Destructoid Checkpoint: Understanding Destiny

I, like many people, have put thousands of hours into the Destiny franchise. I was not there on day one for the original game, as I didn’t own the relevant consoles at the time, but I jumped in with friends several months later, and enjoyed their terrible envy as the first exotic weapon I got turned out to be Gjallarhorn from a Prison of Elders drop. 

I remember my first completions of Vault of Glass, Crota’s End, King’s Fall, and Wrath of the Machine. There was a point in the original Destiny where I was running each raid three times a week. Only one completion would net me any reward; the other two runs were with Raid groups that had five members each, and were done purely for enjoyment and to help them get their weekly completions. 

Yes, it really was about the friends I made along the way. 

I was there on day one for Destiny 2, and Steam tells me I have 1744 hours in the game, but it feels like that time was spent slowly falling out of love with the game. I still showed up for every expansion, and I stood with the community as we said goodbye to Lance Reddick, who led the Vanguard as Zavala and who died all too young, at just 60 years of age. I read the memes and I watched the lore videos, and I’d sit on Friday evenings and watch better players than I go head-to-head in Trials of Osiris. 

The Destiny community was something that I felt a part of, and being part of it brought me lots of enjoyment over the years.

So, why don’t I have Destiny 2 installed on my PC anymore, and why am I having more fun playing Destiny: Rising, a mobile game?

The Power Fantasy

At one point, build-crafting in Destiny was one of my favorite things to do. I loved finding fun interactions and interesting combos of things that would turn my Guardian into a monster. The trial and error and endless iteration appealed to me. 

But at some point, that faded away. In the endless pursuit of giving me something to do, Bungie stripped away the thing I liked doing most, and the need to constantly reset my progress and start again robbed me of that feeling of reward. 

Worse, whenever something was discovered that was truly fun or potentially bordered on overpowered, Bungie would often move quickly and issue nerfs or fixes to interactions that they didn’t like.

Destiny and Bungie have a multitude of problems right now, and everyone has their own issues with the game as it stands, but, rightly or wrongly, I began to feel more and more of a squeeze on my time in an effort to do the thing I wanted to do, which was have a strong build. 

It felt like somewhere along the way, the important metric became how long I was playing the game for, and various tweaks and changes were made to make sure that it was longer and longer over time. The means by which I had fun seemed to slowly be leeched away, until eventually I was being fed very careful, very measured access to power in an effort to keep me logged in for longer, always striving for that next step up.

My Guardian, who had faced and felled mighty machines, time-traveling aliens, and literal gods, had entered a complete paradox where, in the lore, I was the saviour of all humanity, the guy who was there when the shadow was longest, the candle that refused to flicker in the gale. And yet, each season, I was reduced to a chump.

I had lived too long. My Ghost had brought me back too many times. The Light had granted me immortality, but the developers had granted me nothing more than an inventory of weapons that were obsolete, and a need to farm them all again. 

Destiny: Rising

In Destiny: Rising, the new alternate universe version of Destiny produced by NetEase for your trusty mobile device, that is gone. I am a New Light, recently brought back from the dead. My character is a know-nothing idiot who, a few hours ago, was dead and desiccating in the rubble of some ruined building. 

It has been a refreshing reset to have dialogue imply that a simple Servitor is a thing to fear, and that the lowliest of Vex enemies are a mysterious threat that I should be careful of, and have that actually make sense. 

Even more interestingly, even though I have just started my journey in the game, I feel like it already understands the power fantasy that you want to go for in Destiny 2. Guardians, for all their love of humanity and the Light, are turbo-powered murder machines in a world where lots of evil is trying to eat your face. Being able to spam my abilities every few seconds and have them hit like trucks feels great. 

Even though it is a completely different game, it feels like a reset of my relationship with the Destiny universe, and it feels strange to have that occur without Bungie being involved in it in any meaningful way. 

It has helped me come to terms with the idea that as long as Bungie is still trying to build Destiny 2’s future on the bones of a game that just doesn’t work for me in any meaningful capacity, I shall not be returning to it. Playing Destiny: Rising has made me realize that what Destiny 2 needs is just to end, and make way for a Destiny 3 that can reframe what we think the Destiny universe is. 

Now, this should not be perceived as a positive review or endorsement of Destiny: Rising. I haven’t played it enough at this point to find the flaws, and as a gacha game, there are likely to be many of them. It is just a gentle reminder of the truth of an old adage, that a chance is as good as a rest.

What’s happening, Destructoid?

Over on the good ship Destructoid, Andrej Barovic is wondering about upcoming efforts to balance killers in Dead by Daylight. He is not expecting good things. - “While I do not appreciate tunneling or slugging, I believe that extreme nerfs like this could only be detrimental to the game and the balance, particularly because high Elo Survivors already have the means to combat with any Killer. What this will do is throw the balance completely off the rails, buffing Survivors to the utmost, and preventing a Killer from performing even the most basic functions.”

Scott Duwe has developed a video game addiction for the first time in his life. - “I feel like this may be part of my personality, because I tend to obsess over new things that bring me joy, but never for this long. I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about my own habit and what, if anything, I can do about it, so I’m open to kind advice.”

Bhernardo Vianna is on a journey through Granblue Fantasy Relink, and I think he’s a bit shook about how hard it has grabbed him. - “Story cutscenes are as high-quality as any award-winning anime would be. The different camera angles, zoom-ins, and character expressions breathe life into the Granblue Fantasy characters, who we would otherwise only see as static figures in dialogue scenes.”

And that’s it for this week, folks. Stay gold.