Military Sci-Fi Oddities: The DESTINY Franchise

A Long Time Ago in the 90s, in a gaming landscape far, far away was this little software company that established itself with a clone of Pong, Just eleven years later, this little Washington-based software company would released one of the most successful, celebrated, and beloved video games of all time: HALO: Combat Evolved. After selling over 6 million copies, the HALO franchise was born and it would be a juggernaut that rose to generating sales of 5 Billion dollars. In 2010, the last Bungie made HALO game would be released: Reach and after that, Bungie became all about the new IP: Destiny, while HALO was spun off to a new gaming studio: 343 Industries. From the September 2014 of Destiny (D1) to the current release of the Season 20 expansion called Lightfall for Destiny 2 (D2), many of fans and critics have regarded Destiny as an oddity, and as a former massive fan and weekly player of Destiny 2, I thought FWS should look into the oddity that is the Destiny franchise. 

My History with Destiny

I barely knew that Bungie existed until the November 2001 release of HALO: Combat Evolved on the OG Xbox, but once the gaming community got their hands on the game and the console, the magic happened. I came to HALO about 2 years after release after a home robbery left me without my PS2. I bought an Xbox and a copy of HALO: CE and became part of the faithful. Now, given that the HALO series were some of my favorite games, I was very excited by news of Bungie working on their next property and for years, some little bits of information flowed out until the first trailers and that banging live-action trailer with the Gods of Rock (Led-Zeppelin) pumping my excitement in total fangirl mode. 

I would buy the original Destiny in 2016 and then bought the Taken King expansion a little later. And damn! I did love me some original Destiny, but I wished the story and the single-player campaign had been much better. HALO it was not. I played D1 for nine months until I bought other  Xbox One games and I came to the original game here and there. When D2 came out, I was disappointed by the destruction of the tower and the direction taken. So, I decided not to get onto D2. Then, it became free-to-play (sort of) and I downloaded the game around 2021...and it took over my life and sank production on FWS to a crawl. 

But, it was a short road from enjoyment to pain with no safe word to protect you from that line between spicy and trauma. Soon, the endless lifeless grind was too much and the paywalls were too much. When the Lightfall expansion hit, I was done with the abuse, fueling me to finally buy Skyrim. Thus, finally allowing to get clean and sober from D2 and move onward. Presently, my relationship with D2 is mostly over. I get one once and a great while on Tuesday to check out if there is anything worth my Bright Dust, and most of the time I jump off and rejoin Aela the Huntress on a quest. To me, Destiny is nearly a dead game and a franchise with little future. 

The Oddities of the Destiny Franchise

1. There is a story...if you want it

While the story of Bungie's other two big franchise: HALO and Marathon, were layered into the game itself giving us gamers a world to fight for and within...and that sort of exists within Destiny. While D1 introduces us new lights to the world after the Collapse and the Last City, there is some much more that is given to us via these lame "Grimoire Cards". If you want to fully understand the universe of Destiny than you have to read those entries into the lore or watch several YouTube channels devoted to exploring the history of Destiny. However, if you don't want it that shit and just want to get down to PvE and PvP action than the story is just a few cutscenes. This is a sad element of Destiny and it undercuts the vast amount of work that creators did to forge the world that your Guardian fights for the light within. This lack of involvement and accessibility to the story of Destiny was a major disappointment to the fans of HALO and it creates a lack of identity for the game. 

2. The Amount of Loot/Gear/Weapons/Fashion in this Game

There are no games that I've ever played that has the amount of items for your character's personal armory, transport, and drip. D2 has a rumored nearly a thousand guns in the game with millions of combinations of perks for those weapons. Not to mention the number of shaders, ghost shells, sparrow vehicles, jump ships, and transmat beam-in effects. You could spend hours upon hours grinding for those wanted items or spending real money for an awesome bunny ghost shell ( I totally did this). Why is this odd? While games similar to Destiny have loot, guns, gear, and fashion...I've seen anything like this and it seems to consume the community with D2 being mostly a fashion game for that important drip for your Guardian. It also leads to the dreaded God Roll Fever...more on that down below.

3. The Dancing Guardians

In the marketing for the game as well as a major interactivity feature of the game is the ability for our Guardian warriors to dance and dance like there is no tomorrow. From NPC speech elements and other little pieces, we know that the dancing Guardians is an actually a canon element of their personality. It is so odd on much dancing and just down right odd behavior is present in the Guardians themselves. I wish there was more explored about the Guardians identity and culture in the game...but that would mean there would actually be a game there and not a cash grab by Bungie. After all, story is so HALO. 

4. Are We Space Zombies?!

We were dead. Our body was laying among the rusting car and the bones scattered outside of the Cosmodrome in Old Russia. While never said, it is assumed we were part of those attempting to gain access to the ships trying to escape off-world during the Collapse. Or we were protecting those attempting to escape by holding the line against the Darkness forces. When our Ghost found our dusty bones and began the process of our first resurrection, we may have been in the dirt for centuries. From that moment when we lived again, we were a space warrior that used the light of the Traveler to fight the darkness, eat Ramen, and dance like there is no tomorrow. But...who were we before we were a space zombie warrior of the light? Shockingly, Bungie never developed official lore for these questions of who we were before we met our end at that road in old Russia. This could have allowed for system similar to how we pick the background of our Shepard in Mass Effect.  It is odd to think that this idea was not expanded on by Bungie and it is also odd to think that our Guardians maybe a form of space zombie...? 

