Destiny: The Imploding Hype Train

NOTE: P&P’s impressions of Destiny’s Alpha and Beta.

Ever since Destiny, Bungie's FPS/RPG/MMO/I DON'T KNOW, released, everyone has had only one question: Did it live up to the hype?  And instead of dancing around the answer for an entire article, P&P can simply say: Nope.  But before you run outside for the first time in months and start flinging your feces around, hoping for it to land somewhere in my general vicinity, you should know this: it doesn't mean the game isn't fun.  It just means Bungie made too many promises that they couldn't keep.  "Well then, Mr. Smartypants, would you like to explain exactly how Destiny failed to meet the hype?"  Sure, but first you must understand that…

DESTINY IS LIKE GREAT SEX:

You're standing in a violently loud club, when suddenly, your world stands still.  Directly in front of you, twenty feet away, is the most beautiful girl or handsome fella you've ever laid eyes on.  Surrounded by sweaty drugged-out ravers and numerous ugly friends, this individual looks like Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, himself carved them out of the most immaculate piece of marble on earth.  So what do you do?  You drag them right into your bed without the mention of dinner or a movie.  And you're not disappointed.  Their thrusting and gyrating mechanics are flawless and could go on for hours.  You can't believe who or what you've found, so instead of waiting three days as required by a silly law, you take them back to your bed the next night too.  And again, you have monumental sex that no one will ever understand.

"If this guy's exhaust comes anywhere near my robe, so help me God..."

Lying in the sheets, soak and wet from ecstasy, you do something unfathomable: you decide to have a conversation, and when your angel opens their mouth, out falls stories about bubblegum and handbags or football and beer.  You think, "well that was interesting," but then shrug and reflect on the fantastic sex you've been having.  So before the next night's romp session, you decide to buy multiple mirrors—which is creepy, yet necessary—and decorate the bedroom.  And in the reflections this Greek god or goddess looks exquisite from every angle.  Filled with such fond scenery, you attempt to converse again, and once more you hear about bubblegum, handbags, football, and beer.  And that's when it finally hits you: the angel lying next to you doesn't have any stories or adventures.  They lack depth.  They lack complexity.  They lack—*gulp*—a soul.

Now, someone that hasn't had a variety of different partners might marry a bubblegum/beer talker (not that there's anything wrong with that).  But someone with experience might feel that without some substance to fill the remaining hours of the day, your exquisite monkey-sex partner is just an empty shell.  A gorgeous, ridiculously talented empty shell, but an empty shell nonetheless.  And when you do finally find an exquisite person that can make you laugh and tell stories that keep you enthused for hours, the angelic empty shell will just become a distant memory of what could have been.  And that, my joystick fondling friends is exactly what Destiny is like—give or take a few orgasms of course.  "So what you're saying is Destiny is like awesome sex and I should come back often?"  You seem to have missed something important.  It was probably the word s-e-x that confused you.  No matter.  Let's move on.

"Man, these 7 o'clock shows are becoming more and more repetitive.  Where the hell 

is the purple ball?"

THE HYPE:

Bungie promised a universe like Star Wars to gamers.  Worlds where you could travel and meet other Guardians and unearth fantastical stories that span time and space.  They’d create a game where you'd have an experience like no other game before it.  But what Bungie really delivered is Diablo 3 in a first person shooter perspective (relax).  It may not resemble Diablo 3 or dip into fantasy elements, but the mechanics underneath are exactly the same.  You go to an area, kill everything in sight, collect the loot (or in Destiny's case the lack thereof) and move on to the next area.  When you've killed everything in every area, you go back to previous areas and kill the same things over and over again, until you collect the right loot to level up.  Both games thrive on the principle of wanting to get to the next level and both games can be extremely fun, but only…if you're okay with a grinding mechanic.  The problem is that's not what Bungie promised when the advertising train started rolling.  So the gamers that believed they were getting a Halo type shooter with the depth of Mass Effect were utterly disappointed. 

