So I'm watching Husband kill some Dregs (drags?) on Destiny. We pre-ordered last minute and have put some time into it yesterday and today, and I thought I should talk about it before I forget and before it's not new anymore and no one cares.
If you haven't heard of it, it's a new science fiction game from the people/company behind Halo (I think?). And in many ways it's very similar. Powered armor, fancy weapons, aliens. Yup. Most importantly, kickass graphics and marketing designs that totally sucker you in.
And while it's new and exciting and fun to play of an evening, I do kinda feel like a sucker.
It's a First Person Shooter World of Warcraft... and here are the reasons why that's not as great as it sounds, despite being a WoW fan that loves FPS games too...
1. The story. Oh dear goodness. WoW can get away with not having the story as the focal point, because it's so task oriented. I don't need to know why I'm killing ooze or whatever, to have fun doing it. And honestly, fantasy can hold it's own without a story. Just the elements are sufficient, obviously magic being a large part of that. But Destiny isn't really pulling it off. The writing is terrible. I know Peter Dinklage has been taking shit for his voice work, and really it's not great, but I believe it has to do with the writing first and foremost. If what he's reading is crap it's never gonna work well anyway. Nothing is explained, and the few moments of revelation are stilted and lacking. So we've pretty much lost the story element, which bums me out since science fiction stories are often my favorite. And I thought that when building my character that I would get a character, I was pretty disappointed to not really experience any of the RPG aspects of a MMORPG (which I suspect heavily influences this game). The cinematics are brief, and there are no dialogues - not with the little guy that follows you everywhere, the leader role, or with vendors. If it wanted to be like other First Person Shooters that just gave you a gun and a place to run around killing things, that would be okay, but they seem pretty proud about the story they do have, so you can't really ignore it like you can on a game like Call of Duty where the story is 100% optional.
[Also, if you are going to rip us off on a physics engine that matches what we know about gravity on moons, please at least acknowledge it with a blurb in the already-forced story about why, so I don't get all grumpy cat about not being able to jump leaps and bounds because the developers didn't want to write another set of code.]
2. It's pretty damn weird to be leveling solo and have all this stuff on your own heads up display or whatever, and then you start a quest/objective with a handful of people that pop in and out depending on where you are. It's irritating enough in WoW when I'm used to it, but in this gaming environment it's just weird to spawn somewhere and not have any enemies because a group ahead of you got to them already. If my only objective is to shoot, even if I don't know why, then don't rob me of that opportunity. It's not like there are other skills I can level up while I wait.
3. Multiplayer. I get it - online FPS are making bank in the video game industry. I love them too. But so far, the mechanics don't work. I already mentioned shared objectives, which is just different, but I could get used to it. Husband, however, tried to play what in WoW would be a battleground/arena set-up. Capture the flag was the style, I think. That's cool. What's not cool is no pairing system that puts you against people in the same range. He was level five. The other team was level twenty. That's pretty disparaging, and not very fun.
4. I think that's it.
The pros so far still outweigh the cons enough that we haven't stopped playing. I think the best asset of this game is the AI. I've not seen enemies behave like they are in Destiny. It's almost unreal how real it is. They dodge, hide, charge, retreat, flank... they are damn complex and hard to fight. It's a good thing! It makes this a step above other FPS games, where they just kind of hide, pop-out and shoot. Period. This is so much better, so much more challenging, and more rewarding when successful. The adrenaline rush is effin' insane.
If you're not very good at FPS games, the good news it that the respawns are helpful. I prefer it to the old style of Call of Duty. There isn't a single respawn point, unless you're in very specific areas, but rather it settles the enemies and drops you in just close enough to start firing when you resume. It's like it rewinds the game (but not really).
The graphics are pretty sweet too, as I said above. And the art direction is fantastic. I saw the intro's compass rose for a second before I was like "OMGOSH I LOVE IT I CAN HAS TATTOO????" I won't, but it's beautiful. The little loading symbols are neat too. Props art guys.
If you were on the fence about this game, I say go for it, just be aware of what it is. My brother did not want the game, but broke down and got it too, and he seems to like it more than he thought. Maybe it still has room to improve, since it's still so damn new.
...
If you're bummed the story sucks, the good news is that my work-around is reading Fortune's Pawn . It's science fiction / military / adventure. I was reading it when Husband was playing Destiny and it was pretty neat. I haven't gotten very far in it, but I've enjoyed it to be sure. The main character has awesome powered armor, so that alone was exciting! Plus the characters are interesting (think Firefly), the universe intriguing, and it takes place on a ship. Sweet!
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