Let’s preface this with a couple things. One, I am a new father, and have probably a third of the available time that I have had in the past for gaming. Two, my gaming habits for the past six or so years has been almost exclusively for social purposes. My friends live at closest 100 miles away, and farthest 1100, so online gaming is a perfect platform for us to hang out. Three, like many I am a huge Halo fan, and was terribly excited to see Bungie’s new offering as they are one of maybe three companies that I would do anything to work for so expectations were high, but also tempered because we are talking about following up one of the biggest lightning strikes in the history of video games.
Now that we have that out of the way, first impressions. As expected from such a seasoned developer like Bungie, the production values are great. The game looks amazing, from the character modeling, to the environment textures, to the vast and inspiring skyboxes that they continue to employ throughout their worlds. I am sure there are some graphical glitches somewhere, but I cannot think of any that have been particularly noticeable yet myself, and that level of polish shines through in the other areas to. The sounds all seem to fit the effect they are tied to, and the controls are tight. You feel like you are playing Halo to an extent, but did you expect anything different from the company that made FPS relevant in the post N64 world?
After the first hour or so of new game feeling, you start to get the hang of the general feel of the world. As far as story goes, I am currently not done with the available missions, but I am killing aliens that are chasing a giant ball around the universe. That is all well and good, even Halo was at its simplest a “kill everything in sight” game, but there feels to be zero character development. No recurring NPC’s that matter, and you end up being a faceless, voiceless murder machine. There is a lot of room to improve here, and maybe it does with the content releases that are planned, but who knows. I have several friends who have completed the current content, and are very happy leveling past 20 and doing everything they can to obtain better gear. Again there is a lot to talk about on that subject, but for now, I will leave it to people who are more progressed than I.
There are two main issues I have with the game though. First, the social aspect. Talked about as at least a pseudo MMO, there is very few social aspects built into the game. There is no player trading, no local chat, and the tower is limited to 16 player blocks. Even the world maps where you end up randomly assigned is vastly empty and I have yet to see more than six or seven people within visible distance of each other. Beyond that the only voice chat available is with your fireteam. Even in the Crucible if you do not invite the matchmade teammates to your fireteam, you cannot hear them at all, and obviously you cannot hear the other team either. As I stated in the opening statement, I play games to hang out with my friends, which is why outside of the Crucible, and the 6 man raid I am not high enough level to attempt yet, I have a huge problem. You can only group up in fireteams of three. When we gather we are consistently a group of at least 6 playing at the same time. At that point it is Crucible or bust, and we are forced to use the Xbox one party app to talk to each other.(The recent update though has seemed to remedy some of the issues that we were experiencing while trying to play Titanfall in the previous months.) I very much enjoy the competitive multiplayer, and as a group it is much more manageable and fun, but still the game seems to dissuade you from playing with large groups, or forcing you to choose between this friend or that friend when you end up online with several different groups of people.
Second content. I will not complain about the current amount of content. There is plenty there for me, as I do not have copious amounts of free time. Also Bungie seems to remember how popular the weekend double xp sessions were in Halo 3, and have unique events that should be available every weekend, as well as periodic new raids and missions. That is great, I like a constant stream of semi new content. The real rub though is the paid expansions. With a planned release in December of “The Dark Below” there is going to be a new story arc with I would imagine new level caps and equipment. The big question is can I access that equipment and levels without the expansion? Also how will players be restricted when playing with friends that do or do not have the same content. It is hard to get every person on board with expansions on console, at least in my experience, and it either turns into deciding to not play with friends from time to time because they do not have the same content, or not playing that additional content because you would rather play with your full group of friends. That worries me about the longevity of the game. Rarely do you see a console game able to compete with the games that come out the following cycle. A year is about the most you get out of even a AAA title nowadays, and that is why the Call of Duty franchise has multiple studios working on separate lines of games so they have something for everyone to buy every year. I want Destiny to last, but I am just not sure how they are going to make it stick.
There are a lot of things that people can harp on with Destiny, and most of them are at least partially justified, although maybe not to the degree that is expressed by the general public. I think competing this fall with CoD 14.2 Kill the Badguys edition and Master Chief Collection will do a lot to see how far Destiny can go. I enjoy it, and with realistic expectations, it is a very enjoyable, well made game. Bottom line is you should buy this game, and you will get your monies worth in entertainment.
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