THE STORY:

What story?  Did someone say something about a story?  I clearly didn't say anything about a story.  You?  It wasn't me.  Well okay then, moving on.  (Go anywhere on the web and you'll find numerous articles about how Bungie bumbled this aspect of the game)

"Yeah, umm...I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but your face looks like it's 

having sex with an octopus."

A ROBUST WORLD:

It's funny how all of humanity and every Guardian left in existence fit perfectly on a rooftop of a tower (pun intended).  When you think about games like Mass Effect or Fallout 3 or even Borderlands 2, you immediately remember all the fun you had just walking around and talking to the NPC inhabitants.  There always seemed to be a story to find and somewhere interesting to explore.  But not here.  Certainly not in Destiny.  Even the NPC's in the Tower have absolutely nothing to say.  They just stare at you.  And if you count them up (not counting factions or vendors) there's probably about five.  So why isn't there unique NPC's in the Tower or on other planets?  Umm…don't know.  Why are all the other areas (besides the Tower) just filled with enemies?  Why aren't there other outposts for Guardians?  After various shrugs, you'll quickly realize there are no other outposts, NPC's, or towns anywhere.  And sadly, that creates a big empty void where a remarkable story could have been. 

"Yes, I'll take the double latte macchiato, light foam, soy milk, and a galactic hot dog or--Wait, do 

you have anything on the menu NOT made from Dreg?

LAZINESS OR A DIFFERENT APPROACH TO GAME CREATING:

It probably took you about 15 hours to finally decide to open up your inventory and have a look.  And in your pixelated satchel you discovered all this junk you've collected with absolutely no description of what it is or what to do with it.  "Discover the world in your own way (paraphrasing)," Bungie reps tell you.  So they've made a game just like life: you spend an outrageous amount of time wondering what to do, and when you finally figure it out, you die shortly after.  Without the help of the online community deciphering all this crap, you'd have Guardians just wandering around the Tower, grinding on each other.  Is this method of game-making profound or just down right lazy?  That's for you to decide.

BUT WHAT ABOUT MULTIPLAYER:

Yes, there's that.  Multiplayer is fun after obtaining decent loot and upgrades, and can actually become quite an addictive part of the game.  But then everyone looks at Halo (and how could you not?) and realizes there's not much here, besides a couple of game modes and terrible matchmaking.  And just like in the Beta, if your whole team drops out, it leaves you holding your nuts and twiddling your thumbs.  So that's fun.

"Hi there, I was wondering where you got that extremely sweet smelling cappucino?"

"..."

"Yeah, if you could just point me in the right direction, that'd be great..."

"..."

"Hello?  Lady?  What is with all the mute idiots around here?  The hell with this...Ghost, where's the purple ball?"

CONCLUSION:

Destiny, sadly, didn't come close to living up to the hype Bungie built.  The funny thing about all that is if Bungie just explained what they were delivering (a grinding first-person shooter) in the first place, there wouldn't have been any outcry from gamers.  But then again, Bungie wouldn't have sold as many copies as they did.  So from a pure marketing standpoint, the hype worked.  Destiny is a beautiful game and as far as shooters go, has top notch gameplay.  Even though the story, dialogue, and world-building completely missed the mark, the level design is completed with care, the characters look gorgeous, and the game can be damn fun at times.  Will Bungie fix all these problems with Destiny 2?  Only time and a lot more hype will tell.

Destiny Alpha: Impressions

NOTE:

Bungie, the team that created the little unknown game called Halo, has teamed up with Activision's half a billion smackaroos, to bring you Destiny: the love child of an MMORPG and FPS.  The following impressions are based on the Alpha form of Destiny.  And any or all of these thoughts and concerns may have already been fixed or could be in the process of being tweaked.

"That wizard came from the moon."

Cut!  Dammit.  Could someone go get a glass of water and some aspirin?  Dinklage has 

been drinking again.

