I've been talking with my brother-in-law for the past week or so about video games coming out for 2018, and we've been discussing the lack of any major title announcements that we're looking forward to (aside from God of War for him), and we ended up getting on the topic of Destiny... which has been a rough journey full of promise that ultimately has underdelivered in so many ways. I'm not talking about Destiny 2 specifically, but Destiny as a whole. I'm going to share a bit of backstory as to our experience with the game(s) and why we've come to associate Destiny with a "bad game experience" and why we're both pretty much burned out on it. So we both started playing together on XBox One back during Destiny's House of Wolves launch, and we both had an idea in our heads what we wanted to do. I love shotguns in games, and I love explosives, so I started off as a Warlock and my most-used weapon became the Universal Remote along with the Necrochasm. My brother-in-law likes fighting from far away and not being pressured, so he went with a Hunter and the Icebreaker. We geared ourselves up, tackled the Raids, and generally had fun. The PvP for us was a side-thing, so we didn't focus on that very much (my brother-in-law in particular hated the PvP) - the PvE was what we were mostly about. We worked our butts off getting gear that we loved, and then eventually the next expansion hit and all of our gear became irrelevant and we started "having to work with" what gear was allowed to upgrade. This was frustrating in particular for my brother-in-law, because the Icebreaker was one of the weapons that didn't carry over (and my Necrochasm didn't, either). Eventually the weapons made their way back in Destiny 1 for the Age of Triumph which was kind of nice, but bittersweet because we knew we'd have to work to get our gear all over again just to lose it in a few short months. Fast forward to Destiny 2, and we both made our peace with the fact that Destiny was not going to be a game where you can get a loadout you like and keep it. So we decided to try getting into Destiny 2 and giving the new Exotics and Weapons a shot and we both felt the same way - all the weapons were terribly boring. With Special weapons being lumped together with Heavy Weapons into the new "Power Weapon" category it made one of the more fun part of the games less accessible, and both of our primary ways of enjoying playing games - my shotguns and his sniper rifles, were now relegated to "you can use them sometimes" status. Instead, we were both forced into using some variant of an Assault Rifle - either Fully Automatic, Burst, or Single-Fire. Sure, there were Hand Cannons and Sidearms as well, but they're pretty much just variants of Single-Fire rifles anyway. The end result? Because the weapons were so underwhelming and the gameplay had slowed down considerably we got burnt out within a month or so of playing, and we quit and haven't been back. So if we haven't come back, why am I here? I feel like the game has the potential to be good, but not with the current direction that the game is going in. There are aspects of it that have immense promise, but the game is so bogged down for whatever reason that the most unique aspects of it don't have a chance to shine through. I'm going to go over why, especially when compared to other Shooters, that Destiny has kind of fallen flat on its face with my brother-in-law and me. [b]Problem One: Boring Weapons and Abilities[/b] The most interesting thing about Science-Fiction games like Titanfall, Halo, Star Wars, etc. is the fact that you can do pretty much ANYTHING with the weapons. You can have energy launchers, plasma cannons, acid launchers, explosive rounds, lasers... the sky is the limit. However, Destiny has stuck with basic ballistic ammunition for pretty much anything. The most unique weapons we have are the Fusion Rifles, and that's it. One weapon type, and that's it. So if we let go of the expectation of Destiny having unique weapons and we look at what it does have, are the ballistic weapons awesomely special? Not really. The Exotics in original Destiny were actually decent. You had the Vex Mythoclast which was basically an Auto Rifle that spewed energy blasts like a Fusion Rifle. Then you had the Necrochasm which would cause a ghastly explosion with an eerie scream when killing with a headshot. The Icebreaker similarly had rounds that could cause a defeated target to explode. Granted most of these are explosive effects, but it made things really flashy and fun. Looking at Destiny 2, we have weapons with perks like "Shoots faster and has a larger than normal magazine". ... Really? An extended mag and higher rate of fire is Exotic-worthy? It certainly doesn't