Over the weekend, Playstation 4 owners got a little taste of the game Activision is hoping is the next big thing, Bungie’s Destiny. Being a PS4 owner, I was right there with everyone else, giving the game a trial run, discovering what I did and did not like about it.
Going in to the Alpha, I was not sure what to expect from Destiny. Previews over the last year have made the game seem like a mixture of Halo and Borderlands but that description of the game is only about half right. Whereas those games force you to play as the characters the story requires, Destiny has you take full control. Players can craft their unique Guardian from three classes (Titan, Hunter, Warlock) and three races (Human, Awoken, and Exo), with both male and female sexes as a choice. The customization mostly centers around the facial features of your character, but it is enough that you feel an ownership over the goings on before you even set boots to the ground.
That said, once the game starts, Destiny does play a lot like Halo, albeit with the ability to look down the sights. The Titan class in particular feels very much like a Spartan from Halo: Reach equipped with a jetpack. And the pseudo-open world and numerical damage indicators in combat does in some ways resemble Borderlands. However the game approaches things very differently.
The alpha was split into four distinct play types: story, exploration, strike missions, and competitive play, all of which are accessible from your ship. There is also a centralized hub world that has vendors storage for your character. The story level on display, while set in the open world, was quite linear and gave hardly any information on what the actual story of Destiny would be. All you get is that you are a Guardian, and you have a very bored Tyrion Lannister as your AI guide. While I hope the story levels will actually tell a coherent story, the game shines in exploration mode.
Exploration is where the game takes a different turn. After completing the story mission, I was allowed to return to the setting of that mission and explore the area and its other surroundings. While I could have just wandered around killing the roving enemies that kept populating the environment, taking on missions from scattered beacons gave me reason to explore every nook and cranny of the accessible areas. The missions themselves left a lot to be desired though as they almost always required me to go to an area and scan it, kill a percentage of the enemies in the area, or to collect X number of things. Still, Bungie has crafted a huge world, and it is populated with not just enemy AI but also other players that can help you in combat (or not). However, I had the most fun when a random public event spawned in and required multiple groups to accomplish a goal. You get a true sense of being in a larger encounter when there are hordes of enemies attacking 5-10 actual players.
While Story and Exploration can be played solo, Destiny also has Strike missions which require co-operative play in a three-man strike team. The alpha had one such strike mission available, and it played a lot like a longer version of the story mission, with a higher degree of difficulty. This Strike mission had multiple boss fights and sadly, much like bosses in Halo, these were just long and tedious battles. Even with this downside though, I can see the Strike missions being my go-to mode for playing with friends because the objectives are clear, the gameplay is fun, and most importantly, it is balanced.
Speaking of balance, I fear that Destiny’s competitive play is going to have huge problems due to imbalance. The alpha has one competitive mode to try, that being Control, which plays a lot like Domination in Call of Duty. The mode itself is fine and operates as it should, but the problem with balance arises because everything takes place in the same world. Campaign progress and multiplayer progress all impact the same Guardian; as such players that put more time in, and/or get better drops in the field, will be better equipped in competitive play. As someone that loved the balance that Halo brought to the table, I am sad to see it be completely obliterated here in Destiny. That isn’t to say that competitive play was not fun, because I truly did enjoy it, but I don’t see myself spending the time to really truly get good at it because of the randomness that one could encounter.
During my five hours, I played to the level cap as a Titan and sampled both the Hunter and Warlock. While there are slight differences in their abilities and how they ultimately play, they are very, very slight, and I’m not sure how much difference it is going to make in regards to actually playing the game. That said, my human female Hunter and my male Exo Warlock both looked fantastic.
The game answered some of the questions I had about it going in, and I am far more excited for it than I was before E3. Bungie has created something special with Destiny, and I can’t wait to play more of it.
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