I may not be the fastest quick-draw in galaxy, the most proficient with a machine gun, or even have the slightest idea of how to follow quest markers or bring up my personal hover bike.  But there is one thing that I can do better than anyone in the galaxy…and that, my friends, is dance.  Yes, when it comes to busting a move in the most awkward of places like in the midst of battle, you can be rest assured my booty shaking is the best in the galaxy.  Why?  Because a galaxy without dance is a galaxy where Kevin Bacon and I, can never, ever belong.  But I've gotten ahead of myself.  Allow me to start from the beginning.

A few minutes into Destiny, I was already on my way to creating a perfect lookalike Warlock: a charming gentleman with blue skin, white hair and yellow war-paint.  Different facial choices seemed scarce and the scary 90's hairstyles left much to be desired, but the gorgeous graphics brought tears to my eyes.  Never before has a gamer been able to create such ugliness in gorgeous 1080p.  And after I had my perfect avatar—one who would surly dance his way into every female guardian's pants—I was dropped willy-nilly into old Russia and left to find my way.  With rifle in hand and absolutely no idea what to do or where to go, I began running.  And no more than a few moments later, my beautiful face became the finish line of many enemy bullets.  (In the Alpha, enemies came in two forms: the Hive and the Fallen.  Besides a different set of attacks and weapons, they're mainly the same and can be dispatched of with a steady stream of pew-pew-pew)

"Hey, guys, check this move out!  I bet you never saw anything like this before."

"Can it, rookie.  Unbelievable, the first thing these idiots do when they get here is shake their junk in front of everyone and everything.  I saw a Titan rookie, yesterday, humping the galactic trashcan."

THE WHOLE MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER THINGIE:

Some people may dislike MMO's because of the time investment, monthly payment (which Destiny doesn't have), or the need to make friends.  But Destiny has solved those problems.  It's a game that can appeal to the casual/mature gamer and the MMO fan that has way too much free time.  How?  Well, by allowing a gamer to pop in and out for as little or as much time as they want.  Since the player has multiple gaming options (multiplayer, strikes, missions, etc.) with rewards, you won't have to prepare for an eight hour session of boar killing in a forest to raise your level.  Twenty minutes may be all you have time for and you'll still be able to increase your stats.  Destiny also creates "Fireteams" consisting of other players to help you out.  And the first time I happened to look to my left and see another player—someone I've never met and will probably never see again—beside me, chopping down enemies…it felt awesome.  Like I was part of something bigger than just my story.  Like I was part of a living world.  That's the secret to Destiny.  It doesn't force you to become friends with anyone or to team up, but if it happens along the way, you'll appreciate the help.

 

"Psst.  Someone should really tell that idiot that dancing over there does NOT increase wizard powers."

"Nah.  He'll figure it out in a couple of days."

THE TOWER, CLASSES, MISSIONS, PUBLIC EVENTS, AND STRIKES:

Pushing through the Alpha's limited 8 levels as a Warlock (the Warlock is like a wizard dude with a gun) took around five hours.  And now you're thinking, "Well, my good man, did you also level up a Hunter (a quick-on-their-feet dude with a gun) or a Titan (a heavily armored dude with a gun)?"  No, Sir.  And here's why: aside from their special moves and über-special moves, there really seemed to be no difference between characters.  And running around doing the same missions over again, just in a different pixelated skin, seemed like absolutely no fun.  So I decided to stick with my Warlock and max out his abilities, and then head over to multiplayer.

After the first 20 minute mission, which establishes a small chunk of Destiny's story, you're sent to the Tower (Destiny's galactic coffee shop filled with emo guardians and gun aficionados) to regroup.  In the Tower, you learn how to obtain new gear (helmets, gauntlets, chest/leg armor, guns and the like), find new quests, upgrade your ship (which seemed unnecessary, at least where the Alpha is concerned), buy/sell rewards, and if you're inclined, how to add friends to your Fireteam. 

