Recently CraveOnline‘s gaming editor Jonathan Leack posted his largely negative review of Destiny, and while I am enjoying the game a fair bit more than he is, it is difficult to argue against the majority of his points. As with any review, there will be those who cry foul and furiously debate the score because they’re having a good time so no one else could possibly have a contrasting opinion to theirs. However, reading the review and not simply scrolling down to the bottom of it to check out its score highlights some major flaws with the game that, even as someone who’s having fun with it, I can accept that they prevent Destiny from being the defining experience I was hoping for.
Related: Destiny Review – Star Bores
Destiny‘s got a lot of great ideas, but it fails to flesh those ideas out. It’s a game that sounds exponentially better on paper than it does in practice, and although it has hooked its claws into me, at almost every corner I have been left thinking about what could have been if only Bungie had followed through on its ideas a little more. Here’s what Destiny is now, and what it could have been.
What Destiny is… an FPS built upon half-baked MMO foundations.
What Destiny looked like before Bungie started banding around the term “shared-world shooter.”
Concept art is obviously not indicative of the final product, but if you want to see what Destiny could have been like if the game had lived up to its MMO aspirations then one need look no further than the designs Bungie released during development of the game.
This artwork hinted at a far more diverse and intriguing universe than the one Destiny would go on to deliver, with a far more diverse array of both environments and enemies. Take the below image of a bustling city environment, for example:
There’s more life in this one piece of concept art than you’ll see in the entirety of Destiny.
Wouldn’t you like to explore that instead of any of the current worlds on offer in the game? The closest that Destiny comes to featuring a living, breathing environment similar to this artwork is in the Tower, which after the umpteenth visit eventually becomes more of a chore than a pleasure to venture to. Bungie was very keen to distance Destiny from its clear MMO roots, instead referring to it as a “shared-world shooter.” What this essentially means is that though you will cross paths with players throughout your playtime, your interactions with them are limited. You can wave at them, dance in their general direction and invite them to your Fireteam, but aside from occasionally finding yourself taking part in an event triggered by another player and helping them take down a hulking enemy, you’ll mostly just pass one another silently thanks to the lack of in-game/text chat.
What Destiny could have been… a unique MMOFPS
Even small additions such as a wider variety of hub worlds with more things to see and do would have greatly benefited the game, but the only way Bungie would have lived up to its bold claims is if the developer scrapped this “shared-world shooter” nonsense and built upon its MMO foundations. Despite being tonally disparate from the likes of Borderlands 2, playing Destiny does feel very reminiscent of Gearbox’s shooter, only with human players crossing your path every now and again.
Despite each planet you visit in the game featuring its own memorable visual theme, these themes fail to impact upon the gameplay in any way. You’re still traveling from Point A to Point B and shooting things in between, and while the shooting mechanics remain as tight as you’d expect from Bungie thus making these segments enjoyable, there could have been much more put in place to make these locations more appealing to explore, rather than having them feature little other than the odd event or small cave containing some rare loot.
Also See: A Solar System to Explore: 9 Fun Things to Do in Destiny
I had hoped that Destiny would be a game filled with distractions, where I’d find myself venturing off the beaten path in order to explore something intriguing in the distance, or even to clamber atop a vantage point in order to admire my surroundings. Instead, each planet is a world filled with little other than firefights, and while they’re still enjoyable given Bungie’s proficiency at delivering well-tuned shooting mechanics, it’s disappointing that there’s not much else to do in its beautiful environments.
What Destiny is… another FPS with a barely-there story.
Without a shadow of a doubt, Destiny‘s greatest weakness is its story. I’ve now completed it, and I still have no sense of the importance of what I have accomplished in terms of its impact upon the game’s world, due to its characters having a complete disinterest in conveying the narrative to me. As previously mentioned, the game’s shooting mechanics are fantastic meaning that I would be more than happy to continuously blast away throughout the duration of its story missions, except that the game doesn’t in any way add a sense of urgency to proceedings.
Peter Dinklage uniquely conveys Destiny‘s narrative to the player by sounding like he’s taken three Valium and wishes he was dead.
