Tom Powter reviews Destiny….
For a long time, Destiny looked to be the next big thing. It was a game that was fiendishly ambitious at its core, sporting a ‘shared-world’ motif where you could see and interact with other players on their epic journey, as you went about yours. Developer Bungie, renowned worldwide for their critically and commercially acclaimed science-fiction series Halo, were building Destiny up to be something it perhaps never could have been. There are a myriad of reasons as to why Destiny succeeded, and perhaps an even greater number as to why it failed.
From its initial reveal, Destiny’s concept has been confusing and Bungie’s explanations muddled. What was it? A first-person shooter, akin to Halo? A MMO-style game, like World of Warcraft? Neither, or perhaps even, both? Something else entirely? This identity crisis transcends into the game itself, presenting Destiny with its biggest issue.
But let’s not start there. With Destiny, Bungie have attempted something massive and, on a number of levels, they’ve achieved their goals. Destiny is a ‘shared-world shooter’, meaning that, like a traditional MMO, you roam a single game world inhabited by other players going about their own activities. The best part? They pulled it off – mostly. As you traverse the four major worlds on offer at the moment, at times it’s almost like nobody bought the game when you can’t see another player in sight. However there are times where, mostly in the game’s social hub The Tower, numerous other players are running about busily. It’s in these fleeting moments that you really get a glimpse into Bungie’s vision for the game and it feels like something that could have been special.
To compliment the unique feel of the world, Bungie have brought their best to the table where gameplay is concerned. The influences of Halo are felt in abundance in Destiny, from the floaty jumps to the precise, heavy-hitting guns. All-in-all the shooting mechanics are absolutely top-notch, as one might expect from the company who revolutionised the first-person shooter genre twice. Getting into a battle with the enemy is very much what you’ve seen before from Bungie – the opponent is cunning and clever, often strafing and evading your shoots with a well-timed jump, which lends itself to an intense firefight.
There are three classes to choose from in the game – Warlock, Hunter and Titan, and although they might sound cool, they don’t differ all that much from one another. Plenty of cosmetic changes aside, they have a few differences in abilities but Bungie has attempted to keep the experience as even as possible. Regardless of which class you choose, you will have an absolute blast playing the game from a gameplay fundamental point of view.
Alongside the superb combat, Bungie have crafted a universe that looks absolutely gorgeous. Earth’s sole destination, Old Russia, is a desolate sprawl of blasted landscape, with remnants of Soviet history scattered across the plains and gilded with bronzed rust. The sun sets over the jagged, unforgiving terrain, casting a warming orange glow across the horizon. Meanwhile, the soft browns of Earth are juxtaposed by the stark coldness of the Moon. One of the more visually impressive areas, the Moon is as white as bone, with a shattered space station floating overhead while a shadowy Earth rotates ominously in the backdrop.
My favourite of the playable spaces however is Venus, which is a dense, jungle world. Overhanging trees and leaves strangle once grand buildings, now left to rot. Red water runs through the centre of the streets, while the skies light up with brilliant blue flame. It’s on Venus that Bungie’s artists were able to go all-out in their design and the result is a splendid looking world. In contrast, Mars is a desert of red sand with basic, militaristic compounds littering the wastes like specks of dirt. The design works, but it isn’t as inspired as the worlds that came before it.
Unfortunately, Bungie don’t seem to have applied the same level of care to the game’s story as they have the world in which it all takes place. When the game opens, you are introduced to The Traveler, a mysterious white orb that arrived on Earth 700 years ago. From there, we branched out into space, making miraculous advances in technology and exploration, until we came into contact with The Traveler’s ancient enemy, The Darkness. The great battle that took place resulted in the Collapse, plunging Earth into a Dark Age. The Traveler came to settle over the City and protected it with its dying breaths. To this day it remains there, a silent protector.
You are a Guardian – one of many brought back to life through the light of The Traveler to push back out into the unknown and reclaim what we lost to The Darkness, with nothing but your Ghost as your companion. If all of that sounds rather cool, well, that’s because it is. The premise for the game is grandiose, ridiculous and fantastic. Unfortunately, what you know at the beginning of the game is all you know by the end of it as well.
You see, Destiny’s story is perhaps the sum of many of its faults, though it too creates even more problems. Perhaps it’s because Destiny is trying too hard to be a MMO – games that traditionally drip-feed their stories over their long years. For Bungie though, people expect more. The lack of any cohesive storyline or narrative is baffling, especially when coming from the team who gave us Halo, a tightly-wound science fiction adventure with clearly defined story lines and interesting characters. Destiny has absolutely none of that – the characters are faceless, nameless and boring and the story lines…well, there just aren’t any. Any form of vague exposition is done through loading screens, which are tediously long also.
Not only that, but should you want to explore the potential lore of Destiny, and believe me it’s a world dripping with rich potential, you’ll have to exit the game to read the many Grimoire Cards on offer. In what is perhaps Bungie’s biggest mistake, the developer has for some reason chosen to relegate almost all of the story content to small, unlockable cards available to read on smartphone devices. Because of this, almost everything you do is devoid of context and so you may as well be running around boxes shooting things for no reason whatsoever. Despite the fact that you are able to choose from one of three races at the start of the game, Human, Awoken or the robotic Exo, it makes absolutely no difference outside of the aesthetic – you never understand why nor how these people came together. It’s a terrible shame.
