I'm totally with you on this - I'd love to see stuff that can be missed if you're not paying attention (because then NOT missing it is worth more).

The biggest problem I see (and I have no clue how Bungie - or any other company, for that matter - is actually handling it) is that there's a conflict between wanting to give the player cool options like this and being able to justify to whoever's paying for development the work involved in putting in content that might not be seen by a significant fraction of the playerbase. (I know where YOU come down on that conflict, Cody - but it ain't your money, at least not during the development phase. ;) )

But that seems like an outdated assumption, or at least one that is being rapidly outdated. 20 something years ago I had to have my dad call the Sega of America's pay per minute hotline to get the cheat codes to Sonic the Hedgehog 2. (Which I memorized so well back then that I still know two of the three important ones!)

Ten years ago cheat codes were trivial to find on the internet and even the most complex, hard to reproduce easter eggs (like the Halo 2 IWBYD skull) were being shared by the people who had capture cards or were willing to point a camera at a TV screen. Now, with everybody's computers and video game consoles recording video of their actions all the time, the expenses of making a how to video have also vanished and with any vaguely interesting thing spreading over Twitter and Youtube how does the calculus of a feature not being seen even compute anymore?

The biggest problem I see (and I have no clue how Bungie - or any other company, for that matter - is actually handling it) is that there's a conflict between wanting to give the player cool options like this and being able to justify to whoever's paying for development the work involved in putting in content that might not be seen by a significant fraction of the playerbase. (I know where YOU come down on that conflict, Cody - but it ain't your money, at least not during the development phase. ;) )

Don't you think that with Destiny strongly pushing you into a social / co-operative experience, that hidden things might spread from player to player faster than in a single player only / lone wolf style game? :-)

Also showing the player everything is a surefire way to make your world seem smaller and less engaging. The whole POINT of such content is that it is not seen by many. Even if you don't see it all, knowing it's there and seeing SOME accomplishes the goal of making the world seem deeper, so I would consider it a fine investment.

The biggest problem I see (and I have no clue how Bungie - or any other company, for that matter - is actually handling it) is that there's a conflict between wanting to give the player cool options like this and being able to justify to whoever's paying for development the work involved in putting in content that might not be seen by a significant fraction of the playerbase.

I may have not communicated well enough, but the example I gave would still be awesome even if it was a required part of the story.

My reaction to that segment was not because it was optional, but because finding the solution was extremely cool. It could very well have been necessary to find that secret room to proceed in the campaign, but still been just as awesome.

So Bungie could make every single quest / mission mandatory, yet still adopt the kind of approach to completing it I outlined, and significantly improve the fun of the game while considering your point above. The missions should have you looking at the world, exploring it, etc, rather than following instructions and waypoints.

I never tried it before because it looked ugly.

I'll get someone to gift it to me, play it, and report back to you :-)

Technically the game is unimpressive. There's no gamepad support, and it's the type of game I'd like to play on the couch. There are times when the framerate dips pretty bad, which is inexcusable given the simplicity of the rendering, and the fact that my Mac runs Bioshock Infinite (Via bootcamp) at around 60fps at 1080p with ultra everything, so it's not the setup.

The art style and simplicity is really unappealing.

That being said, yes it's very welcome. I'd still say that the hint plaques are even too much. At least you don't have to click them.

I haven't finished it yet but

SPOILER

I got a lot of satisfaction in figuring out that drawing outlines with the block gun causes the game to fill in the middle, which is vital in order to duplicate blocks so you have enough for some of the puzzles. This was all up to me to figure out, and it was fun!

Thank you for pointing me to this game. More games should treat the player the way it treats me: like I'm not an idiot and actually enjoy exploring and figuring things out myself.

You're the only person I've ever seen refer to her as Anna in this kind of context, and the only reason I can imagine why you did it is that your passive-aggressive jerk side likes doing this kind of thing.

Um, I think YOU just spoiled something. Your post is the one implying Anna is someone other than Anna. Nobody reading my post who hasn't played is spoiled by anything except for the fact that there's an Anna. Which they know after playing the game for 90 seconds.

To be 100% honest Anna was just easier to type than the alternative, and I am bad with the iPhone keyboard.

Agreed. Or at least I hope you're right! :)

When I think of Destiny and its missions I picture something that trends towards Borderlands but with a lot of the silliness removed, with the scale made bigger, with the combat improved, and with the missions seeming more "official." You're not a bounty hunter freelancer in Destiny, you're (as I imagine it at least) part of a part military, part exploration, part scientific structure based in the city.

