Does Destiny live up to the hype? - The Chatty debate

It's been a full week since Activision and Bungie released the long-awaited final version of Destiny to a grandiose amount of fanfare. It was a project that had been years in the making, with Bungie finally entering a post-Halo age. So of course, there was a lot of hype that came along with it.

Critics and users have started to weigh in with mixed reviews, following a lengthy evaluation. It's so lengthy that the Shacknews staff's review isn't going up until later today. In the meantime, however, Shacknews posed the following question to the hardcore users that comprise the Chatty community: Do you feel Destiny has lived up to the hype?

The Chatty community, unsurprisingly, has returned with a melting pot of opinions. Here are some of the more eye-catching answers, regarding whether Bungie's latest is all it's cracked up to be.

Brave new world

The Destiny supporters among the thread will point to the sheer size of the game's worlds as one of its most positive qualities. Poster thaperfectdrug notes that the map sizes are such that it makes running into random people incredibly fun. The large worlds give folks like Lawgiver a chance to live out some of their sci-fi fantasies, traversing worlds and blasting away at giant monsters. Sometimes, blasting monsters in a giant sci-fi world is all it takes to have a good time, especially if you're a poster like Thornfist, who sees Destiny as a good stopgap before the next Borderlands.

It also appears to be among the first games to offer a truly "next-gen" experience, in terms of graphics, with snot3353, thaperfectdrug, aasyranth, jake, and nunami among the posters taking a moment to cite the impressive visuals on display.

However, that seems to be where many of the positive points of Destiny seem to end and where many of its problems begin.

Pardon our moon dust

While many Chatty posters acknowledge Destiny as a fine effort, filled with vast beautiful worlds and an entertaining multiplayer facet, they also point out that it falls short in several areas. The one thing they point out the most is the game's monotonous questing system and the same set pieces used repeatedly. Poster omnova even brought up the Tower, staggered by how lifeless the area seemed, other than a couple of vendors.

As snot3353 points out, repeating the same areas over and over can get draining, especially if you're doing strikes for incremental upgrades. But poster Beady goes a step further, slamming the overall mission structure.

"At times it feels like the Library from Halo was used as the inspiration for mission design," he said. "Follow the floaty orb, press X and wait for something to happen, shoot things while waiting, follow the floaty orb to the next press X location. With how the shooting works that wouldn't be entirely bad if the encounters were fun and if the writing and delivery wasn't so awful, but as they are incapable of holding the game up, it just becomes a boring grind."

Worse than that is the game's loading times, which are often cited as a major issue. Poster pandastrong cites the downtime between the Tower and orbit as a killer, while valcan_s adds that the long loading times can ever serve to break any sense of immersion that Bungie was aiming for.

"That wizard came from the moon"

If there's one common consensus, it appears to be that Destiny's story simply doesn't captivate the way Bungie intended. Poster 'flip' expressed his disappointment, noting the promise of narrative immersion that didn't quite pan out. Posters jake, reznory, and Rauol Duke concurring that the story falls short.

On top of that, much of the lore is hidden away from the game. Posters geedeck and snot3353 both lamented this odd decision, with geedeck calling it one of the dumber decisions in gaming. Given that one of the joys of a rich world can be discovering its history, the way one would do so in an Elder Scrolls game, it's hard to disagree with him.

But if there's one aspect of the game that Chatty posters seem universally united in disliking, it's the voice acting, with snot3353 even calling it incomprehensible and embarrassing to listen to. In particular, Peter Dinklage is largely panned for his performance. Skoal^Fyfan cringes at the sound of his voice and v1ctoly goes as far as to say he needs to be patched out of the game. Ouch!

The Diablo comparison

One interesting direction that the replies took was when grifter made the comparison to Diablo. In many ways, he's not far off. He makes the point that Destiny's story is five acts with multiplayer co-op and raids across varying difficulty levels. This is precisely the reason that he's come to enjoy the game so much.

However, a few posters argue the Diablo comparison. Rehevkor points out that Destiny only has about a fraction of the loot that Diablo has, meaning the time-to-reward ratio isn't nearly as rich in Destiny. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, according to Sailor of Fortune, who would rather get to the meat of the rewards, rather than deal with dozens of junk drops. And as Evil Benius points out, the loot drops become more substantial after reaching level 18.

There's more to Diablo than just loot, though, and that's where sigpro points out another of Destiny's shortcomings. He points out that Diablo is more unpredictable with enemy types, placements, and champ packs, while he notes that Destiny is far more static with each of its strikes. They're so static, in fact, that snot3353 points out that players can taken advantage of the spawn timing and placement patterns to clear out enemies for more loot.

The lasting appeal

At the end of the day, several Chatty posters don't feel that Destiny will have enough appeal to last beyond the initial excitement period.

But even if Destiny doesn't capture hearts and imaginations in the long run, many posters agree that this is a good first step of what could be an amazing full package. Vincent Grayson makes the comparison to the first Assassin's Creed, in that it's proof of a cool concept and a decent game on its own, but with ample room for improvement.

"I feel like Bungie has only given us the ball, not the bat, bases, or gloves," royalally added. "The fact that just playing with the ball is arguably enjoyable already says a lot about what's coming. They do have a great start and a foundation for a crazy awesome game. The 10 year plan for this thing definitely has me excited."

As for whether Destiny lived up to the hype, that appears to depend on who you ask. However, given everything that Activision and Bungie did to market the game, former Shacknews staffer Brian Leahy may have had the best take on it:

"It didn't live up to the hype, but nothing would have."

While we were able to gauge the reactions of dozens of Chatty posters, there were a few contributors that were not mentioned in this piece. To get the full, uncut posts from our community, be sure to visit the original Chatty thread. And if you're not a part of our Chatty community, you're welcome to register and join us today!

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?