The longer that you spend in Destiny’s Tower hub-world, the more that you’ll quickly become accustom to its many practices and rituals. After being ferried into its courtyard the breadth of The Tower opens up in front of you, the opulent, regal decoration of its many expanses a far cry from the war-torn planes that exist beyond its borders.
To your right, the Cryptarch ponders the contents of another glimmering reliquary, deep in thought as he carefully twirls the hexagonal Engram on its axis. To your left, the Postmaster doles out fistfuls of faction rewards, each an impersonal, well-worn antiquity earned by right of killing in the name of a cabalistic sect. And directly ahead of you is the Bounty Board, home of the kill contracts and mission briefings that stress the need for a fighting Guardian, forever burdening each of Earth’s protectors with ceaseless purpose.
But the longer that you stop to gaze at the untainted sky that surrounds the Tower’s precipice, or sift through the inventory of the many cultured death-dealers that reside here, the more that the Tower’s alternative appeal becomes apparent. An impromptu football match in the foreground, a chance meeting atop the canopy of a tree, a dance contest within a starship loading bay…there are many ways to push back the Darkness, and roping your Fireteam into a choreographed dance routine is but a single one of them.
There is one other notable Tower pastime, though. Jutting out of the sides of its peak are horizontal antennae accessible only by hopping a guardrail and landing carefully, lest you plummet thousands of feet down into the slums below. It’s here where the photographers take their pictures and the distracted go to idle. It’s also here where you are at your closest to the orbit of The Traveller, never once being permitted to step into the city beneath its shadow and extend an arm towards its shimmering maw. For both in the context of Destiny’s lustrous universe and its story, The Traveller is but an unreachable figure on the horizon, a mythical vision at the heart of a fantasy based on hushed whispers and unanswered questions.
There’s little doubt as to the efficacy of Destiny’s aesthetic design. Every gilded hallway, every mountainous sand dune and every battered weapon stock has been crafted with a relentless attention to detail, built from the ground up as but a single piece of a galaxy-sized diorama. The worlds beneath the Destiny stars are truly things of beauty, and are just as evocative of the ages ills as they are the wonderment of any child who has ever dreamt of charting the cosmos. And rather aptly, each of the diverse planets that make up the games universe is perfectly capable of telling its own story. On Venus for example, an abandoned library lies at the centre of a derelict city, covered in the scars of a battle long since lost. Once a decadent hub of information for the academics of this fallen colony, it is now littered with Vex warriors, robots who skitter and jump through the very fabric of time, and who presently stand on the ashes of your precursors.
The sheer majesty of Destiny’s planets and moons implies much of what was lost and how bad humanities defeat was, but it’s here that the substance of the universe both begins and ends. For if you were to seek answers as to the specifics of the Guardian order, or the fate of planets beyond your reach, then you would be left wanting.
The Destiny story builds itself up as the telling of a tale that will propel this presently dormant universe back into life. A formerly defeated Guardian, you are revived and awoken beyond the perimeter of Old Russia, your only goal at present being to find your way home and make contact with the inhabitants of Earth’s last city. Things at this point are decidedly straightforward. You’re not so much a Guardian as you are the walking dead, and as such the structure of the Destiny plot demands the conclusion of the prologue before the blossoming of the rest of your legend. And as the figure deliberately plucked from the grave for this duty, as the Guardian forever inundated with the pleas of The Speaker, I think it’d be fair to assume that this is, in fact, my legend, and that my actions will have directly influenced the very fabric of this conflict.
The problem here is that, from the commencement of the story to its abrupt end, nothing in the Destiny universe changes, despite all of your efforts. There are quests to retrieve lost artefacts, and even return a corrupted shard of the Traveller back to its home, but neither these missions nor their counterparts across Venus, Earth and Mars ever have any telling effect on the universe. At the very start of your journey, The Speaker languidly paces his quarters, doling out fragmented information and specious reasoning in equal measure, never once plying meaning to our actions or validating our place within the world. We’re told of ancient places lost to the annals of time, places that although are visually breathtaking, are given little in the way of explanation. And at the end of it all, when the final bullet of our crusade has been fired, the Speaker remains sequestered in his quarters, still treading over the same footsteps, and still uttering the same aimless calls to action under his breath.
The shallow depth of the Destiny plot is only ever accentuated by the games mission design. Core story missions in Destiny segment action into bitesize chapters, littering events with unintelligible, poorly delivered exposition that conflicts heavily with the structure of the plot. Destiny’s problem in this sense is that it tries to tell a conventional story in an unconventional way, a way that fragments information, sullies any sense of progression and leads to a lot of crossed wires. By emphasising the need to progress as a character rather than as a vessel within the narrative, the story of the game is no longer integral, with the quest to attain the best gear becoming separate from the experience, rather than a part of it. And as this carousel serves as the crux of Destiny’s being, therein comes the much addled repetition factor.
The atmosphere permeating a Hive-ridden satellite structure or a darkened hovel teeming with Fallen helps lend a truly horrific slant to proceedings, but from the moment that your objective becomes apparent, the monotony begins to set in. You cull a few enemies, interact with an ancient device and then pivot, now having to defend against an ensuing counterstrike with your back firmly against the wall. You attack, defend and interact forever in succession, never breaking the hold of this repetitive slew of commands, and never completing a mission with the sense of satisfaction provided by truly igniting the dulled fires of the story. Your reward for completion is not knowledge, not further insight into the history of this big, hollow rock, but instead a piece of gear, a gun or a cape that bears far more significance in terms of this eternal conflict than The Traveller, yourself, and everything in between.
And really, that was Destiny’s ultimate impediment. ‘Become Legend’ read the tagline on the posters and at the end of the flashy pre-release trailer. If only it were that easy. My role in the Destiny tale was tantamount to that of a generic gun-for-hire rather than of a hero one day to be immortalised in book and song. I was a Guardian by name only, my actions full of conviction, but lacking in impact. For even as the galaxy around me brimmed with character and beauty, it could not save me from being forever trapped within the clutch of a cosmic mausoleum, devoid of understanding, and bereft of purpose.
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While I agree with your assessment of Destiny, I have to recommend that you put down the thesaurus and leave the flowery speech to theater.
"The shallow depth?" Really?
Here's to hoping they include a full story next time, that truly makes the player feel like they're accomplishing something meaningful.
Actually, here's to hoping Destiny 2 is a huge improvement in every respect.
I like the game. Gameplay wise it's great, environments are beautiful... however he story is too fragmented. The back anf forth to the Tower and Reef to pick up another story element is unecessary and break thing up too much (IMO).
I actually want cut scenes and not the fragemented bits with commentary. The lore and enemy types should be in game and not grimore cards. Hopefully they can build this into the game going forward.
"To your right, the Cryptarch ponders the contents of another glimmering reliquary, fascinated by the rage inducing results of exotic engram decryption."
Fixed.