Destiny: Became Legend

Destiny was released on September 9th, 2014 and quickly became one of the best selling shooters on PS4 and Xbox One. Though, the mythic, sci-fi game was not without it’s blemishes at launch. Quite a few people held issues with the fact that the game’s season pass was borderline mandatory if you wanted to get any worthy amount of content. That, plus the additional expansions offered were all fairly expensive considering what they offered gamers. That did not stop millions from buying the game and from million enjoying the game. Back in May of 2016 an article was published saying that 30 million players were registered playing Destiny.

Destiny has gone through numerous substantial changes with each expansion pack they released. Their first expansion, The Dark Below, offered players new missions and additional narrative to feed their drive to becoming legend. The second expansion, The House of Wolves, allowed players to hunt down escaped traitors to the crown of the Awoken Queen, which was easily some of the most fun offered in the first two expansions. Then they dropped their third expansion, The Taken King, which took the content from The Dark Below and upped the ante quite a large amount. Everything you did in The Dark Below is now coming back to bite you in the bum and it’s pretty freaking awesome to see that unfold. Take King offered the most additional content, as well as the best told narrative through their beautiful cut scenes, and plenty of sick new gear and loot to deck out your character with. Finally, they released their fourth and final expansion called The Rise of Iron, which was in my opinion a weaker installment to the Destiny universe. There was new content, which I very much enjoyed, but I feel like the narrative was weaker than that of Taken King. In between all of this Bungie released numerous smaller updates including live events to match up with holidays, such as their Festival of the Lost, and the Dawning, to their Iron Banner weeks and the Sparrow Racing League, to the pretty great April Update.

Which brings us to now. Tomorrow Bungie will release their final live update for Destiny which is called the Age of Triumph, it’s a revamping of the old Raid’s that players have come to love and additionally it’s adding in some new gear and cosmetic unlocks for players to earn and strive for. All of this is super duper cool, and has players pretty excited, but it doesn’t really mean much with the fact that all of this will go away here pretty soon. Yep, come September 8th, Destiny 2 is supposedly going to be released. All of that gear you spent all of that time unlocking will vanish, and a brand new slate will be offered before you to build a new Guardian on.

For some this is an issue, it means that everything they’ve done has been for nothing. They’ve spent anywhere from $60.00 to $170.00 or more on purchasing content for Destiny, and countless hours of playtime to get the things they wanted out of the game, and now that’s vanishing. It leaves a kind of bad taste in the mouth. For others it’s not an issue, for others this is an opportunity for Bungie to make amends and do right all the things they did wrong in Destiny. I find myself included among those that see this as an opportunity.

Destiny’s narrative structure was spotty and all over the place. It never really felt like it had any direction, mostly because it was going in every direction it could manage without tearing itself apart. The narrative aside, the game had bounties of lore for players to dive into and read, granted they used the phone companion app, or visited the website. External content aside, the gameplay was super fun to experience, I really enjoyed killing other players in competitive PvP, when my gear was leveled up enough after hours and hours of grinding just to be able to compete against the hardcore gamers who’ve plunged countless hours into the game. Multiplayer balancing aside, Destiny boasted a robust Raid variety which allowed players to gain max level loot and experience the best parts of Destiny, the Raid’s are easily the best designed elements of the game and every has access to them, granted they can muster up five other players they know and are connected with over their profiles so that they can party up. Raid’s lacking matchmaking aside...well, I could go on. But honestly the point I’m making is that Destiny has so many good things working for it, yet so many bad things working against it. I’m hoping that Bungie has opened their ears to the community and heard what folks have been wanting from their game, and I’m hoping that they make those changes with Destiny 2. Alas, only time will tell, and we won’t have to wait for too long at that. September 8th, 2017 is the rumored release date of Destiny 2, but with the summertime E3 just around the corner I’m sure we’ll learn more very soon.