This isn’t helped by Peter Dinklage’s voiceover work as your AI companion Ghost. While his narration has served as the butt of several jokes, it does honestly detract a huge amount from the experience. I mean, how could I possibly take an interest in what is going around me when Dinklage delivers all his lines as though he’s been held in the recording booth by Bungie against his own will? There’s no denying his skills as an actor, but his prowess as a voice actor certainly leaves a lot to be desired.
The only point in which the plot even so much as teases that it might suddenly be worth the player’s attention is in a few cutscenes on Venus, but these quickly give way to the same tired, derivative sci-fi spiel about saving the Earth from the evil extra-terrestrials, without making me care about my planet’s fate whatsoever.
What Destiny could have been… anything else.
I have no idea why I should put in the effort to save this place.
I would have had no problem with Destiny’s plot following the tired conventions of the sci-fi genre if it were to have offered anything that could have made me emotionally invested in the story it attempted to convey.
If a narrative is executed correctly and its dialogue is handled adeptly then no matter how many tropes the writers throw at it, it can still have enough about it to draw the player into its world. Destiny has nothing of the sort, with even the lore-building Grimoire cards you unlock throughout the game (which have to be accessed via Bungie.net, because god forbid Bungie actually made you care about the story in the game itself) offer obtuse and vague insights into a world that tries to keep its distance from the player as much as possible.
Destiny could have literally done anything else, save for throwing in a segment where the player shoots rockets whilst sitting on horseback, that would have appealed to me more than what is on offer here.
What Destiny is… a quest for dull-looking loot.
There is nothing that drives me more to continue playing a video game than obtaining more cool stuff. I’ve spent countless hours on Diablo III pillaging for loot in order to make my player-character look as mean and deadly as possible, as there’s a sense of achievement to be had in creating a character that makes your friends take a step back and say “wow, I don’t want to f*ck with that guy.”
Generic sci-fi characters A, B and C.
But whether it be roaming the Tower in Destiny or playing through the PvP modes in the Crucible, I have never stumbled upon another player whose appearance or equipment has made me want to continue pushing on in order to acquire it. It needn’t be said that Destiny is a beautiful looking game, and though I have heard of many having qualms with the design of the enemies I stand by my opinion that each look suitably otherworldly and menacing, but the designs of the player-characters leaves a lot to be desired.
With only three classes to choose from, either the Titan, Hunter or Warlock, I’d hoped that Bungie would offer enough diversity in each classes’ equipment to ensure that I could craft a very individualistic Guardian to call my own. Unfortunately, he’s ended up looking the same as every other Warlock I encounter in the Tower.
What Destiny could have been… a quest to make the most impressive-looking Guardian the world has ever seen.
Bungie’s Halo series had a varied array of weaponry, with each piece of equipment feeling monumentally different in both the way it handled and the way it looked. Needlers, Battle Rifles, Energy Swords, DMR’s, Plasma Pistols… the list goes on and on. By comparison, Destiny feels like a monumental step back in this particular department. Very few of the weapons are as satisfying to use as the ones featured in Bungie’s previous series, and the armor with which you use to protect your Guardian all look by-the-numbers and decidedly uninspired.
My Diablo III character before I’d even reached the level cap. Why didn’t Destiny feature loot as glorious as this?
While acquiring better weaponry and armor is crucial to making your Guardian more powerful (and to continue leveling them up in the endgame), the aesthetic appeal of this equipment is considerably lacking. I’ve bumped into some players who have leveled up their Guardians past the level 25 mark, but I wouldn’t have guessed that they’d made such significant progress upon looking at them. In all other visual aspects Bungie has knocked it out of the park with Destiny, but in this one crucial component of the game, they have fallen far below the expectations they set for themselves with the Halo series.
But it’s not all bad, is it?
Destiny isn’t a bad game, but it’s simply not the one that I had hoped Bungie would make. Everything about its pre-release hype suggested that it would reinvent the wheel and reinvent the console FPS, but in actuality it’s an extremely watered-down MMORPG stuffed inside the worn-out body of a shooter. It’s got far more problems than I’ve come to expect from a Bungie game, and while (as previously mentioned) I am enjoying my time with it more than our reviewer Mr. Leack did, it’s difficult to ignore the missed potential here. Hopefully its inevitable sequel will up the ante and be the genre-defining experience I’d hoped Destiny would be.