feel like it! " may sound like an outlier with Sweet Business, but it seems to be the norm. There's a Pulse Rifle which does the same damage as normal Pulse Rifles but the first two hits are weaker and the third hit is strong, and most of the Exotic Armors are centered around managing ammunition. They're [i]boring[/i]! In a game about space wizards and strange alien armies, HOW could all the weaponry and gear be so terrible? Giving the weapons and armors a break, let's look at class abilities. They pretty much all have the same abilities: melee, grenade, and some form of jump mechanic (either jump-jets or double-jumping). The coolest ability is blinking as far as jumping goes, and the melee and grenade abilities are all pretty interchangable. There's the "Solar Grenade" type of weapons that are essentially like Poison Gas in most games, grenades that act like Claymores, grenades that act like Frag Grenades, grenades that act like Sticky grenades... see what I'm getting at? The grenades offered are pretty much the grenades you'd see in any other shooter. So that means that Destiny has to be directly compared to other shooters for gameplay because it's [i]not offering anything unique or original that can't be experienced in another game[/i]. When I can pick up Call of Duty, Halo, Titanfall, etc. and have the same experience as I would have on Destiny, why would I play Destiny? I know this section may come across as overly harsh, but my message with it is clear: Give Destiny 2 more of an identity rather than being that shooter with the goofy dancing emotes. When I put a shooter game into my system, I want something unique, original, and fun. If I want something super-hardcore tactical, then I'll play Rainbow Six. Destiny 2 feels like it's trying to be tactical and serious, but its visuals and its lore would do it much more justice if it was trying to emulate something more like Halo with strange alien weapons and technology. Everything in Destiny 2 feels familiar in the worst possible ways. It needs weapons that are unique and offer different styles of gameplay. It needs something other than grenades with a cool visual effect - something that's actually FUNCTIONALLY DIFFERENT. Heck, throw in more ways for characters to traverse the landscape quickly - speed the game UP! Make movement fun! Make it unique! Make it Destiny! Don't just copy / paste stuff from every shooter that's out there! [b]Problem Two: No Vehicle Combat[/b] I know that the lore points to humanity being on its last legs against the Darkness and stuff, but we get plenty of cutscenes with spaceship combat. We have Amanda Holliday spawning in tanks for us willy-nilly, and we have Sparrows galore. When I first played Destiny and reached the Moon, I jumped on a Pike and absolutely loved it. My head was filled with dreams of going against other players using Pikes, possibly outplaying them on their faster Sparrows and going against tanks... and yet that never happened. Sparrows never got weaponized, and the Pike was rarely seen in-game after that. The combat focused on infantry-style combat, and the vehicles were just shoved into the background as a means of transportation and one-off mission props. This is an area I think could really help Destiny a lot. One of the things that helped set Halo apart from other shooters is that many shooters don't really focus on vehicles that much. The games that do, such as Halo, Titanfall, Battlefield, etc. are the ones that end up usually being front-runners in the shooting genre. Why is that? Because vehicles are FUN, that's why! Some of my most fond memories playing Halo were when friends and I were all driving around in a Warthog together, or when I was dashing around the map like crazy through tons of explosion on a Ghost, or doing bombing runs with a Banshee. It offered variety and made the battles feel bigger than what they were. It also made each PvP match feel unique because you didn't know what you'd run into in terms of what the enemy team would do. With Destiny currently there's no vehicle gameplay (not really), so players have to REALLY like the infantry combat in order to get into it. With the "problems" I mentioned above with the weapons and abilities being really lackluster or very "same-y" when compared to other shooters, it means that Destiny generally has the same experience to offer players or less of an experience to offer players. Adding vehicles would give it something most shooters don't offer, and with the alien lore there can be a lot of unique vehicles that could be put in - I just feel like the development team isn't focusing on it at all because it isn't a part of the core game experience. (Continued below in the comments due to length...)