There
So, let’s
start off by going back to the end of August, Destiny is a week or so away from
release, and it is being hyped to the point where it may be released in a ‘sliced
bread’ special edition cover. It certainly was exciting, and then, the game
actually came out.
Destiny was
good, but essentially ended up being washed over completely because people
expected so much from it. I expected so much from it. It was an MMO, but it
wasn’t, it was kinda, perhaps, maybe an MMO...but not really. It essentially
filled this space between space adventure narrative and MMO, and because it was
an in-between, the game seemed torn. While you were playing through the game,
it was brilliant. It seemed unique, fun, cooperative, had a multiplayer, and
the experience of running into other players just while playing, which was, for
consoles at least, a unique experience. However, once you hit ‘end game’, at
the point where the MMO-ness should really kick in, it fell apart. The same
raids over and over again, did become tedious. You do about 5 different raids
and you’ve essentially just done all of the story missions again. I would have
forgiven the short and lacklustre story if upon doing the end game, the MMO
aspects kept everything fresh, but they didn’t. There was very little being
added each week to keep the momentum of the game going, until eventually, I
stop playing it. Maxed out and bored, I was done.
Back Again
It has
probably been a month since I last played Destiny, before I picked it up and
gave it another whirl this week. I was hoping to find that after the month that
I had been away there would be fresh content and momentum given to the game,
where I could come in and play it as an MMO, but, what I actually found, is
that it is exactly the fucking same.
Now, I
wasn’t expecting miracles, I wasn’t expecting a new game, but in the nature of
the middle ground this game is trying to cover, I expecting a little more than
a new person to buy stuff from in the hub world. All the planets maintain their
certain raids and missions, and the crucible (multiplayer) seems to be the same
also.
At the time
of writing this, we are now about a week away from Bungie’s first DLC , and I
think it is telling that this is being referred to as ‘DLC’ and not and
‘expansion’. If you look at something Like World of Warcraft, with each
expansion you get a new area, new raids, new story, which is exactly what
you’re getting with the Destiny DLC, so what is the difference? I’m afraid to
say that the difference, the big reveal, is that Destiny is just a regular game,
not an MMO. Bungie wanted you to think it was an MMO because of the fact that
the game is short and poorly written. It pretended to have something for you
after you’d finished the game, as an MMO would, but it just doesn’t.
What Destiny
should have been is a true to form, story driven game that had a multiplayer,
which could then be emphasised. I’d like to think Bungie were trying to do
something unique here, break the mould, say, ‘we don’t want the standard story
and multiplayer aspects. We want a world where everything operates from within
it’. I’d like to say they wanted to do that but just failed. However, after
coming back to the game after a month and hearing of this DLC, it seems more
like Bungie forced this MMO angle because with an MMO you’re almost obliged to
buy the DLC ‘keep living in this world’, whereas, with regular games, DLC can
be optional, and you stand to make less money if something seems optional.
Conor M.
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