ABSTRACT: I am going to take the long way around here, but I think this is a worth while analysis of Destiny and Bungie games in general. I will sum up the end with my thoughts on the future of this genre. Let me know if you agree. THE BACKSTORY: After Halo CE, Halo 2 was going to be completely amazing. Except there was one problem. You see Bungie is probably the 2nd greatest game developer in existence (right behind Blizzard cause they made Starcraft, Diablo and WoW). If you leave a good company alone and let them do their thing, great things like Halo CE happen. If you push any artist into a time slot with deadlines and PR and corporate mumbo, then you get Halo 2. Bungie sold themselves to Microsoft for a bunch of money, which they planned on using to create the next Halo. They signed a deal with Microsoft to launch Halo 2 with the new XBox 360. However, about one year beforehand, the E3 demo for Halo 2 barely even worked (watch Bungie's vidoc they released in 2011 (maybe 2012) on the Halo 2 fiasco). Most of Halo 2 was made after E3 (all done within about a year). Thus, the game was cut drastically short. Most of the story was gutted to get the game to ship. The game was never fully debugged before release. The saving grace of Halo 2 was the ability to update games on the new 360 with xbox live. The story line was a jumbled mess, but the multiplayer was terrific. MLG came into existence and life was almost good. I recently played Halo 2 through the entire campaign, and I remembered why I had only played it once before. On legendary, the game is tough, and then the graphics issues happen. At one point in the middle of the campaign, the graphics get so buggy, I almost could not see to kill the mobs and progress. Multiple graphics issues the likes of which you will not see outside of Fallout 3. But lets be honest, no one really remembers Halo 2 except that it had really awesome multiplayer and that it started the MLG scene. So Bungie bought themselves back from Microsoft, but at a price. Microsoft would not sell them back the rights for Halo. Bungie was able to sign on to produce a few more Halo titles. Then comes Halo 3. With all the time they wanted, and a pile of cast, Bungie released Halo 3. Halo 3 finished up the jumbled story that was cut out of Halo 2. All the bugs and graphics issues were resolved, and Halo 3 released as the best game ever. All was set right in the universe. THAT GAME CALLED DESTINY: That was a lot of Back story, so what does this tell us about Destiny? We know that Destiny was released on a tight schedule, that was set by the partnership with Activision (ironically Activision owns Blizzard). But what was the gaming community promised? Well, lets see, you had a combination of companies that combined had created WarCraft, StarCraft, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Call of Duty, and the Halo series. Essentially, the three best companies in gaming were coming together! What could be better (maybe adding Bethesda to the list)? What kind of game were we promised? We were told early on that this was be a first person shooter mixed with elements from MMO style games. I do want to point out that no one should have expected a full blown MMO. Bungie early on stated this was to be a shooter game with MMO elements. Most gamers expected a story line with the depth of Halo CE, the multiplayer of Halo and CoD, and MMO elements like WoW. Early screen shots and game demos were exciting, and showed a large world with a living environment to play in. We were told to expect to travel from Earth, to the Moon, Venus, Mars, and Saturn. A lot of story elements were presented in E3 demos and reports from early testing phases leaked that just helped build excitement for the game. I have friends who do not really care for Halo, and love CoD, and even they were excited about this game. I will dare say that Destiny was probably the most anticipated game in a few years now. Everyone was expecting a miracle, and it seemed that Bungie was promising to deliver one. However, Bungie seems to have forgotten the lesson they learned from partnering with Microsoft, and more importantly, from trying to hit deadlines. So what did Bungie deliver? THE STORY/CAMPAIGN: I am probably going to be the most harsh on the story. It was short, easy, and the reward for completing it was rubbish... absolute rubbish. The only reason I have for even playing story missions is because there is a daily challenge. What happened to the spartan challenges from Reach? What happened to the fire team survival missions from Halo ODST? None of these great ideas are present for some reason. The strikes and raids will be discussed later, since most people consider them a different