This issue extends to the gameplay itself, which essentially boils down to repetitive missions that force you into the same scenarios over and over again. The game’s story campaign, for lack of a better word, is exceptionally weak. Destiny funnels you and up to two friends into small arenas where you shoot a bunch of enemies, move on and then shoot some more enemies. Every so often your Ghost companion, who is voiced rather listlessly by Peter Dinklage, will stop to hack a control system at which point you’ll be forced to defend it from waves and waves of enemies. This happens far more times than is forgivable and is essentially the only kind of mission type there is in the game. Add to this the fact that you don’t really understand why you’re doing any of this due to any real storytelling going on and well, it all feels kind of pointless.
It’s incredibly disappointing when the world around you is so beautiful, yet what you’re doing inside of it is so sterile and empty. The fact that enemies remain in the same place all of the time drains the life from the world. You can literally drive for hours on your Sparrow speeder bike around these gorgeous open worlds, yet what’s the point? There’s practically nothing to do except for tedious, menial missions and there’s little to no other life in the world, making the whole thing feel somewhat like a prettied up shoebox. At least the four major enemy types, the Fallen, the Hive, the Vex and the Cabal, are all varied and have interesting designs. Don’t expect to ever learn anything about them however – just know that you have to shoot them, not that you’ll ever really know why.
If I sound as though I absolutely despise the game, well forgive me for being disappointed. The game certainly isn’t bad and, outside of the visuals, I have the honour of moving onto some of the finer points of Destiny now. To begin with, let’s look at Strikes.
Outside of Destiny’s regular, dull missions, there are Strikes, which essentially amount to ‘boss missions’. In a Strike, you and two other players must work together to break through a level and take down a tough boss at the end. While the boss fights are generally uncreative and simply bullet sponges with exorbitant amounts of health, the coordination and cooperation flying back and forth between you and your teammates allows for exhilarating gameplay. Perhaps this is also a brief look at Bungie’s vision for what Destiny could have been – a gruelling fight against evil, with teams of three sticking rigorously together in a battle for survival.
Then there’s Destiny’s competitive multiplayer mode, The Crucible, for when you’ve had enough of shooting bad guys for no real reason. The Crucible has a number of modes, ranging from the typical capture the zones and team deathmatch modes. Once again, Destiny fails to revolutionise in this department and instead keeps it very safe – but that’s no bad thing. In fact, The Crucible is perhaps one of the best things about the game. With a nice variety of maps across numerous landscapes, The Crucible’s six on six action is fast and frenetic and can truly excite. The map design is impeccable for the most part, leading to shotgun duels, grenade cook-offs and machine gun battles from across the map. The gameplay is satisfying and oddly addictive and I find that out of everything, it’s The Crucible that I keep coming back to play.
Unfortunately, Destiny’s unusually cruel reward system means that you may have to play this for a long time to get anything out of it. Despite all this talk of shooting, don’t forget that Destiny has attempted to incorporate MMO aspects into its world. It doesn’t quite marry a seamless integration however, as the MMO aspects are very light and what is there doesn’t appear to have been thought out all that well. For instance, loot drops are almost completely random, as are loot rewards for the end of a match. To absolutely dominate in a game, only to see the worst player on your team be the only person to receive any loot is a strange thing indeed.
Some of the MMO aspects work rather well however. The levelling system is smooth and adds a nice feel of progression to the game. It’s just a shame the level 20 cap is reached far too quickly. Despite this, the levelling system does bring some balance issues into The Crucible – while level advantages are removed in most game modes, equipment is not, meaning you might get steam-rolled at a lower level when you try to take on a big shot with your starting rifle. Just a warning.
Destiny is undeniably a big, ambitious project. It’s also certainly a disappointment, but does that mean it’s a bad game? Well, no, of course not. In fact Destiny is a perfectly capable shooter with a few tacked on RPG elements that plays very well in its own right, but fails to prove to anyone why it should be played in the first place. Despite this, Destiny does a lot of things right – the universe is beautiful and inviting, just don’t expect to find much when you arrive. Lifeless worlds make the story play through, what pitiful amount there is of it anyway, a slog, but you’ll keep coming back for the bigger picture. The Crucible online mode is often fun and sometimes rewarding, and some elements of the game are exceptional when played with friends by your side.
Destiny was supposed to blow everyone away and in an sense, it has. Destiny has perhaps laid the foundations for other, greater games to come along in this generation. I certainly love the idea of a ‘shared-world shooter’ and want to see more of it. If, in time, Bungie and Activision can release free, regular content to help bulk up the game’s skeletal world, then count me back in. For now though, Destiny is more a pleasant distraction than something you were fated to play.
Final Thoughts
Pros:
– Exciting, ambitious idea of a ‘shared-world shooter’ that is actually successfully pulled off
– So much potential for deep lore and storytelling
– Beautiful game worlds and absolutely stunning graphics
– Solid, tight gameplay mechanics
– Entertaining, if moderate, competitive online mode
Cons:
– Serious lack of any real narrative or context, with no effort made to enrich the world with in-game lore
– Story missions are repetitive and boring
– The game worlds, while beautiful, are completely devoid of life and personality
– Loot drops are random and frustrating, while the RPG elements in general feel mostly tacked on
Rating : 7.5/10
Tom Powter
