All of this shows off the most startling element in Destiny: the amount of polish every aspect has been given. There isn’t one half-arsed animation. There isn’t one mediocre texture. There isn’t even a weapon which feels like it was built by a slothenly half-wit from the backwaters of Uranus. It is rare to not see a copious quantity of polish given to a big AAA release yes, but even by modern standards the developers at Bungie have outdone themselves in this respect. Right down to the somewhat surprisingly easy-to-use UI, every aspect feels like it has spent hours being tinkered with.
Sadly though, this is its own curse. It may all feel great and sound astonishing, but it also feels cold – almost clinical – in its delivery. Every second spent in a board room meeting discussing whether that floor texture or this mechanic will appeal to all has apparently been detrimental to the passion which can really make a game stand out. The most memorable aspects of much-loved games are not the precise controls or the sound design; they are the little sparks of fun, something which seems to be lacking in Destiny.
There is so much scope in the game for little things to raise a smirk or throw in a surprise. The Moon could have had an American flag in the distance alongside the remnants of a lunar lander. A comedically named mission target or two wouldn’t have gone amiss either. Some fun did manage to slip through the gates with a couple of choice weapon names, but everything else has the lustre of surgical steel. Yes it cuts well enough. Yes there’s an incredible strength to it. Yes it completely serves its purpose. It just doesn’t want to make you smile.
If anything, the best vehicle for comedy, your Ghost, causes more cringing than dinner at Ricky Gervais’ house. “I’ll work faster!” he shouts while breaking through a code. He’s a robot for heaven’s sake! Obviously Dinklebot is the first computer ever to be built and programmed to run as inefficiently as possible.
Oh the fun is from getting new loot, you say? Well, there is some truth to that, but not a whole lot. Leading up to level 20, loot drops are sparse at best and currency stocks barely grow quickly enough to fund the purchase of new equipment. This does change at the soft cap though. Jumping into the 3-person strike missions, each generally taking anything from 15 to 30 minutes, does give out the loot, but in a particularly cumbersome fashion. More often than not, you obtain an Engram which has to be taken back to the central social hub to be converted into a new pair of shoes or a shiny hat, at which point the loading times decide to wander into view.
These aren’t soul crushingly long loading processes, like those seen on the Amiga 2600. Just after a hectic strike mission though, sitting through a minute of loading only to get a new piece of gear unlocked, then jumping back into loading and then into yet more loading time to start the next mission just breaks gameplay up. Would it not simply have been easier to give each player their new equipment outright without making them traipse over to a hub?
“Variety is the spice of life” is a common phrase which everyone has heard sometime in their life. Not the folks at Bungie though. Almost all missions follow a structure more rigid than granite. Here are your options. Go here and scan this, then shoot this mini-boss. Go here and defend your Ghost. Go here and defend your Ghost, then defeat this mini-boss, then scan this. That’s pretty much it, apart from one mission where the your Guardian is given a sword to swing around. One mission.
Both in the high level strikes (of which there are six… Yep, six) and the story mode that’s about as varied as anything gets. Maybe this is due to the combat area design, which creates a perfect battleground on which to fight the strict selection of enemies placed before you, but it is no reason to keep coming back.
And yet, with all this lack of variety and a clinically cold world, Destiny is still a compelling experience which is difficult to turn your attention from. These failings are severe in the long-term but in the short-term, Destiny is a joyous and wonderful game to devote time to. It seems to suffer from a split personality. One side of Destiny is a great collection of mechanics and systems which make the game a joy to play. On the other is a world which could have been wonderful to explore had the passion not been sucked out in favour of a little more polish.
Sat atop Destiny‘s tilted crown, though, sits an experience which tests players to the limit on an even, competitive playing field: the Crucible. This Player vs Player environment is always fun and always interesting, in part because it takes the game’s mechanics and applies them to a competition against others with the same tools as yourself. In part, though, it could also be because this environment is the only place in Destiny where you really have to engage any grey matter to adapt to situations.
Destiny could have been the shining star many wanted it to be. Destiny could have even been the stepping stone towards greatness the current generation of consoles hungers for. Instead, it has been born into the world without an identity all of its own. Half RPG loot system, half social MMO shooter, and somehow half competant multiplayer competitive FPS. It is a game of three halves which together do not add up to a whole.
It will still eat up your social life and spit you out. It is almost worth purchasing Destiny to feel just how good a Generation 8 shooter could feel. If a little passion and variety had been injected, Destiny could have truly become a legendary release. As it is though, Bungie’s latest provides a fun distraction without the staying power its mechanical prowess deserves. Rather than being created by a group of designers willing to take risks to carve out a new identity, Destiny feels like it was designed in a boardroom during shareholder meetings to maximise mass-market appeal over creating a timeless classic.