5. The Ships that go nowhere...

In some games, your ship is an important part of your identity, travel, strategy, and ability to fight as we seen in Mass Effect, Starfield, and even in Outer Worlds...but not in Destiny. The jumpships in both Destiny games are just a fashion piece that is only seen in orbit of a world or during transit to a world. Sure, you can pay or win many ships and apply shapers to the jumpships in D2, but you never see the inside, you cannot customize it, you cannot access your vault while in the ship (yet). It is a ship that goes no where and does little for the game. If you wanted to, you could just use the first jumpship given to you and that would be fine, which is so odd considering how important most spaceships are to most space-based games, but oddly in Destiny franchise, they are nothing more an computer wallpapers.  

6. The Failure of the Destiny Merchandise

When Destiny launched, companies saw the ability to jump onto a Bungie franchise on the ground floor and maybe reap the success and sweet sweet cold hard cash of HALO. Companies like McFarlane and Mega Bloks jumped with their own lines of merchandise and even Bungie had Destiny  themed items...but it all failed. While HALO enjoyed much success in the work of merchandising, Destiny oddly did not due to the story being hidden and the look of our Guardians are highly customizable. The toys of our Guardians are not what we see when we log into the game. I celebrate that those toy makers attempted to bring the world of Destiny to a playable scale or that we had plastic display pieces of some characters in the game. Also, I give Mega Bloks praise for bring an actual plastic Xur figure to the line. Bloody legends. The entire Destiny toyline just seems off somehow like other current video game toylines and yes, Lego Mario, I'm looking at you.  

7. People are Always There...

One of the odd things for me was the fact that there were real live human beings in the gaming environment at all times despite the fact I did not have Xbox Live. In the middle of my campaign mission, there were other Guardians dancing, being weird, and flashing emotes at one another. This is something I got used to, but it was an oddity for me that I was in a living world of other Guardians that did interact with me, even if I did not have Xbox Live, unlike when I am playing Skyrim. 

8. It All Takes Place in Our Solar System

Nearly all science fiction, ranging from literature to video games depict active spacefaring civilization that travel among the stars. Much more rare is those works that show a spacefaring civilization that are just contained to their homeworld solar system. One can consider the government of the 12 Colonies for BSG and the 'verse from Firefly, and the entire Destiny franchise. As I said, this very rare and odd. It is shocking that all of the action in the game and the entire Golden Age of humanity is isolated to the Terran system. Now, there were attempts just before the collapse to send humanity to exo-solar destinations like Kepler-186 and even the Andromeda galaxy via the Exodus Program...but we do not play within those environments. 

9. Farming for the God Roll!

If you are part of the Destiny 2 addiction...I mean...player base than you know about the addiction to the farming and grinding for the God Roll of a weapon or armor. I mean, damn Guardians be grinding harder than strippers on a Tuesday lunch for those fives and the Guardians, man, they love the Grind! Or do they? That is the horror of the weapons and armor in the game: the unholy amount of perks that alter a base weapon into trash or treasure. Adding to the misery, is that the "god roll" for a certain weapon or armor piece is subjective based on player style, build, what has been nerfed & buffed by the devs, and the game mode that the piece will be used in. 

There is no end to the addiction either. Players get on YouTube and LightGG every Xur Friday and Reset Tuesday to see if a God Roll piece of armor or gun is being sold or if one of the activities has a god roll weapon to farm or grind for. Hours of blood, sweat, tears, and Mountain Dew are committed to these holy quests. But, the grind...she breaks you and then you leave the life behind because it just too much. It is odd how something that is might to engage Guardians in playing the game is also the thing that breaks them from playing it. So, let us talk plainly about the abusive God Roll Meta of D2 and why you should be very careful of falling for the cycle of farming for the "god roll" gun. Within the D2 community there is a question that cuts through the entire player base like the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon: what is the God Roll for X Weapon?  

While there are many other shooter-based video games that have weapons and YouTube channels devoted to exploring and explaining them like RAINBOW 6, COD, HALO, and Counter-Strike...but there is nothing like the amount of guns and their vast variety in the two Destiny games. It has been estimated that there 600 base guns that occupy over a dozen categories with each gun (mostly) having five perk slots that further randomizes the rolls for each guns. It is estimated that each gun that has random roll perks can have over 5,000 variations. This means that there are millions of weapons in the Destiny games. Some of the perks work beautifully together to the degree that they are labeled an "God Roll" for both PvE and PvP environments. These God Rolls for a weapon in D2 are subjective and the weapon and  subject to nerfs and buffs to the perks themselves based on what the lords of Bungie decide. One season, that Funnelweb is a murder machine and then the next season is a water pistol of cold piss. Some exotic weapons do not have much in the way of perk choice, like my beloved murder machine, the Gravition Lance. 