topic than survival or fireteams. I expect they were lost in development because of time crunch. What we are left with in Destiny is probably the weakest and shortest story Bungie has ever produced. There seems to be almost no replayability. Also sadly missing from Destiny is any form of secret anything. No skulls to find that modify the game, no ridiculously hidden items, no retarded jumping tricks to find anything. I remember how long I played Halo 3 to get everything needed for Hayabusa Armor. And Recon Armor. And finding skulls in the campaign missions. But what does Destiny get right? Well for one thing, public events are probably the best idea I have ever seen. I don't know of any other game that does this. What about Patrol missions? They are fun. They get repetitive, but they are at least fun. Unfortunately, they really have no depth, and they do not tie into the campaign at all (from what I can tell). THE MULTIPLAYER: I am going to start out by saying just one thing..... custom matches. Where are they? Really, where are they? Don't even get me started with asking about where Forge went! The only thing I can really call the multiplayer experience is "safe". There are the usual safe game types, zone control, capture the relic, team death match, and FFA. No one is breaking any new ground here Copernicus. I think the biggest issue with the longevity of Destiny will be that there is no multiplayer community. There is no creativity to make odd game types, there is no creativity to build your own map layout, and .... yeah there are no custom games. The only saving grace with multiplayer longevity is strikes and raids. Oh wait, no voice chat? At least the community was able to scream loud enough for Bungie to modify this. STRIKES AND RAIDS: So here seems to be the focus of Destiny's community. Strikes are pretty basic, and offer some weekly challenges and as a path to get materials, weapons, and armor (lets not discuss that PSN gets more strikes than XBL, least I rage quit). Strikes can be a fun past time, but it seems that the real meat lies in the Raid, the Vault of Glass. I have played the raid a few times through. I have even done some cheesy things, like pushing mobs off platforms and such. In all, the raid is a lot of fun! It is difficult, but fulfilling. Oh wait, there is only one.... And, it took me at least 8 weeks (seriously) to build up a friends list using DestinyLFG.com to even get a group that could beat it. The lack of matchmaking in the raid is bad. At least the community was able to fix this. So how does Bungie fix a game that has a short story, a "safe" multiplayer, and just one raid? Add more stuff! Oh wait, you have to pay for that...... And lets not forget the real reason I am writing this ridiculously long post.... I CANNOT CONNECT TO DESTINY SERVERS. Yes thats right, I am here because I can't actually play Destiny right now. But don't worry, cause if you are on anything other than an Xbox 360, your good to go... or so I am told. But rest assured, Bungie tells me they are working on a fix as we speak. Probably another update..... which leads to.... UPDATE CRAZY: Why can't someone release a game now a days without a weekly update. As if I didn't have enough trouble hitting AT&T's max download cap on my own, Bungie releases a game that adds even more stuff to take up bandwidth, which, after all, means I can't play Destiny while its downloading.... Seriously, last week, I downloaded a 950k update EVERY DAY. Seriously, every day I played Destiny, I had an update. CUSTOMIZED AND UPGRADED: Thats how I like my characters. Fully upgraded and customized. I was most excited about this. I thought that it would be great if somehow my Halo character could be upgraded and customized. In this area, promise delivered. Wonderful game mechanics. Bungie nailed this. Perfect. CONCLUSION: Ok guys, really, don't worry too much about everything Destiny lacks. Time and experience have taught me that Bungie will put out some patches and make the best out of a bad situation (aka the Destiny Launch). The next game will most likely be what they wanted this first one to be. Just like Halo 3 corrected all the errors of Halo 2. My only fear, is that Halo 2 was saved by its multiplayer, and the advent of MLG coming along. Destiny does not seem to have any such saving grace. Multiplayer is fun and Raids are fun, but I just do not think that will carry the game two years. And now Bungie is letting people try out Destiny for free. I cannot remember the last time a Bungie game had to offer free passes this early on to get people to play. These seem to be indicators of a bad two years for Bungie. The future of MMORPG's is great. I just hope Bungie is still around.