This post is the first in a series of collaborative posts written by Jessica Maissonet and Lucien Wyatt. In it, we compare and contrast our wildly varying perspectives on the very same game, movie, tv show, or whatever we can’t stop arguing about that week.
This week, we’re addressing Destiny, and the many ways we all Become Legend.
Jessica: This machine gun needs to work, and it’d better look damn good doing it.
Some time ago, as we sat on a semi-crowded train on the way to visit family, I said to Lucien, almost entirely without context, “You know, I think when we play Destiny, each one of us is playing a different game.”
I mean, alright. It wasn’t entirely without context. Bungie had just dropped The Dawning event on our SRL-starved hands, and with it came a brand new host of weapons, quests and awesome story tidbits. Any opportunity for Eva Levante to troll the denizens of the Tower is a welcome development in my book, (and more to the point) worthy of discussion.
Anyway, Lucien’s response was something along the lines of:
“Yeah. You play it like Shooter. I play it like an RPG.”
It struck me at that moment that this assessment was not Lucien’s alone, but also Bungie’s.
Ask any year-one Destiny player, and my bet is, they will gladly confirm that Bungie’s initial recipe for an FPS and RPG hybrid was an unforgiving mistress. It jealously asked to be wined and dined with a lot of your precious time, and only made good on its promises on its own terms. (Or, if you were in it for the story, arguably not at all.)
By contrast, The Dawning and the last few expansions before it have demonstrated Bungie’s growing understanding of us as players. Maybe you want your game to be a jealous mistress. Maybe the challenge of conquering her makes it all worthwhile to you. Or maybe not. Maybe you just want to swipe right, seize your booty and keep it moving, wanting your game to do the same.
Either way, The Dawning confirms that Bungie’s got you.
If you’re in it for the RPG feel, get ready, because it’s about to get dark in these weeds. The Dawning has granted Zavala and Ikora Rey some pretty awesome quests for you to embark upon. And for your trouble, there are a ton of rewards, including [SPOILER] the Abaddon and the Nova Mortis. Solar and void counterparts to the Thunderlord, which deliver everything you could ever want from exotic machine guns.
Speaking of which, would you like to know what’s in it for you if you’re in the “Play it Like a Shooter” camp for this particular quest line? Well, I’ll tell you: COOL ASS LOOKING MOTHERF**ING MACHINE GUNS THAT WILL DEMOLISH ANY FOUR-ARMED MOTHERF**ER DUMB ENOUGH TO BE IN FRONT OF YOU, that’s what.
And then of course, there’s SRL. Because regardless of your play style, if there’s one thing we all want is to go fast and be first. The Dawning brought us two new tracks, streamlined racing gear (that doesn’t bring down your light level,) and like all awesome gifts, we get to keep it.
That’s right, at its end, The Dawning leaves us with Personal Matching, which allows you to set up custom Crucible match-ups, and includes Sparrow Racing, provided you can get a few buddies together.
So, do you play Destiny as an RPG, or like a Shooter? Maybe you’re not into labels or mistresses, and you love Destiny just the way the Traveler made her. Either way, we’re on this train ride to the end.
Lucien: What if I told you that your machine gun did get nerfed in the last update?
Therein lies the infinite conundrum for me. As I struggle to invite her to all of the raids, all of the weekly chalenges, and the activities of our brand-new event, a realization creeps upon me. Why, I ask myself, as much as she notices, is there still so much more lying under the hood, eagerly in wait for the discerning, and the hardcore? If all she sees the Matrix, why am I the one combing all of the descending green code? Bear with me moment, and let me explain what it all looks like to me:
As any Destiny guardian going on three years will tell you, the pursuit of rewards is that above all else. Don’t get us wrong, this wasn’t a willful ignorance of everything the game has to offer, but a visceral reaction to the relative lack of story Bungie provided for its space saga’s main missions. Usually, the obsessive concern over stats and special loot comes late in an RPG’s lifespan. For Destiny, it’s practically the narrative for many guardians sharing war stories. Some players may see new weapons, but I see damage ratios and optimizable perk trees. You may squeal at the presence of any Exotic drop, I see an entire tactical shift that I’ll need to work around in order to accommodate it.
