Thoughts on the original Destiny
It's strange to think that a journey started for me in 2011 is ending.
In all honesty, the journey technically started well before that. In Halo: ODST, there was a cryptic sign that dotted the open world. On it was a simplistic diagram of the Earth, and a strange white sphere hanging above its surface. The tagline for the poster was simple, and prophetic, though we didn't know it at the time: "Destiny Awaits." It would not be until around 2013 when the poster suddenly made sense for me.
Fast forward to 7 July 2011 - 07/07, better known as Bungie Day. It was going to be the very last Bungie Day for Halo Reach, a game that had come out the year before and had very quickly become one of my favorite games for the Xbox 360, and one of the last I purchased for the old console. I had a hell of a time playing the game that day, but what really got me was that Bungie released a forty-plus minute video on their website called "Brave New World." At the very end of the video was mysterious footage of a game in the whitebox stage of development. Rolling hills, spinning fans, and endless mystery called for it.
I didn't know it at the time, but I was looking at Destiny for the very first time.
Looking back, it should have been obvious. Old Reach ViDocs show Bungie staff wearing shirts bearing the familiar Destiny tricorn and emblems of the Future War Cult, Dead Orbit, and New Monarchy, but without context they were meaningless designs. Still, something was afoot at Bungie, and it was something big.
For the next two years, the mystery of what was known to the community only as "Project Tiger" (a name given after a leak early into Destiny's development) drove us. It was only really the beginning. On 11 February 2013, the dam broke. Concept art, our first ViDoc, exclusive (albeit vague) information, and all the hype that could be physically mustered suddenly rushed into existence.
I was still in High School when Destiny was announced, and would be up until its release in 2014. I had grown up playing the Halo games, particularly Halo CE, 3, and the aforementioned ODST and Reach. They were games I cared deeply about, that had a deep emotional connection to me. I loved their universe, their characters, and dug deep into the lore at every opportunity I could. Destiny was a new mystery, a new universe, with new places and characters to meet and explore and understand.
To abridge the next year and a half of waiting, I was as excited for Destiny as one could get. I watched the ViDocs over and over, I read the Weekly Updates religiously, and I listened to the Bungie Podcasts endlessly. I must have been insufferable for my parents, but to me and my brother, Destiny was a dream game.
When September 2014 rolled around, I was just starting my Freshman year. I managed to play at some point before the Dark Below released, but at the time I could only access it during breaks when I was home from school. It would take until the Taken King for me to play it as often as I do now, but that didn't prevent me from taking up every waking hour at home playing it. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why I have so few bad memories and feelings towards the game - I simply didn't have the access to it others did. To come home and play Destiny was something I looked forward to, and my grades showed it, sad to say.
In any case, the rest for me is history. I played the game as often as I could, and I still do (though I like to think I have a better sense of moderation than I did then, but as I'm approaching a thousand hours spent in the wonderfully rendered world of Destiny, I suppose that might not be the case...), and after several abortive attempts over the years to start writing a Destiny story, I finally got the push I needed the summer before the release of Rise of Iron.
So, now that I've given a massive spiel over my history with Destiny, what do I think about the game now that three years have come and gone?
In truth, I'm not a game reviewer. What has been said by others more or less covers anything I could say, and anything I could say about the mechanics and the feel of the game has been said to death. Like many, I was disappointed with the lack of story with the vanilla game, but found myself playing the game day in and day out because the game felt so right. I don't think I've ever shouted so loudly in my life as when I finally killed Atheon the first time, and I certainly have never felt so confident in my skills when six hours of hunting Skolas in the Prison of Elders ended with the bastard going down.
Destiny, to me, is an experience beyond compare. I've come to know it inside and out, and I've come to love it, scars and all. It's a beautiful world, and even though I know my time with it is coming to an end, I still keep logging in to see if I can't get one more drop, kill a boss once more, and see a sunset in the Tower one final time.
To leave Destiny behind is going to be an emotional moment. The game will always be there, but I'm looking forward to the future that is in Destiny 2. There are new enemies to conquer, new experiences to find, new friends to make. I probably will not touch Destiny for a long time after 8 September, and perhaps that's for the best, but I'm always going to miss it. Few games have ever meant so much to me, and it is without a doubt the reason I keep coming back to it.
Destiny, to me, is like an apartment or a house that you're moving out of to something new. It wasn't perfect, as you didn't quite have the cash to get something truly exceptional, but working alongside your friends and family, you made something of it. Over time, you improved the flaws that were there, made a home out of it to call your own. You felt safe inside of it, happy, at peace. Even when it drove you nuts when something went wrong here or there, it was still home. Now, we're moving out of that first house, and it's going to be sad to see it go. None of us know yet what is in Destiny 2, our new house, but there's a certain adventure to that that draws us forward. All we can say for certain is that we will never forget where we've been, and that together, we can make a home out of where we're going.
So, in sum, I would like to thank every member of Bungie, past and present, for creating such a beautiful, fantastic game, the best I have ever played. I would like to thank the communities of r/DestinyTheGame and r/DestinyJournals for creating a vibrant community that - aside from the occasional content drop - has always kept the home feeling warm and alive. I would like to thank my readers, here on the blog, and I would like to thank my brother and the many people I have encountered on my journeys through the Frontier - you made the world alive to me, gave me the strength of an army to stand against the Darkness alongside, and plenty of laughs between one checkpoint and the next. Without you, Destiny would have been a much shallower place, too quiet than it ought to be. Together, we will continue fighting to create a better future for Destiny, both inside and outside the game, and we will always be bonded together.
Be brave, everyone, and I'll see you starside.
