Fortunate enough to have a copy of Destiny at the time the servers went live at 1PM yesterday, I quickly embarked on completing the prologue of the game for the third time. This time, at least, I got a trophy for my troubles.
However, it highlighted a problem for me, one of cold disassociation with the events on screen through a degree of over-familiarity. To me, it has an element of being busywork until I can get on to the interesting stuff, and in Destiny’s case, this could be something that’s particularly acute for its fan base as a whole, given the breadth of players that tried out the alpha test and the beta. I know people who have been through it even more times.
I mean, there’s nothing wrong with the prologue and the early missions in Old Russia. Far from it, they do an able job of introducing you to the universe, while leaving plenty of mysteries to unravel as you first do battle with The Fallen and The Hive. But having played all of this already, it’s likely that the majority of players will be simply trying to get through the missions and story as quickly as possible.
It certainly doesn’t help that I’ve been doing this on my own once more. Destiny is very much a game that wants to be played with two friends, and I’m looking forward to being able to pick up a pad and sink time into the game with Peter and Blair – for whom everything will be brand new. On your own, retreading your own footsteps once again, it loses a lot of the charm that captured peoples’ imaginations back in July.
For the gaming public this isn’t usually something that will manifest itself on the day of a game’s launch, though. It’s generally only by the time that you come to your second or third play through of the game that you know every beat that the game will hit, but even then, that’s usually after a lengthy campaign, so there’s a broader base to draw from.
Yet perhaps this is more down to my mentality with games. I always feel like I would love to return to something for a second play, whether it has cemented itself as one of my favourite games or if I feel like I might aim to get the remaining trophies, but I generally find myself moving on to the next game. I know there are some of you who have been through The Last of Us multiple times on both PS3 and PS4 to earn those platinum trophies.
Three of the trophies in Destiny relate to fully upgrading one of each character types’ subclasses. That means that if I want to earn that platinum trophy, I’ll have to go through that prologue another two times. Yet it calls back to the game’s underpinnings as an action RPG, and again, I know people with a stack of characters in Borderlands 2 with each character class, or those who have been through Diablo 3 what feels like seven or eight times. I might have been able to do this in the past, but now I simply don’t know how.
I do feel that it goes beyond that, even, through getting exposure to a large number of games prior to release. For example, I played BioShock Infinite’s first three hours at an event a few months before launch. While it left me incredibly enthusiastic for the final game, when I did come to play it, I had seen all of this before. Again, my desire to see what came afterwards pushed me through, but once I reached the threshold between the new and old, my will had been sapped. I’ve not been back since. The new games and experiences beckon to me much more brightly.
Destiny’s beta did an admirable job of selling me on the game, and it will have helped people to decide whether it’s for them as well, but I can’t help but feel that, for me, it has sapped some of the fun of exploration and the buzz of starting a new game and franchise. I hope to regain that feeling sooner rather than later.
Kennykazey
I’m feeling the same. I was very excited about this game, but after the beta it doesn’t feel like a new game to me anymore.
And now that I’ve gotten into Xenoblade Chronicles I just couldn’t care much less. Which is unfortunate since I’ve already paid a premium for the digital copy of Destiny.
chall5
simples, don’t play until release day
Starman
Genius!
bunimomike
Agreed. Article should read “How My Own Impatience Leads Me to Spoil Games For Myself”. :-P
Stefan L
But then, how could I possibly write about all these lovely upcoming games for you guys? ;-)
Bilbo_bobbins
agreed, bit of a stupid article really. you can’t moan about going through it after playing the alpha/beta.
Plus once you hit level 15 on one character, you unlock all subclasses for each character, so in theory you shouldn’t have to go through all the story missions if you don’t want to.
rSp8
It wasn’t so much going through that intro 3 times that annoyed me, but the length of time it took to actually be able to play the thing. Go to the PS Store, input the code for my upgraded Sparrow (only to find that Bungie had gifted me 1 for taking part in the beta), input the code for the Vanguard armory (only to find that it doesn’t appear to do anything), wait for it to download and install the patch, wait for it to install over 15GB to my HDD, watch a few unskippable credit/title screens and intros, then finally get to play!
wonkey-willy
i think the trouble with betas now a days is the fact that they are more or less the final product.the software companies give the “it give them time to iron out the bugs” sob story.
i remember going back to battlefield 3 and its beta.
a beta that was so piss poor and full of game breaking bugs that i thought to myself EA have got their work cut out here for the final code..
oh how wrong was I?the final game was just a bug ridden unplayable piece of shite.
i think a few people have said and quite rightly.
don’t play the game until its released.
Steelhead
I rarely replay games so plodding through Destiny’s intro again is a mild irritant for me, but I know there is a fair bit of untapped goodness beyond the first few hours so I don’t mind that much.
TSBonyman
I found the beta missions quite repetitive so the prospect of replaying them again doesn’t fill me with excitement. In fact the prospect of playing the game at all doesn’t fill me with excitement so i’m glad i had the opportunity to play the beta.
Now if i can just deal with this nagging feeling that i might be missing out on something.. :)
hol
I know what you mean after 3 previous ‘starts’ but I still couldn’t wait for the install to finish! After a year of mostly playing BF4 & Killzone, I’m ready for something new & I’m loving it. :)
Bilbo_bobbins
You don’t have to go through it all again. You get all subclasses unlocked for all characters once you hit level 15 with your first character. That means you don’t have to do the story missions if you don’t want to, I believe.
To be fair, you can’t really moan about going through the story again, its a beta, you didn’t have to play it and you knew you would be playing through that again anyway. A bit of a strange thing to say.
Either way I’ve had a great time in the first few hours online. I played with a couple of others on my friends list and it was great fun.