Destiny
In terms of hyped and over-hyped games in the past decade, Bungie’s Destiny ranks up there. All of the ingredients were there – the studio’s first new IP in years and years. A ten-year deal with Activision where the latter reportedly paid $500 million. Even star talent like Peter Dinklage and Nathan Fillion signed on for its cast. Throughout all of this and even after the first co-op gameplay showing, many wondered just what Destiny was.
The first beta offered a better look at co-op activities, loot, PvP, the social hub and much more. It was almost like Borderlands but not quite. Some concerns popped up about the amount of content, especially since players reached the Moon fairly quickly after Earth. But surely there would be more in the full release.
Cut to the full release. Destiny was a major success, becoming the biggest new IP in history. Server troubles, connection issues and so on plagued the game due to the massive influx of players. But this was it! Bungie was back! Right?
Unfortunately, as players spent more time with the game, it became clear just how hollow Destiny was. The story was a mess with laughable writing and once it was finished, players were left with little to do besides Patrols, Strikes and PvP on the limited number of maps. Rewards felt incredibly stingy – your Crucible and Vanguard Marks were capped each week, limiting the Legendary loot that could be acquired. Legendary drops felt terrible, especially in the old days when Purple Engrams could decrypt into Rare items (which was quickly fixed). These were but a few issues on top of repetitive missions, wonky PvP balance, and bugs.
The Vault of Glass raid arrived and was rightfully praised but brutal RNG and artificial difficulty due to Light levels reared their head again. Bungie would add slivers of new content over the next several months with The Dark Below being horrendous (House of Wolves was better received). Reports emerged about how the project was effectively rebooted several months out from launch – which explained the last delay – and major story sections were effectively ripped out and retooled.
Nevertheless, it was a success and The Taken King would arrive a year later to smooth things over. Of course, Bungie would repeat this entire mess all over again with Destiny 2 but that’s another story altogether.