So when The Taken King expansion came about, I saw first and foremost the massive changes made to the game’s light system, and the huge boon for customizability after levels were no longer directly tied to Raid gear. A change to Legendaries had me feeling the sting of no longer being able to rely on my hard fought Raid guns, and the eradication of my arsenal of choice up until that point (RIP, Vision of Confluence and Fatebringer). When Exotic weapons were finally declawed and became special one-offs instead of the rule of play, the game changed for me entirely. I had my reservations about my weapons becoming obsolete, but seeing the Dragon’s Breath dispense volatile flame canisters instead of Solar Flares more than made up for it in a tactical sense.
Even when SRL came about, there were people who were confused at the presence of a racing game in their shooter. What did I see?
I saw a wipEout-esque tribute built into what was supposed to be a side activity, and the inherent advantages that playing racing games offered the more eclectic gamers in this shoot-em-up climate. I witnessed a throwaway mechanic that served no purpose other than helping players speed through some of the larger environments, and watched it evolve. Suddenly, cornering and maintaining absurdly high speeds WAS the point of a Sparrow, not the exception for players looking to make their umpteenth trip to The Forgotten Shore more interesting. The addition of tricks to maintain your speed kept the SSX-lite visual feedback at an all time high, and for those who purchased an (optional) Record Book, a suit adorned with flashing Christmas tree lights dominated the tone of the game for a solid three weeks. If you’re reading this, and are a Destiny fan, I hope you didn’t miss it.
Rise of Iron continued the tradition by adding even more weapons, and activities, and even if it were lighter on content than anything prior, it still left it’s mark by giving an entire area a fresh new coat of paint, as well as an existing alien race getting a makeover. For a game that is heavily reliant on repetition—playing events repeatedly, modifying challenges and remixing the rules in order to keep levels fresh—these expansions were necessary, and more than welcome to those of us scratching at the walls and subreddits for any new bit of information. Destiny has stumbled here and there, but I would be remiss if I didn’t say Bungie was a great sport though it all, even amidst the widely-reported turmoil the company had gone though.
Part of this is because it’s simply a -very- well made game, and because of that, it’s very easy to love on that level alone. The guns look great in action, and feel tactile, with a real sense of weight and impact. The controls are smooth and boast one of the most intuitive layouts a console FPS could have, given the wealth of tactical options available. Though it definitely has roots and very valid criticism in being an overly repetitive grind, the game in it’s current state feels more like a hobbyist activity to indulge than a begrudging slog, and those of us who looked underneath the hood were rewarded for their patience in watching an admittedly new concept grow and mature. (See The Division on how to actually do this the wrong way.)
The fact that it was so flawed at first, and yet so deep in the areas that mattered is exactly what made it endearing, and kept us returning to craft our own experiences out of the foundation. When events like Crimson Doubles come about, they aren’t always perfect, but they do stretch the concept to new levels and add value to a game that proved more malleable than it initially let on. The Dawning by extension, was the culmination of all that came before it in previous events and then some, making the game all the better for it. The all-encompassing approach they’ve adopted here, one that takes pains to be all inclusive while remaining just deep enough for those searching for it is a balancing act to be sure, but one Bungie’s proven capable of pulling off, nearly three years after release.
That means whether you’re me, a player with three maxed out characters waiting for the new Age of Triumph expansion to bring even more to the table, or Jessica, a career Warlock who carefully balances her combat effectiveness with her fashion sense, making heads or tails of our approaches is irrelevant. What really matters is that we’re in it together.
(Festival of the Co$t 2016 was still a disaster though. Don’t do that again.)
