Agreed, and I think that's obvious to many of us.

What I want to discuss is whether Bungie ever made an honest effort to deliver on their early promises. Was it all lies from the beginning, or was Bungie simply forced to scale their original ideas down to something more realistic? I'd like to believe they took the latter path, but it's difficult to tell. Having learned so much about the troubled development of Halo 2, thanks to interviews with past and present Bungie employees involved in that production, I see a lot of similarities with Destiny.

Halo 2 started out with insane ambition, made a fine showing at E3 2003 that ended up being mostly smoke and mirrors, and then was forced to scale back when Bungie realized that they didn't have the time or the resources to actually do what they originally said they would do.

Zoom out on the landscape behind the Cosmodrome wall. Look at how low-res it is. Do you really think those kill barriers are temporary?

I'll give them a bit before I fully judge. This game is not meant to be all present out of the box. For all we know, all of those areas WILL become explorable as part of updates.

I'm not even too phased by the physical size of the game worlds etc. I would be 110% stoked if what we currently have was used to tell a truly epic story that extended beyond being a glorified courier that is essentially just getting the Ghost from one terminal/door to the next. I'm supposed to be a guardian of Earth fighting back the horrors of the Darkness; yet all I feel I'm ever doing (in story missions) is going from point A to point B simply to experience the same sort of thing I've done the last three missions.

I guess my point is, If we going to get more explorable areas; it doesn't matter if the core story and mission structure to fill them is lacking.

Part of the problem is you're going to be charged 20 bucks a pop every 3 months for a chance to see these areas. The game is frankly small right now, and to make it as big as they were touting it to be you'll end up shelling out 60-80 bucks.

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Honestly, I was expecting something along the lines of Multiplayer Mass Effect or Boarderlands, and for the most part Bungie has delivered on that.

I was expecting larger areas and more on each planet, along with a few more cutscenes and such to really emphasize the story. Right now the world just feels a bit empty and small. Likewise the classes and upgrade trees. Three classes and two trees is a bit lackluster compared to most action/RPG style games.

It would be nice if you could do more with your ships, but they shot that rumor down early. They also hinted at a larger pool of vehicles, and I really feel after Halo did such a great job of making vehicles feel intrinsic Destiny drops the ball here. The Shrike is nice to get around in, but Destiny really needs some of that Warthog action. And Tanks. Tanks beat everything.

if anything, the only promise that Bungie kind of made and then failed on was the "This is all playable area" comment from one of the demos, where the guy panned over that starting area with the rusted out cars. That really made it sound like each area would be very vast, when instead they are large but not enormously so and a bit too divided into discrete areas that only have one or two exits.

We'll see. I doubt it.

Welcome to DBO! About time. Now I won't have to send you links to posts and news all the time. :P