So after having a galactic cup of coffee and watching people dance, wave, point, and sit (emotes mapped to the D-pad) you're free to do whatever you want.  The only location in the Alpha was Earth—mainly old Russia—where small missions like discover this cave and kill that idiot can be found.  Also, if you run around doing nothing for a while, you might happen upon a public event.  This is a randomly generated quest that starts in a public area and includes other people who happened to be nearby.  I was part of two public events.  My first had me all alone defending and downloading information from a large orb that fell from the sky, while fending off waves of enemies.  Needless to say, I died quickly and cursed up a storm.  The second public event had me teamed with two strangers and we won, leading to an impromptu dance-off in the snow.  I, of course, won with unmatched galactic moves, but the judging is subjective.  Two public events seemed like enough so I moved on.

"I don't get it.  Every time a match starts this idiot just dances the whole time."

"Yeah, but have we lost?"

"No, but you're not seriously considering that's helping?"

"Hey, I'm just saying.  And anyway, he's Jerkin_It24:7's cousin or something.  Best to just leave him alone."

Strikes come in all types of difficulty and length.  My first had me dispatch some wizard A-hole that the galactic community deemed unfit to cast spells.  So I ran through claustrophobic hallways and oil refineries to slay the beast, and did so, on my own.  I therefore, became a level three Warlock and was able to wipe my own arcane ass.  After another strike of dispatching the same enemies in a different area of snowy Russia, I finally reached level seven Warlock and the last and biggest strike in the Alpha became available. 

If you do partake in Destiny, you should know that Strikes can take a while and you should allocate your time accordingly.  This level 6 Strike required a three guardian Fireteam and lasted a tad over an hour.  But the awesome part is I never had to make any friends or worry about who was coming with me.  Destiny teamed me up with two Fireteam buddies and no effort on my part was required.  I only remember one of my fellow characters because her name was unforgettable: YeastyBeaver, a title that holds a special meaning in my heart.  Up until she and my other Fireteam member left me right in the middle of battle.  But here's the silver lining.  I never even noticed, because Destiny smoothly replaced them with two other pixelated friends.  How this happens in real time without the slightest hiccup is beyond me.  But it worked.  In fact, everything in the Alpha worked.  There wasn't one time where frame-rate dropped or a match didn't connect or someone happened to float past on an imaginary cloud.  And although I do enjoy the occasional glitch—because sometimes they're extremely frigging funny—not one thing went wrong the entire weekend I spent gorging myself on Destiny.

"Alright, watch this.  Awesome, right?"

"Do that one more time and I will beat you to death with my helmet."

THE CRUCIBLE AND CLASS DIFFERENCES:

After the humongous level 6 Strike and defeating its two ridiculously ammo-absorbing bosses, I danced.  But I not only danced because dancing comes natural.  I also danced because I'd achieved level 8 Warlock: the highest level that could be achieved in the Alpha.  I then took my ship over to the Tower to upgrade my armor and weapons.  The time had finally come to head over to the Crucible and test my fully maxed skills in multiplayer.  And being a level 8 Warlock was sure to earn me easy kills and awesome bragging rights.  It didn't take longer than a few seconds of Control (the only multiplayer option in the Alpha, where two teams of six attempt to hold three map points until time expires) to die repeatedly and realize I was way out of my league.  I'm going to take a shot in the dark here and say that if you were awesome in Halo's multiplayer, then you'll be kicking some ass in Destiny.

Destiny offers three weapon slots in multiplayer and regular play.  Primary (ex: machine gun, pistol), secondary (ex: sniper rifle, shotgun), and heavy (ex: rocket launcher).  Primary ammo can deplete if you're not running around collecting it.  Secondary ammo is scarce.  And heavy ammo is dropped in about once or twice a match, giving you a limited amount of time to get it.  And it's in the same spot for everyone, which leads to frantic gun fights for just two missiles. 

"We claim this land for truth, justice and--"

"Psst.  Say dancing."

"What?"

"Dancing.  And dancing.  I just love dancing."

"Can someone find Jasper's medication?  He seems to need an extra shot."

