Let's talk about Destiny 2 [SPOILERS]

I remember when I returned Destiny 1, I said to myself "maybe I'll pick up the game if it ever came out on PC".


I'm pretty sure I posted something about Destiny 1 back when I tried it out.  It was my friend's birthday and he said he wanted to rent Destiny 1 and blast through the story over the weekend.  He brought his PS3 over with a monitor and set it up right next to mines and we fired up the game.  Both of us had the expectations of an experience as unforgettable as Halo.  Sadly, our two days of blasting through the game was filled with a boring campaign, a convoluted story, and countless disappointments.  The thing I remember most was spending over an hour on a strike mission because we were heavily under-leveled and under-geared with my friend walking out of the room while I was carefully sniping a boss for over 45 minutes.  Still, we didn't regret playing the game since it was a long while since we played any games together.  I returned the game with little incentive to ever pick it up again unless it was maybe on PC.

And then Destiny 2 was announced to be on PC.  I pre-ordered the game with uncertainty and hopes.  After trying out the short open beta testing, I was impressed with the beautiful graphics, the humor filled-dialogue, and the smooth gameplay.  Playing through Destiny 2 with my friends, I felt that I had found the Game of the Year (GOTY) for me.  But I think I had a change of heart after I got to the end.

Destiny 2 prides itself for being an involving MMORPG Shooter, but suffers from the lack of end-game content that could keep me interested in the game.  I really like the game though.  Level designs are more reasonable, story is easier to follow, campaign is more evenly paced, there's lot of neat weapons to collect and use, and combat feels satisfying.  What I looked forward to most was the Strike Missions and Raids.  Strike missions are a lot easier than I thought they'd be and there are only about 5 of them.  Running them after a while becomes pointless because the rewards weren't worth the effort.  Raids are notoriously difficult, and we are always short 1 player from a full 6-man party.  When you get to max level, there's little incentive to continue playing because there's nothing to work towards and no new content to keep things interesting.  My main reasons for continuing playing now is doing the weekly objectives for a chance to get slightly better items than what I'm carrying or to create a new character.


I'm making it almost sound like Destiny 2 is a bad game.  It isn't.  It just didn't have the lasting appeal I was hoping from it.  Combat really does feel satisfying, boss fights are creative and challenging, and public events can feel involving.  I just think that I have to re-evaluate how I feel about the game being GOTY because as fun as it is, it lacks depth and content compared to some of the other games I've played this year.  I'll probably still continue to play Destiny 2, but I hope there's so fun and long-lasting content to enjoy in the future because going through what we have now over and over is going to grow old, fast.

A Weekend of Destiny and Composition in the Morning

This morning, I was woken up by my alarm clock and hit the snooze for an extra 30 minutes.  Within those 30 minutes, I had a dream were I was consciously composing a song in my head.  The melody and sounds of the piano, strings and horns were so clear that it resonated throughout my dream.  And I kept building upon it and heard it expand in my dream.  Then the alarm clock went off again and I woke up.  With that idea lingering in my head, I thought about it a second and realized I can still hear how I wanted the song to sound like.  After eating breakfast and starting up my computer, I quickly recorded whatever I had down.  I've had times where an idea or tune comes to mind either in my dream or at random times during the day; however, they're usually fleeting and I end up forgetting them by the time I want to record it.  It's kind of amazing that I remembered it this time around.  I got about 1:15 worth of music from it but feel too tired to continue expanding upon it just yet.  I was able to record everything that I had planned out in my own dream though.  For now, I decided to call the song "The Tune Within My Dreams" and it seems appropriate enough.  I'm hoping to expand it and use it in a RPG I want to develop in the future.  I thought I'd write about it right now so that in the future, when I finish it, I'll look back on this post and remember that the song all began inside my own dream.

So it's my friend's Birthday tomorrow and I wanted to treat him to dinner this past weekend.  Rather than just a regular hang-out, he had the idea of renting Destiny for the PS3, set up his PS3 next to mine and rush through the story together over the weekend.  I loved the idea and so we set off to finish the FPS-MMORPG together.  It took both Saturday and Sunday in order to finish.  The best way to describe our reaction to the game is that "we complained about the game the entire time we played, but it did have its moments."  There's a lot of things we didn't like and only a few things we did like.  So the game turned out to be rather disappointing for him, but kind of predictable to me since I've already seen gameplay footages of it.

This is what we liked about the game:
+ Some very intense moments of combat and boss fights
+ I liked some of the music
+ Certain abilities were really cool
+ Controls were tight and felt really good overall
+ The graphics were nice and the environment was beautiful

Here are things we complained about (as much as I can remember):
- From the very beginning to the very end, we had no idea what the !@#$ the story was about
- Every character in the game threw out random terms expecting us to know what they mean
- The game had no personality.  Characters were boring, story was confusing, and fights were generic
- Navigation was horrendous.  No in-game maps and quest beacon constantly needs to be brought up
- Loot is a rarity.  Very few boxes, enemies rarely drop them, and even bosses don't give any
- So much waiting.  Unskippable cut-scenes, drawn out dialogues, waiting for something to happen
- Among all that waiting is load times.  Loading the map, loading the next area, loading the menu
- PvP felt extremely unbalanced and meant only for max leveled and geared out players
- Most weapons felt useless and only a select few were practical
- Open-world quests are menial tasks and don't feel rewarding
- Some grinding is required to advance to the next story mission
- Even after you reach level 15 for the subclass, you have to level that class up to do any skills
- Strike missions take very long if you're under-leveled and under-geared. So more grinding/farming
- Most boss fights were bullet sponges with a LOT of infinitely spawning minions; very annoying
- The game wasn't very memorable

Despite all that, we didn't regret it.  It was a fun weekend and my friend hasn't played videogames in a very long time.  I think Destiny is all about gameplay and end-game content.  I can see how it can be fun doing the strike missions and all, but you'd definitely need some friends to play with.  I don't think I could have as much fun playing with random people online.