Has Destiny 2 fallen to the Darkness?

In 2014 we were all introduced to the next series to claim the mantle at Bungie – Destiny. Destiny has polarized many gamers across the globe, myself included. This sci-fi space wizard adventure has claimed itself a place in gaming history – on both sides, famous and infamous. Illustrious developer Bungie has brought forth a game that has caused a massive divide in the gaming community – either you love or hate this space epic.

Destiny has been lucky enough to be parented by the godfathers of the FPS genre – and that parenting shows off in spades. The shooting feels so smooth and the mechanics of the game keep it as the paramount shooter in gaming today, but there has always been something missing from this game…substance. From day one this game has been plagued with a lack of variety and any type of depth with existing content. It has become public fact that there was content ripped out of initial release to create paid DLC and this only exacerbated how a certain part of the fan-base felt. The stories presented felt lack-luster and void of character, even with the strides Bungie made in story-telling up to Rise of Iron.

Destiny has had a past and present checkered with questionable decisions and unforeseen disaster – despite this it has been a massive success. This gigantic MMORPGFPS has warranted a sequel that has fans and haters alike clamoring for its reveal. I myself have just been pulled back into the game after a very long hiatus and can easily say I am worried for the second installment of Destiny.

DISCLAIMER: IF YOU ONLY WANT TO HEAR ABOUT HOW PERFECT DESTINY IS TURN AWAY! REMEMBER IF YOU LOVE SOMETHING YOU ARE ABLE TO BE CRITICAL. THERE WILL BE NO RAINBOWS HERE JUST UNBIASED TRUTHS!

Now that we got that out of the way, we can talk. Let’s be blunt here, Destiny has many great aspects to it, but none of them are content related. We aren’t going to be talking about their raids (unless it relates to the fact that they are spread far….FAR apart) we will only be concerned with pre-end game content. All the quests and missions that lead up to end game are few and can be completed in a couple hours of play, and coming from a game that took more than 5 years to develop. Cited from multiple sources on the Internet, planning for Destiny began in 2007 and officially began in late 2009, early 2010. Now of course it is perfectly understood that this style of game is one Bungie is not used to, but coming from the masters of FPS may be a bit much. Weekly and Nightfall strikes are rehashed strike missions from previously played missions repeated in certain cycles pulled from a pool. In an article from gamerant.com 2 years ago Bungie said that the format involving weekly and Nightfall strikes would change for the better, involving “new and unique strikes, offering twice the options weekly.” Now looking back at it this didn’t last very long, or even leave any impression upon the community. This has been a long standing problem with Destiny, adding modifiers while challenging, does not count as diversifying your content portfolio. In this gamers opinion, Bungie could easily develop a separate playlist specifically tailored for those modes. Imagine how much more challenging and satisfying these weekly confrontations would be! Going in to every week with a strike that hasn’t been played and even if they were to keep a pool (albeit a much larger one) would create a freshness that would instantly escalate the quality and variety of every week played. None of this would be so problematic if the game didn’t heavily rely on loot, while not terrible in Destiny this is where Bungie starts to show chinks in their armor. Other games of this magnitude have provided alternate routes of acquiring loot by instituting a trade or auction system (cough…WoW…) thus alleviating much of the repetitive nature of “loot shoot”. All these issues don’t originally stem from Bungie of course, the blame of this falls squarely on Activision shoulders…or does it?

Destiny was originally delayed, many concessions were made on the staffs part to merit members leaving and being fired, DLC was cut out of the game not only for monetary reasons but also because DLC deadlines were not going to be made, and now even Destiny 2 was already delayed. There was a very well hidden interview with one of the former member of the Bungie team that confirms not only were many concessions made to the original vision of Destiny, but it essentially crippled their creative independence. I highly recommend that any Destiny player should read this and get a perspective that hasn’t been looked upon in the correct shade, in short not only was future content cut out of the game, but so were planets, dialogue and story. The fact that Bungie has many incentives to keep them on track and meeting deadlines regardless of the end result. A multitude of added variety that would have brought a breadth to the game that would have made it feel…complete. This is all hardly breaking news, but it is news that a good percentage of the community chose to ignore and continue to throw an endless stream of money at inspire of this information. Even with the most recent (even extremely controversial) news from Kotaku.com penned by Jason Schreier claiming that Activision is legally in the right to acquire shares of Bungie if dead lines are not met, granted some of this information was retracted but Jason isn’t typically misinformed about Destiny. Who is to say what is true and what is false? But wouldn’t this fall in line with the rest of the drama that has cursed this game development prior to and during release? Activision and Bungie have a volatile relationship that has been spilling out into the development of their game, the public eye and their fan base and at this point something has to give.

This could not only spell trouble for Destiny 2, but for it’s developer Bungie as well. We are all aware of the history Activision has had with shutting down the once great developers (the list is to massive to insert here) and how Blizzard is the only one to remain fully intact. Bungie rushing their work to meet deadlines just to keep themselves intact is possibly a horrendous omen that may end with the creators of Halo being fed to the dogs. It is no secret that for the many gamers logging into Destiny daily there is a larger community that sees the flaws that continue to hold the game back from being a classic stamp of Bungie greatness. I have repeated many times that Bungie is one of my favorite developers and that Destiny holds a special place in my heart, but this is not a complete game – this is half assing to the highest degree.

Whether or not this is entirely one parties fault or the other the release of Destiny 2 is a worrying subject matter. Bungie as great as they have been, are not fully equipped to handle to task at hand and Activision is a controlling and destructive money hungry machine that will eat Bungie alive if they aren’t up to the task at hand. The state of Destiny 2 is up in the air to the community and it’s scorned lovers and I pray to the big man that they become the Bungie of old and deliver us that GOTY material we know they can create.

Cheers Bungie.

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