Unfulfilled Destiny

I don’t really get why I like Destiny so much.

Santa got me an Xbox One for Christmas and it came with CALLADOODY ADVANCED WARFARE, which was a good starting title as my first game on the eighth-gen console. It’s a decent game – the story is alright and the multiplayer is more akin to Black Ops II than the execrable Ghosts – but it’s more of the same: after about a week, I didn’t want to play it anymore. What I needed was a shiny brand new game.

I hadn’t really been following the current generation of games (except for Wii U releases, since everyone was banging on about them), so I didn’t really have any idea of what to get. Then I remembered about Destiny.

So I departed to my local shopping centre just before the new year where, after spending a hideous amount of time in the most unnecessarily long queue in the history of retail in GAME, I left with a copy of Destiny for 35 smackers. Not a bad wee deal, I thought. I posted on Facebook or Twitter or something and found out that my pal Barry played it as well and would be happy to start a new character with me. Good stuff.

So I got home and slapped it in my Xbox. After getting to grips with the mechanics of the game and all the stuff there was to do, I was instantly hooked. Buddying up with Barry, we’d go on missions together and finish story levels, go on raids for epic loot together and arse about in The Tower – we’d kick the numerous balls hanging around the place onto the fan on top of the Postmaster’s building and see how far we could fire it.

When playing alone, I’d see what bounties were available and fire into them to upgrade my weapons and see which legendary items I could find. I’d fire into The Crucible and get my Dead Orbit reputation up so I could get some wicked-sweet gear from them. Once I reached level 20, I started to grind for legendary items to get more light to further level up. I’d grind raids for Vangaurd Marks, grind story missions for upgrade materials and during the recent Iron Banner multiplayer event, I found myself grinding PVP in order to get nice new Legendary gauntlets and chest armour.

It’s only recently after experiencing some of the endgame content – especially getting my first Exotic bounty – that I’ve realised things aren’t really as engaging as I previously thought.

While levelling up from having the bog-standard armour to level 20, it was exciting to find new armour and weapons, with each piece being better and more useful than the last. However, drops become more and more useless as you progress: once you get a good weapon or piece of armour, you can fully expect to be using it for multiple levels, all the while picking up absolutely useless uncommon and rare items that will never see use. It’s because of this that I’d been using the same Auto Rifle so often that when I eventually upgraded to an Exotic Pulse Rifle, I had difficulty adjusting to using a different kind of weapon. I’ve also had the same helmet equipped since about level 10, meaning that not only am I becoming bored wearing it, now my Titan looks weird whenever she wears anything else, which isn’t often.

As such and as mentioned above, what most of Destiny’s gameplay falls down to is grinding for items in order to make your character better, which means that often you’ll have to engage in activities that aren’t really very fun just for the slim chance of being able to get an item that’s marginally better than your current loadout. This may involve playing a story mission that’s horrendously difficult which, after multiple frustrating wipes no matter what strategy you undertake, ends in your and your fireteam leaving the game annoyed and frustrated.

And good luck if, like me, you don’t have many people to play with: if you’re mainly a solo player with only one or two other people to play with who have little free time to jump on, you’re essentially locked out of the content that garners you the biggest rewards. I haven’t even attempted a single Vault of Glass or Crota’s End raid since I simply don’t have anyone to play them through with. As a result, I’m usually found completing the same standard bounties and missions in a usually fruitless attempt to find some better equipment.

And even when you do manage to get that exotic gear after such a long slog, what do you once you’ve picked it up? There’s not exactly anything better you can keep grinding for. As a result, once you’ve got it, there’s not much left to keep playing for.

But yet, even after all these misgivings, I still find myself logging in day after day, finding out what bounties are going and seeing who’s online to do some missions with. I’ll be hopping around killing Hive for Eris Morn or in The Crucible trying to get 50 headshots for little reward. I’m not actually sure why I keep playing so much: the story isn’t exactly stellar and the chance of me getting anything worthwhile during my playtime isn’t exactly great, but for some reason I find myself playing it on a daily basis. I’ve already laid down additional notes for the DLC and can see myself playing it well into the future. It’s even taken over my previous game obsession Payday 2, meaning that I haven’t touched that game for months. I really should go back to it at some point.

Bravo, Bungie. Bravo.