Destiny is fun but not as epic as advertised

For those familiar with the video game industry, the name Bungie carries a lot of weight. Bungie is the game studio that created Halo, a super franchise encompassing several sequels, books, and even live action and animated shows. With its latest release, Destiny, Bungie hopes to create a new franchise with less violence and a wider appeal. The game’s $500 million promotion and development budget gives it a good start.

In Destiny, Bungie once again takes gamers to battle across space on exotic planets.The game’s advertising tag line urges gamers to “Become legend.” Legendary seems a fitting description for a game that takes top quality, first-person-shooting action and adds role-playing elements. Destiny also features a recognizable cast of award-nominated actors—Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones), Bill Nighy (Pirates of the Caribbean), and Nathan Fillion (Castle). Even the trailer for Destiny features live action and top quality special effects.

But the game falls short in the story department and never really feels as epic as all the promotion suggests, although it still manages to be fun. Given Bungie’s investment and industry influence, Destiny likely will continue to grow, bringing players new content and challenges with future updates.

Destiny’s storyline begins in the far future when humankind discovers a being called the “traveler,” a large sphere on Mars. The traveler aided humans to explore and inhabit the rest of the solar system. Now it lays dormant on Earth after being attacked and finally fending off an evil called “the darkness.” Players assume the role of a guardian, whose job is to defend and save humanity from the oncoming darkness.

The setup is intriguing and interesting, but after the first several missions, the story falls to the background and only comes up in expositional dialog and in a few cinematic scenes. Destiny does make up for the lack of an epic story with a gameplay system of engaging and challenging missions and searches for new and better armor and weapons. The missions and gameplay can feel a little repetitive, but Bungie created a way to keep it fresh. Destiny is designed to bring people together—play can only take place online. Players often run into other players and can even help each other during heated firefights with enemies. Some missions require three players to team up. Players also can face off against each other in arena-style battles of capture the flag and team versus team in a non-story mode called the “Crucible.”

Destiny, available on Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Playstation 4, and Xbox One, is rated Teen for animated blood and violence. The dialog is clean, the violence is not gory, and all the blood shown comes from the aliens, an indication Bungie has ambitions of marketing this game to a wide audience. Following a trend seen in a lot of science fiction, Destiny’s “more advanced culture” doesn’t include positive depictions of religion. The only religious group in the game is the Hive, a primitive alien race that worships the darkness.

There is plenty to do in Destiny even after the end of the main story, and Bungie has already begun releasing additional missions and story content, with more planned. Destiny may be proof that with fun and well-balanced gameplay, an epic story is not vital to making an epic game. And since Bungie has always been engaged with its audiences, the story likely will improve as the company releases new content.