This abuse and addictive God Roll Meta is one of the reasons for the high grind associated with D2. If you want that God Roll Firefright that Aztescross is rolling in the video and it is not being sold by the vendors in the Tower, then Guardian, you are grinding to focus those engrams and play those missions to hope to Cthulhu that the broken D2 servers gift you with that mystical God Roll...and then it sucks. Pushing this God Roll narrative (and addiction) is the D2 content creators. If they love a gun, for one reason or another, it will be seen through the gaming environments, as players bought or farm for that specific gun so that they can dominate. This pushes players to grind even harder for that one gun that could alter their gaming experience and transform them into the hunters and not the hunted to make Daddy Shaxx proud.

However, my dear Guardians, the mythical God Roll of a certain weapon should be take with caution. Your play style, build, and skill level can make a trash gun into a destroyer of souls or an amazing god roll weapons could be like wet pasta and everyone is take turns on you in the Crucible. Been there my fellow Guardians with the goddamn Suros Regime. For example, some months ago, there was a Cantana-57 hand cannon being sold by Banshee-44 that was called the God Roll for the gun by the entire D2 community. So, I got it and took into the Crucible. Not one fucking kill with the goddamn thing. Not one. So, I switched to my old trusty Survivor's Epitaph and made the other team rethink coming near my Huntress. Test your weapons and see what you like and what are good to you because one Guardian's God Roll is another's breakdown for Legendary Shards. Rant over. Oh, Sunsetting weapons is goddamn bullshit. Rant over...again. 

10. It is the Destiny that Bungie wants you to see...

I came to D2 very late due not wanting to play a game that wiped out the Tower and altered the world I loved so much in D1...then the game became free to play (Ha!) and I jumped in expecting to play the Red War campaign. I was wrong. Dead wrong. There is a limit to what all players of D2 can engage with and past content is not one of them. It is so odd that D2 is only the game that Bungie wants you to see and experience. You cannot play the Red War anymore, and for new lights joining the game, the only way to experience this is via old YouTube playthrough videos. That is odd and lame. Locked down from D2 players is the Red War campaign, Warmind, Curse of Osiris, and Forsaken. With the Final Shape (or Sale) coming out, Bungie put into place a system where you can play some pieces of older campaigns...but it is still not the full package and not as open to Free-to-Play Guardians (like me!). Destiny as a whole as issues with player engagement with their world and this lockdown of older content does not help. 

11. It is Running the HALO engine in 2023!

One of the major complains about Destiny in general is that game is still using the engine developed by Bungie for the original HALO game way back in 2001. This is often cited by fans and critics of the game for issues with stability and connection. The odd thing about this theory is that is it both correct and wrong at the same time. Destiny today runs on a modified engine developed by Bungie for HALO: Combat Evolved: The Blam! Engine. When work began on Destiny in 2008, portions of the game were tested in the Blam! Engine modified for HALO: Reach (my 2nd favorite HALO game). When it came time to actually program vanilla Destiny, the Blam! Engine was again modified into the Tiger Engine. This was named after some early concept art of the game that featured space tigers, who were going to be part of the original game in a early build. There was also going to be another playable race in Destiny that were a species of space tigers, but this was cut early on. We will see what the future holds for the Tiger Engine with Destiny.

12. The Much Rumored Death and Resurrection of Destiny

Since the first release of vanilla Destiny 1, there have been those that said that Destiny is a dead game and even I will say it here on this article. Over the course of the Destiny franchise decade-long existence, there have been lows and there have been highs. Some of these lows nearly killed the game, but like our Guardians, Bungie is able to resurrect the game. It is odd to be on the sidelines, mostly, and reading the amount of the chatter on the death of a game. There is an underline toxic hate for the game and the studio that few other developers have within their own community. If we look at the other Bungie franchise, HALO, for comparisons; it is blinding the difference. The core HALO games made by Bunge were all celebrated and not sad by the community to be the death of the franchise. It wasn't until 343 Studios took on the HALO mantle of responsibility that hole was dug by fans for the beloved franchise. While HALO 4 was okay and even good in some parts, HALO 5 was the kill shot and the entire franchise never recovered from that war crime and I don't think it will. HALO Infinite was a dead game on release and has never captured the magic of the original core HALO games. For Destiny, it was such a bad start that the foundations were never in place, unlike HALO. Where HALO could weather some bad storms until Hurricane HALO 5 knocked down the house and washed it out to sea, Destiny was always shaky and unstable. 

13. Will there be a Destiny 3?

With the dark and depressing news leaking out of Bungie HQ since October, the community has been wondering if the only way to save the game at large is to finally develop Destiny 3 after "The Final Shape ". Part of this reason for the need of D3 rests with the Light and Darkness storyline coming to its final end with The Final Shape. After all, there is alot of concern with what will Bungie do with Destiny after we kick The Witness in the balls? While this seems to be the most logically course of action for the game developer, it will likely not be the course that they will sail and that is odd...very odd. Destiny 2 is played out and the limping model of seasonal content is lame that does not increase player involvement and nor does the amount of paywalls within the game. To me, if D2 is the only answer for the future of this gaming franchise, that a Ghost could not resurrect it again. