I've had my fill of Destiny

     Over the last month or so since it has come out, I have been playing a lot of the game "Destiny" by Bungie, the creators of Halo.

     What started out as a pretty satisfying FPS has slowly degraded into an insanely repetitive and unrewarding grindfest.

     I really wanted to like this game.  I was hoping it would be one of those games where I played it for months on end, sort of like a FPS Diablo.  Honestly, I do like the game, but now that I'm at the point where I'm doing the same shit over and over and over in an attempt to get materials to slightly upgrade the gear that I have, only to come out empty handed, I find myself no longer giving a shit.

On left, my Hunter, on right, Titan.

     You start out choosing one of 3 classes, then one of 3 races.  While the races only offer cosmetic differences, the classes each offer a variety of bonuses and special attacks which help greatly to completely unbalance multiplayer games.   (Supposedly, via rumors, the game was originally supposed to have a different storyline depending on the race that you picked.)

     The plot of the story is that years ago, mankind discovered a large floating object on Mars called "The Traveller".  This object launched us into a technological golden age, and also went and terraformed Venus, Mars, and the Moon.  The downside, is that there's a galactic evil force, called "The Darkness".  This has consumed the galaxy and wiped out all other races, except mankind.  And the Fallen, from Venus.  And there's also those big dudes, on Mars.  Oh, wait, and those shady "Awoken" guys from "The Reef".
     Actually, the Darkness does not make any sense.  The only "real" bad guys seem to end up being these robot guys, called "The Vex".  Both the big guys on Mars (Called "The Cabal"), and The Fallen have been fighting against them.  There's also another race of bad guys, called The Hive, that show up on the Moon and Earth, but then they're all forgotten by the time you get to Venus, so, whatever, fuck those guys.
     Despite the 2 common enemies that make sense, The Vex and Hive, both the Fallen and the Cabal fight you anyway, even though the sensible thing would be to join up.  But, hey, video game.

The games only sense of diplomacy in action

     The story is so flawed, and everyone is bitching about it.  You can find all sorts of other sites bitching about the holes as well as conspiracy rumors about what "The Darkness" is.  One idea is that you yourself are the Darkness. "The Traveller" causes war everywhere it goes. Then there's also the weird detail that your army, "The Guardians", are really nothing more than an undead army, carrying out missions that basically revolve around committing genocide.
     While this story twist would be awesome, it's highly unlikely.

     Bungie has made totally clear to everyone, despite the "story", that the game does not really begin until you hit level 20.  See, the maximum level that you can attain is 20, but high level armor has something called "light", which really just equates to item levels, as seen in games like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV.  Through the "light" of your gear, you can gain "light levels" up to level 30.

     This is where the repetitive grind starts.

     At this point, all you can do is either run the same missions over and over, or run the same multiplayer matches over and over, or, if you have 5 other friends that play at the same time as you, run the same raid over and over.  All of this just with the hopes that you either find better gear, or materials to improve your current gear.
     The problem with this, other than the boredom that sets in, is that you rarely obtain any of the things you actually need.  It ends up being tedious and unrewarding.

     As far as the endgame Raid goes, there's no way to match up with people playing.  Unless you have 5 other friends that play at the same time as you, you're screwed.  No Raid for you.  Bungie seems to think this is a good idea, because they won't add matchmaking for it.  They also won't add any way to socially interact with others other than pointing, waving, and dancing.

Another awesome raid candidate I can't communicate with.

     So that's it.

     Right now I have a level 26 Hunter, and I started a Titan, but at this point I just don't feel like playing it anymore.
     I mean, the game looks great, and plays well.  It just seems unfinished.  It's a shame too, because you can see where it ultimately could have been awesome, it just falls on it's face so badly.

     Eventually Bungie will add more to the game that may or may not fix the problematic storyline or stale content, but by that time I'll be onto Diablo 3, Far Cry 4, and many other older games.

     In the meantime, maybe someone should send Bungie a copy of Borderlands 1 and 2, so they can see how to do this right.

HuckleCat