But then I think of the Queen of the Reef, The Crow, and the latest mention of dignitaries and wonder if maybe I'm imagining Desinty's universe a bit too small. Already I get the feeling that both the Cabal and Fallen are intelligent and even worth talking to if any of them would stop shooting at us. The Vex seem almost certain to have interesting stories to tell, what with their time traveling and the way Bungie describes them as not clean and shiny off the assembly line, but a bit rusted and a bit beat up. Even the Hive seem very curious. Undead(?) space zombies traveling in great sarcophagus like starships perhaps fleeing from The Darkness or perhaps even being sent by it.

I'll be excited if all Destiny is is a highly connected scifi shooter like Halo, but I think I'll be even more excited to find out that it's something even bigger and grander!

The biggest thing I hated about Spartan Ops, (which overall was the part of Halo 4 I ended up liking the most) was the "go here, push this button, kill the spawns" gameplay that it devolved into.

The idea that you had these missions, that you and your buddies could do and it revealed more of the plot was cool. However it really ruined it when it became a race to see how fast you could push the buttons and shoot down all the knights and elites.

I thought Skyrim's quest generator was a little better, because sometimes you would be in the middle of nowhere and this woman would run up to you and shout "help, i've been bitten by a vampire!" or "I just escaped from bandits and I'm lost", and suddenly, fetch or escort quest. It made it feel like there were things happening in the world outside your latest quest lines. (You could totally blow off the people too, with sometimes hilarious results.)

I'm hoping Bungie will fill the world with these more emergent type quests, rather then a field of exclamation points at the area landing zones.

Also, killing mobs for a 1% drop rate item AKA farming, I hate it. Nothing ruins fun like having to kill 1000 firbolgs so you get that critical class item. Watching them all respawn and wander aimlessly around, waiting for you to kill them all again just really breaks the immersion, even more then having to kill 6 rats every time you go to a new area.

...I hope they port the Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap! puzzle into Destiny.

No guidance, of course.

It could be their totally-not-obnoxious way of "encouraging" coop play.

No Self respecting Vidmaster actually solves that platform puzzle. We simply grenade climb to the top :-p MUCH easier.

It's a cool moment in Infinite and all, but I'm not really sure how it fits in destiny? Destiny is being designed as this highly co-operative game, and that kind of mechanic is worst fit in a co-op situation where one player may know the answers, or just wants to run through.

In general, I'd prefer to see a focus on players comeing to grips with hidden levers of the game systems. I'd want more of the learning that you see in games like Spelunky, or Dark Souls, or Phantasy star than what's basically a watered down adventure game moment.

Your co-op point is interesting, which I will get to in a second.

I'm not saying literally make puzzles like the example I gave. I gave the example because instead of hints, directions, waypoints, and highlights, it flowed naturally from the mechanics and your curiosity.

See, Bioshock Infinite failed overall because the world it created suggested a level of depth and interaction that the mechanics didn't provide. So the wonderful world that was created ends up feeling fake and restrictive, instead of deep and freeing. This ends up pushing you OUT of the game instead of immersing you.

A game like Deus Ex is extremely immersive, despite being mediocre aesthetically, precisely because the world allows for more exploration and interaction than the aesthetics initially suggest. This in turn immerses you more, as you realize the world is deeper than you first thought. Likewise something like Marathon or Doom is immersive, because the aesthetics don't suggest or call for a high degree of interactivity or freedom anyway, so the fact you can only run, shoot, and hit switches is fine.

If Destiny is going to make you want to stay in the world and be immersed in its so called 'shared world', then the mechanics need to match the level of complexity the aesthetics of the world suggest, otherwise the world will feel fake like in Bioshock Infinite. From what we have seen, the world appears very detailed aesthetically, which means it needs to provide us with a lot of mechanical freedom. Freedom in the sense that we are free from the rigid mechanics of highlighted objects, waypoints, step by step goals, and telegraphed travel. If you can only go where you are told in a world, it feels fake and restrictive. In other words, let the players learn the layers of the game system, as you say, then have them apply that do do cool shit WITHOUT TELLING THEM HOW TO DO THAT. So, the trick is to allow the player to go a lot of places and do a lot of things, yet tell them very little. Have him figure it out for himself.

Otherwise, you're going to get a wonderful environment that's just a bore to be in.

NONE OF THIS NECESSARILY NEEDS TO BE OPTIONAL, although hidden optional stuff is always a plus.

As for co-op, you could go even farther with the layered implications of the game system, because players will be playing with other humans who can impart their wisdom. I don't want adventure game puzzles in Destiny; I simply want missions and quests that make me feel like I got to the end by deciding on my own actions, rather than getting to the end by following directions.