Fear for Destiny (Destiny)

by Reconcilliation , Imagination Station, Friday, May 02, 2014, 23:58 (3866 days ago) @ yakaman

At the risk of being ridiculed and and vilified: the above is what I fear. Hold on now - haters gonna hate and all that, but I can't shake it. Here's a list of what's bothering me:

• Reach lost me and my friends, very quickly, very abruptly
  
• Bungie's partnership with Activision (potential meddling)
  
• A pretty bland initial reveal - how is Destiny different?
  
• Departure of some core Bungie personnel
  
• Delay in schedule
  
• Courting of PS owners at expense of XBox owners (admittedly irrational)
  
• Departure of very core Bungie personnel
  
• A new reveal that had almost no impact on me

The Beta will serve as an instantaneous market correction, and all of the above will be rendered irrelevant. I wait, however uneasily.

I respect this forum and its users greatly, and I hesitate to express my sentiments here. But...I can't shake it. A prediction is silly; an expressed sense of unease seems reasonable.

Here's my own thoughts:
Gunplay wasn't spectacular, it actually feels like a step back from the well defined character of Halo's weapons. I really don't think we'll be seeing something like the quirks of the Plasma Rifle or Needler. Not just in style, but in actual weapon mechanics and interplay with character mechanics (Plasma pistol overcharge vs shields for example).

The art direction is uninspired. The game is almost a Mass Effect look-alike. Everything is desaturated, there's this awful chromatic aberration effect on stuff, high reflection surfaces seem to have massive bloom, probably the most egregious art issue of all is that there's so little contrast. When I'm watching a firefight everything looks muddled together, the enemies and environment don't really stand out. The character designs really... don't do anything for me. They're like Spartans-but-not-actually-spartans and bland looking on top of it. The 'robes and cloth' aesthetic could've been awesome, but there's almost nothing done following through on that concept at all.

The music, I just want to briefly touch on: It didn't fit. It was alright, but it just did not fit that video.

The interaction between the players and the AI was downright atrocious. This was what I really didn't like. The AI doesn't seem to have any sort of self-preservation, the combat situations are hand to hand brawls - there's hardly any situation where flanking and maneuver - where thinking - came into play. The players just rush straight into the combat situation, become utterly surrounded, and then use a combination of superpower AoE attacks and some guns or melee to kill everything anyways. As a result, none of the aliens looked or felt dangerous or even a worthy opponent at all, just bullet sponges or easily dispatched grunts - and the one time a player died, he was pretty much instantly revived. It made the game just look... really boring, really easy. Like I could run through the entire area in my sleep, or designed so that I'm meant to run through the entire area in my sleep multiple times for the purposes of grinding (I hope that's not going to be the case).

And then finally, the level design itself. Just a repeat of the corridor shooter aesthetic that Bungie started to get a bad habit with in Halo 2, and just couldn't seem to break out of by Halo Reach. Although there are some open spaces, it doesn't really look that open - It's a slightly wider corridor after a series of corridors. I realize this is a strike mission and intended to be fairly linear - but it really just affirmed that the talk of big explorable environments was just PR-speak. Nothing at all that we've seen yet, has said "big open environment". When I hear those words, I expect something similar to an elderscrolls game. Hell, even ODST. The idea is that the open space provides multiple paths to the objective, not a single linear one. Yet the latter is all we seem to be seeing.

On the good side, I don't really know what I can say.
The graphical quality is good. Not superb or jaw dropping in any way, it's just... about average of what I'd expect from a game on the PS4/Xbone today.

The Lighting was pretty nice in the original reveal, although the latest trailer didn't showcase it as much.

Weapon designs improved from the original trailer to the latest trailer. (Although by the same token, I think the spacecraft designs took a step back)

The fireteams and mutliplayer aspect might be cool.

I mean really, nothing about this game stands out to me at all. I'm struggling to see what Destiny is really bringing around that makes it great. Halo was primarily art design, weapon distinctiveness, storyline, music and engaging combat mechanics. Destiny is lacking by comparison in every category so far.

I want to be hyped up for this game, but there's really nothing that is getting me excited.