, but it doesn't look or feel exciting, and a lot of people I've talked to are in agreement.

The Division looks interesting.
That new CoD game looks interesting.
The Witcher 3 looks interesting.
Destiny does not. What those games have going for them, Destiny is missing it. Maybe it's just a PR budget, I don't know. I can't really pin it down from what I've seen, other than to say what I've said already.

Wut???????

I am confuzzed and kinda pleased.

Oh sorry, I think I confused you by leaving out by accident something important from urk's reply, here let me try again:

kittens Also, it sounds like Sparrows are called Sparrows again, and not Shrikes? I'm cool with that.

urk One of the Sparrows is called the Shrike, but all Sparrows are Sparrows and that was totally the plan all along. ;)

I am confuzzed and kinda pleased.

As I said...the beta will render all this moot. We just need to play it. After all, "fun" is difficult to show in a game-play video. And you can't show mystery and endless adventure in a 5 minute demo.

Very much this. My real hope is E3 will be when the beta opens. "And starting RIGHT NOW you can download the beta." But of course that's almost certainly wishful thinking :)

Holy shit that needs to happen though. Epic gameplay or trailer or something, and then it ends right on that quote you said. Perfection.

kittens Also, it sounds like Sparrows are called Sparrows again, and not Shrikes? I'm cool with that.

urk One of the Sparrows is called the Shrike, but all Sparrows are Sparrows and that was totally the plan all along.

Lol. Someone has never played Deus Ex :-p

Heh. To be honest, though, the shooter aspect of it was about average for the time. Leveling up weapon abilities to be able to use it relevantly wasn't very compelling to me either.