I agree with Leviathan . . . (Gaming)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Sunday, September 06, 2015, 14:48 (3365 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

I really can't argue with that, as I was completely offline from January 2014 to October 2014, so missed the large majority of the marketing push. I really only saw the initial E3 demo in 2013 and whatever small subsequent bits we got later that year.

But from the trailers I've looked up since then, I haven't seen anything really off tone. Granted, I assume most of what people have issues with are things said in Weekly Updates and such, which I completely missed out on, so I can't comment on in any meaningful way.

There were some very specific things Bungie talked about in the lead up to launch that ended up being quite far off from the shipping game. I'm thinking specifically of the way Gear acquisition would work. Bungie told us that we'd be able to ask someone "hey, where did you get that awesome gun?" And they'd reply "well first you go here and fight this thing, then you go here... etc". They pushed the idea that weapons would have specific stories behind earning them. As we know, that really isn't the case at all (aside from 1 or 2 weapons). The story is just "I bought it" or "I played 300 nightfall strikes until it dropped".

Again, I'm not complaining, just pointing out a fairly meaningful difference between what we were told to expect and what we got.

Well, the fact that it was true in some cases gives Bungie an out to an extent. They didn't lie. And they probably honestly believed it to be truer more often than it ended up being.

The other area that I think blindsided people was the story. It's difficult to pin story-related expectations on Bungie beyond the fact that most of us have played at least some of the Halo games and were therefore expecting something similar in depth and execution. I think many people were expecting a grand, galaxy-spanning space opera. I think Destiny aimed to deliver that, but just failed to meet most players' expectations of quality in that department.

This has to do with legacy expectations, and this is why I think DeeJ and urk had among the hardest jobs in the gaming industry leading up to Destiny's launch. Many of us complained about not being given much information about the story before launch, but we heard enough relative to how much was there. We projected the rest. (My current theory is that the ten-year narrative will surpass anything they've done before, but Destiny year 1 was focused on setting the stage.)