Destiny has received a middling critical reception since it released, with its scores falling well below the high level of expectation developer Bungie had for the entry point of its first new video game series since Halo. There has also been no small degree of debate regarding the validity of the reviews posted within the two weeks following Destiny‘s launch, due to Bungie previously stating that it foresees the game having a 10-year lifespan, therefore apparently making the mostly negative reviews posted by the likes of GameSpot, Polygon and this very website redundant.
Let me begin by stating that I have no issue with the more “timely” reviews. I have sank many an hour into Destiny since its launch, and once you’ve surpassed that soft level cap of 20 it doesn’t magically become a completely new experience. The game is very much a case of “what you see is what you get” from the start, with its vague semblance of a plot failing to open itself up to the player even in its closing moments, and its gameplay being a constant rotation of shooting aliens before hopping on your speeder bike-esque Sparrow vehicle to explore its barren-but-beautiful environments. If you’ve put enough hours into it, waiting another week or so to post a review of it isn’t going to change your opinion of the game. Right now, it’s not as deep an experience as its intended decade-long life cycle would lead you to believe.
But despite its lack of depth, it’s certainly weird. In fact, it’s perhaps the strangest big-budget, AAA game I’ve ever played. Here are some of the questions I’ve been asking myself about this incredibly strange game.
Why are Raids 11 hours long?
The Vault of Glass, which can be conquered if you and five of your friends abandon your commitments for one week.
Bungie has been keen to stress that Destiny is not an MMO, and that it is in fact a “shared-world shooter.” Despite this, the game borrows aspects of the MMO genre and places them within its world, albeit in a diluted fashion. One aspect of the game that certainly hasn’t been watered-down, however, is the Raids.
News broke yesterday that the game’s first Raid, titled ‘Vault of Glass’, had been beaten by a clan called PrimeGuard. This news wouldn’t have been so notable if it wasn’t for the length of time it took PrimeGuard’s members a little under 11 hours to achieve, with the clan branding it the “single most challenging and rewarding experience” they have had as gamers.”
Raids are open to Fireteams of six people, though there’s no matchmaking available so if you want to take them on, you’ll have to play with your friends. This is because communication is allegedly essential to completing the Raids, something which Bungie… hold on… wait…
…11 hours?
11 HOURS?
ELEVEN HOURS?!
That is, quite frankly, an absurd amount of time to expect the same group of players to invest into a mission, and becomes even more ludicrous when you take into account that players must complete the Raid within one week or else all of their progress is lost.
This stipulation ensures that Bungie’s most prominent endgame content will be locked away from players with other commitments (such as working, spending time with loved ones and eating/breathing) who don’t have the time to arrange playing a Raid in a video game for 10 hours over the course of a single week.
It should also be noted that this 11-hour completion was managed by a fully-fledged clan of players with Guardians nearing the 30 level cap. What chance does the average player have of ever making it to the end of this Raid?
I love games that provide a high degree of challenge, but one that actively excludes a portion of its players due to its stipulations? Not so much.
Why are drops so random?
“Hey, can you see any Legendary drops out there?” “No, just some more rare pants.”
Here’s a good way to prevent your players from receiving any sense of achievement after playing particularly well in a Vanguard mission or Crucible match: fail to reward them with any loot.
I’ve now lost count of the amount of times I’ve finished at the top or second of a leaderboard in a Crucible match, only for everyone else in my team to be awarded with goodies other than me. It’s reached a point now where I’m starting to consider whether it’s more worthwhile to underperform in a match, just so that there’s a higher chance of me receiving some better equipment. How’s that for balancing?
Oh, and don’t get me started on the Cryptarch, the hooded guy who stands at his stall in the Tower, handing out equipment for the engrams you return to him. His refusal to hand the player almost anything of note is so absurd that it’s almost as if Bungie put the system in place as some kind of warped joke.
Also See: Destiny Review – Star Bores
RPGs hook players in due to their sense of reward, consistently patting them on the back for their in-game achievements with various pieces of equipment to help them on their journey. Destiny borrows this concept, but then twists it around so that the more competent you are at the game, the less full your pockets seem to be.
This odd mechanic has even spawned parody twitter accounts such as @legendaryengram and @TheCryptarch, the latter of which has had one of its mocking tweets shared by Bungie. So Bungie recognizes that this is the case..? I’m not sure this is a good gameplay element, guys.
What on Earth is the story all about?
This is The Traveller. No, we don’t care, either.
Let me preface this by saying that I, unlike what appears to be the increasing majority of gamers these days, don’t necessarily need a competent plot in order to keep me hooked on a game. Games which put a huge amount of emphasis on telling a well-crafted story should certainly excel in that department, sure, but a shooty-shooty-bang-bang game such as Destiny just needs to have proficient shooting mechanics for me to keep playing. However, Destiny‘s story is so unbelievably weak (especially when you consider the mind-boggling amount of money pumped into the thing) that it’s baffling to think that this was the narrative Bungie agreed would form the foundations of its next series.
I completed Destiny‘s story a few days after its release, and here’s a blow-by-blow account of what I think it’s all about (spoilers, obviously):
- You’re a Guardian. Guardians can be either human, “Exo” or “Awoken,” but there’s little information given about what Exo and Awoken are.
- Your Guardian is dead when you start the game, but then your newly claimed Ghost (voiced by the perennially bored Peter Dinklage) revives you. I don’t know why the Guardian is dead, how the Guardian was revived or what exactly the Ghost is, and upon completing the game I am none the wiser.
- There’s a mysterious lady who watches you jet off towards the Tower. You meet her later and she talks to someone via… err… a Walkie Talkie or something? That part’s never explained, and I’m still not entirely sure what her relevance to the story is.
- You go to the Tower where you’re made to believe you’re humanity’s last hope, despite this being a “shared-world shooter” in which you occupy an MMO-esque world with thousands of other Guardians who are humanity’s last hope, too.
- You never actually come into contact with the remnants of humanity you’re supposed to be saving, thus meaning that your Guardian sets off on a death-defying adventure to save a group of people that might not even exist.
- You go to Earth. You shoot aliens. The Ghost opens a pile of doors and apathetically explains to you the importance of what you’re doing. Rinse and repeat this formula on the Moon, Venus and Mars.
- On Venus you stumble across some non-Guardian, non-Peter Dinklage characters who for a second seem on track to provide some clarity to the story, or at least something remotely interesting.
- You leave Venus and never hear from those characters again.
- The final boss is a big black ball of energy that somehow brings three statues to life. Once you blow it up you’ve saved humanity, apparently.
- The Traveller is apparently a really important part of the story. It’s just this big planet-sized ball that hangs out next to the Tower. It might be sentient, it might not be, but either way I couldn’t care less.
None of the Halo games were exactly a tour de force of storytelling, but for $500 million Bungie came up with this? The entire plot is so oddly vague and unnecessarily obtuse that Bungie even seems to recognize that’s the case by awarding players “Grimoire cards,” which offer some kind of context to the mess of events that is happening around you but can only be accessed via Bungie.net.
Related: What Destiny Could Have been Like
All of this combines to make Destiny an infinitely strange game, one that seemingly actively seeks to alienate the player by contradicting everything we know and love about the genres it flirts with – the progression system of MMOs, the rewards for good performances in online FPSs – and doing the exact opposite of what we’d expect from it. Maybe if Bungie actually has a plan in place to keep players interested in the game for its intended 10-year lifespan, then at the end of that decade we won’t have this bloody weird game that seems to take joy in irritating us. We can but hope.