-The Farflung Wanderer
In all honesty, the journey technically started well before that. In Halo: ODST, there was a cryptic sign that dotted the open world. On it was a simplistic diagram of the Earth, and a strange white sphere hanging above its surface. The tagline for the poster was simple, and prophetic, though we didn't know it at the time: "Destiny Awaits." It would not be until around 2013 when the poster suddenly made sense for me.
Fast forward to 7 July 2011 - 07/07, better known as Bungie Day. It was going to be the very last Bungie Day for Halo Reach, a game that had come out the year before and had very quickly become one of my favorite games for the Xbox 360, and one of the last I purchased for the old console. I had a hell of a time playing the game that day, but what really got me was that Bungie released a forty-plus minute video on their website called "Brave New World." At the very end of the video was mysterious footage of a game in the whitebox stage of development. Rolling hills, spinning fans, and endless mystery called for it.
I didn't know it at the time, but I was looking at Destiny for the very first time.
Looking back, it should have been obvious. Old Reach ViDocs show Bungie staff wearing shirts bearing the familiar Destiny tricorn and emblems of the Future War Cult, Dead Orbit, and New Monarchy, but without context they were meaningless designs. Still, something was afoot at Bungie, and it was something big.
For the next two years, the mystery of what was known to the community only as "Project Tiger" (a name given after a leak early into Destiny's development) drove us. It was only really the beginning. On 11 February 2013, the dam broke. Concept art, our first ViDoc, exclusive (albeit vague) information, and all the hype that could be physically mustered suddenly rushed into existence.
I was still in High School when Destiny was announced, and would be up until its release in 2014. I had grown up playing the Halo games, particularly Halo CE, 3, and the aforementioned ODST and Reach. They were games I cared deeply about, that had a deep emotional connection to me. I loved their universe, their characters, and dug deep into the lore at every opportunity I could. Destiny was a new mystery, a new universe, with new places and characters to meet and explore and understand.
To abridge the next year and a half of waiting, I was as excited for Destiny as one could get. I watched the ViDocs over and over, I read the Weekly Updates religiously, and I listened to the Bungie Podcasts endlessly. I must have been insufferable for my parents, but to me and my brother, Destiny was a dream game.
When September 2014 rolled around, I was just starting my Freshman year. I managed to play at some point before the Dark Below released, but at the time I could only access it during breaks when I was home from school. It would take until the Taken King for me to play it as often as I do now, but that didn't prevent me from taking up every waking hour at home playing it. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why I have so few bad memories and feelings towards the game - I simply didn't have the access to it others did. To come home and play Destiny was something I looked forward to, and my grades showed it, sad to say.
In any case, the rest for me is history. I played the game as often as I could, and I still do (though I like to think I have a better sense of moderation than I did then, but as I'm approaching a thousand hours spent in the wonderfully rendered world of Destiny, I suppose that might not be the case...), and after several abortive attempts over the years to start writing a Destiny story, I finally got the push I needed the summer before the release of Rise of Iron.
So, now that I've given a massive spiel over my history with Destiny, what do I think about the game now that three years have come and gone?
In truth, I'm not a game reviewer. What has been said by others more or less covers anything I could say, and anything I could say about the mechanics and the feel of the game has been said to death. Like many, I was disappointed with the lack of story with the vanilla game, but found myself playing the game day in and day out because the game felt so right. I don't think I've ever shouted so loudly in my life as when I finally killed Atheon the first time, and I certainly have never felt so confident in my skills when six hours of hunting Skolas in the Prison of Elders ended with the bastard going down.
Destiny, to me, is an experience beyond compare. I've come to know it inside and out, and I've come to love it, scars and all. It's a beautiful world, and even though I know my time with it is coming to an end, I still keep logging in to see if I can't get one more drop, kill a boss once more, and see a sunset in the Tower one final time.
To leave Destiny behind is going to be an emotional moment. The game will always be there, but I'm looking forward to the future that is in Destiny 2. There are new enemies to conquer, new experiences to find, new friends to make. I probably will not touch Destiny for a long time after 8 September, and perhaps that's for the best, but I'm always going to miss it. Few games have ever meant so much to me, and it is without a doubt the reason I keep coming back to it.
Destiny, to me, is like an apartment or a house that you're moving out of to something new. It wasn't perfect, as you didn't quite have the cash to get something truly exceptional, but working alongside your friends and family, you made something of it. Over time, you improved the flaws that were there, made a home out of it to call your own. You felt safe inside of it, happy, at peace. Even when it drove you nuts when something went wrong here or there, it was still home. Now, we're moving out of that first house, and it's going to be sad to see it go. None of us know yet what is in Destiny 2, our new house, but there's a certain adventure to that that draws us forward. All we can say for certain is that we will never forget where we've been, and that together, we can make a home out of where we're going.
So, in sum, I would like to thank every member of Bungie, past and present, for creating such a beautiful, fantastic game, the best I have ever played. I would like to thank the communities of r/DestinyTheGame and r/DestinyJournals for creating a vibrant community that - aside from the occasional content drop - has always kept the home feeling warm and alive. I would like to thank my readers, here on the blog, and I would like to thank my brother and the many people I have encountered on my journeys through the Frontier - you made the world alive to me, gave me the strength of an army to stand against the Darkness alongside, and plenty of laughs between one checkpoint and the next. Without you, Destiny would have been a much shallower place, too quiet than it ought to be. Together, we will continue fighting to create a better future for Destiny, both inside and outside the game, and we will always be bonded together.
Be brave, everyone, and I'll see you starside.
-The Farflung Wanderer
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