Each different Guardian class (Warlock, Titan, Hunter) gets a certain kind of grenade that does the same thing: hurt the opposition.  And then there are the special moves: the Warlock having the ability to throw a devastating arc of light, obliterating everything in front of them.  The Titan obliterates everything around them and the Hunter gets three special bullets in a pistol that have a one-shot kill.  If you happen to choose Warlock or Titan and see a glowing Hunter approaching with a pistol…run.  Run as quickly as you can because they will put you down faster than you can say WTF.  But there was nothing more thrilling than being Super Charged (ready to explode with your special ability) and seeing three members of the opposing team huddled around one control point.  Running into the fray only to surprise them with annihilation is as rewarding and as satisfying as it sounds.  And damn fun too.  It's just too bad the cool-down times for these abilities are extremely long.  You may only be able to use them twice in one match.  This may change as you obtain higher levels, but since the Alpha only allowed up to level eight, it kept your abilities limited.  The same went for the Warlock grenade, which also had a slow cool-down that only allowed usability every couple of minutes.  And in multiplayer, every second counts.

Two different multiplayer maps were offered.  Old Russia—again.  And the moon.  The moon was refreshing because of the vehicles thrown on the map.  The vehicle handling and weapon firing is exactly what you'd expect from the Halo creators.  But that doesn't mean rocketing around the moon and running over enemies isn't fun.  Also having two vehicles battling it out in the middle of the map is hilarious and exciting.  I happened to spend around 14 hours with Destiny and about 9 of those in the multiplayer.  And when the Alpha ended, I instantly felt the need to go back in and have more fun.

"...So then right in the middle of fending off this Fallen Knight, he blurts out, 'That wizard came from the moon.'"

"Holy crap.  What'd you do?"

"First I got shot in the face, because it caught me off guard.  But as soon as I killed everyone I turned the frigging Bot in for a refund.  Stupid machine almost cost me my life."

CONCERNS:

Boredom: After finishing a few smaller missions (the go here and kill that, type stuff) they became really stale.  Hopefully in the final version there are many different varieties of public events, missions and strikes.  If not, then after about a month, multiplayer will be the only thing keeping people from ditching the game.  And that's only if multiplayer has plenty of maps and allows tweaks for custom matches.  The game showed six different options for multiplayer, but as only one was available, we'll have to hope the other five are just as entertaining as Control. 

Custom ships: Why?  If there's no arena for spaceship dogfights or hover-bike races, then why have the ability to customize them?  Hopefully, Bungie adds these areas to the final game, because online races and dogfights in space would be a nice addition to blowing people's faces off.

Voice Over: The popular Peter Dinklage, known for such works as Game of Thrones and…well, Game of Thrones, gets to add his unbelievably mundane voice to your bot companion.  The only voice you'll hear throughout the game, considering your character is a sad mute.  His voice work didn't faze me because most of the time it was drowned out in the middle of a fire fight, but when you do hear him, it's flat out forgettable.  It's a shame Bungie didn't use someone like Nolan North, or John DiMaggio, or any person with a tad more voice over experience. 

Maps and Icons: Pressing the touchpad slows your character down and shows your current objective.  But why not just have the objective icon remain on the screen until you get there?  It becomes a pain in the ass pressing that thing to see if you're going in the right direction.  And this feature slows down what should be a fast-paced game.  Now, if you're looking for a map, good luck.  The only one available in the Alpha was at the Tower.  Maybe maps of previously visited areas will be included at game release.  Maybe not.

"Oh my goodness--"

"Beautiful, right?"

"What?  No.  I let one slip in my suit during battle and now every time I move, a little more squeaks out.  And it's 

still putrid after three hours.  Can you smell it?"

CONCLUSION:

When Destiny was first announced all I saw was an always-online video game with Halo mechanics and a Mass Effect coat of paint.  Yet, everything about the Alpha was fun, beautiful (the view from the Tower is amazing), entertaining and fresh.  Could this be because gamers everywhere only had a weekend to partake?  Maybe.  But Destiny still made a believer out of me.  And do you know what that means?  Come Beta time I'll be dancing my way through every strike and multiplayer map available.