As many gamers out there know, after completing their work on Halo: Reach in 2010, Bungie left to work on a new project. After four years of hype and anticipation, Bungie’s new series, Destiny, was released in 2014. However, for fans of previous Bungie series like Halo or Marathon and for gamers excited for something new and different, Destiny had a bit of a rough landing.

When Destiny was released, gamers were met with a very confusing and repetitive experience. Much of the content that had been advertised to the public was absent from the initial launch, such as further storylines including the Awoken Queen’s brother. What content was present was fun to play, but wasn’t explained well. Most of the story ended up being told in out-of-game Grimoire Cards that players would unlock through certain actions in the game and have to read on Bungie’s website. Thus the in-game story was very muddled and often times gamers had no idea why they were doing what they were doing. By the end of the main story, your Ghost asks you if you’re ready to “kill a god” and I know personally all I could think was “is that what I’m doing? Huh….” Even then none of the characters or story were all that particularly memorable beyond the “that wizard came from the moon” line from the beta that turned into a meme.

There wasn’t much of a post-game either. In order to level up beyond level 20, players initially needed to grind the same quests over and over again in order to get the loot necessary for them to level up. Not only was this loot very rare, it barely did anything to boost your level. When I finally beat the initial game and started grinding, beyond continuing to wonder why I’m doing any of it I would just be bored and want to play something else.

All this being said, Bungie really turned the first game around. I wasn’t present for the Dark Below and House of Wolves expansions since I didn’t buy the season pass and had no intention of continuing to play the game initially. However, a friend of mine convinced me to buy the Taken King edition of the game and I was shocked to find how different the game was. There was a greater emphasis on telling the story in the game, Cayde-6 became one of my favorite characters in any game, certain mechanics were changed to allow for easier and more rewarding grinding and loot-based level ups, etc. Year 2 of Destiny was a truly a different beast altogether.

Taken King was a huge addition to the series but Bungie didn’t stop there. They continued to add community events and extra content for free. This made up for a lack of smaller expansions like Dark Below and House of Wolves in Year 2. Each of these events was incredibly fun and consistently kept me playing the game. From there, Rise of Iron came out and, while not as big as Taken King, it continued to improve the Destiny experience for Year 3. It added plenty of new lore and characters and further polished the mechanics that Taken King brought to the table while adding some of its own new features.

Bungie has clearly taken all the feedback it’s gotten to heart and done its best to continue to support the game far more than most developers do for their games nowadays. Destiny has only gotten better with age and while I enjoy it, it still isn’t perfect. Despite its flaws, it managed to keep a good amount of its fan base invested in the game and even brought back a few naysayers like myself. With the promises that Bungie has been making about Destiny 2 and taking into consideration what a labor of love the original game was for the studio, I have no doubt in my mind that this new game will be much better than the first at launch. Destiny 2 stands in a position to be a truly amazing game by taking what worked in the flawed yet fun original Destiny and adding its own new flare to it.

 

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