By BENJAMIN FOX
Student Writer
Bungie’s latest foray into the gaming world, Destiny, has not lived up to its massive hype.
Bungie, the gaming company responsible for the original “Halo” trilogy, has recently released its most ambitious project yet, the hybrid massively-multiplayer-online first-person-shooter known as “Destiny.” While the game itself has been in development since 2011, buzz was first generated back in 2009 when Bungie put an Easter egg for the game in “Halo 3: ODST.” And with the first public details about the game being released in November of 2012, it’s easy to say that all gamers were impressed with what they saw. However, weeks after its release, those gamers are quickly changing their minds.
Leading the Game Developers Conference in March 2013, Bungie gave key quotes about their new project, such as, “Destiny is Bungie’s next great action-shooter, set in a persistent world that you share with other players” and “Your job as a world-builder is to make the audience curious. To give them just enough information and detail so that they can fill in the gaps with their own imaginations.” But it seems these quotes pertaining to certain content within the game are being held up to the upmost scrutiny.
Upon launch, players were unable to attain a social link with other players without messaging them first, this is in an area which is designated to be the social hub of “Destiny” itself. Any gamer wishing to tackle missions in a group would have to go out of their way in order to do so. Bungie has since produced a press release stating that these social aspects would be integrated into the game, but with a price; that these changes would be implemented over the next year. While a patch to the game certainly fixes things in the long run, it is essential to question why Bungie had not fully implemented these things in the beginning, especially if such social aspects were promised to begin with.
Social media sites like Twitter and Reddit have certainly helped Bungie hear their fans, but one issue seems to be continually pushed off to the side, the idea of more content.
After you beat the story of “Destiny,” there is very little in the way of content at the end. The story can take most dedicated players a few hours at least to beat until hitting the level cap. In gaming, hitting a level cap means that your character cannot progress any further and is at the pinnacle of his abilities. In “Destiny,” after this is achieved, there is nothing more for a player to do aside from the multiplayer aspect of the game and the continuing rehashing of story missions dressed under new ideas.
“Destiny,” in the eyes of the gaming world, has not lived up to its hype, and the gamers who have bought and played the game at launch are being sorely disappointed by something that was supposed to be a legendary game.