Before launching right into the game, the Destiny beta starts off in a character creation screen. In this screen, players choose their class (titan, warlock or hunter), sex (male or female), race (Human, Exo or Awoken) and other physical features. As I am not the most adverse at character creators, I only spent a few minutes creating my unique Exo warlock. Those interested in tweaking every little feature of their character to perfection might be disappointed in Destiny's focus on using preset features and colours for character creation; however it does keep players from spending an unnecessary amount of time in these menus and moves them into the action right away.
After finishing the character creation, the first cutscene plays setting up the conflict between the Traveler and the Darkness and the players' need to bear arms against the threat of the Darkness. The first mission starts as my character is resurrected by a Ghost (your character's robot companion played by Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage) and it plays out much like your standard fare tutorial introducing the core mechanics of the game. Considering you gain one level every mission in the early stages of Destiny, the four other introductory missions are very similar as each one introduces a new element of the game such as special moves, vehicles, public events and new enemy races. Once you complete the first mission, you are given access to the Tower, Destiny's social and non-combat hub. While at the Tower, players are able to view messages, buy new weapons, armour and ship upgrades, decode encrypted items, store items in vaults, take on single and multiplayer bounties and interact with fellow guardians. Exploring the Tower offers players a peaceful distraction outside the intense firefights of missions and multiplayer matches. The Tower is not the only place guardians are able to roam as players can explore each major setting of the game at their leisure. In these "explore" areas are loot caches to find, enemies to fight, secret areas to discover and side missions that come in the form of beacons to complete. Considering I did not get a chance to play the multiplayer portion of the beta, Destiny's open world areas are where I spent most of my time and I spent most of my time exploring Destiny's open world areas and they were a fun way to kill some time.
Although I am not a huge fan of first-person shooters, Destiny got its hooks in me. Even with the limited selection of missions and activities to do, I kept on coming back every chance I had and I believe it had to do with Destiny's excellent hybridization of expertly polished FPS gameplay with the empowering abilities and skills found in many RPGs. The gun play is very reminiscent of Bungie's entries into the Halo series as each gun has its own strengths and weaknesses in effectively dealing with different situations from long distance shootouts to up close and personal brawls. The RPG elements are excellently implemented as players gain levels independent of learning new skills such as hovering, draining health when using your melee or supercharged special moves. Gaining levels never feels like a grind because there are plenty of opportunities to earn experience through missions, explore mode, multiplayer matches and public events. Another impressive element of Destiny comes from the enemy AI. It floors me how well the enemies react to your tactics by moving from cover to cover, flanking when you are busy fighting another enemy or swarming when you make a mistake. Destiny's enemies are unlike the regular FPS grunts as they offer a considerable yet satisfying challenge for players of any skill level.
While I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Destiny, there are still a few issues I ran into during the beta. The most prevalent issues came with the side missions and public events in explore mode as I ran into far too many missions and events with the exact same objectives. The randomized nature of these activities is definitely a factor in this repetition, but Bungie should make a large enough pool of side missions and public events in order to avoid repetition of missions and events altogether. The other issues I found were more graphical glitches like a enemy teleporting through objects, errant collision boxes the level designers forgot to remove or stuttering during loading screens, which are not that serious. Hopefully, the beta helped the programmers and designers at Bungie find all the bugs and balancing issues needed to make Destiny a better game come launch.
Skepticism best describes my opinion of Destiny before taking part in the beta. Due to the incredible marketing might Activistion is putting behind it, there is no doubt that Destiny will be a success upon its release, but would it actually be live up to the hype is whole other question. The excellent quality of the Destiny beta has completely changed my opinion on the game. In a year with a significant lack of triple A titles, Destiny will shine brighter than any game on the market this holiday season, possibly challenging Call of Duty in sales. We will only know come September 9th if Destiny is the revolution in console MMOs that it is being hyped to be, but I do believe we are on the cusp of something special regardless.
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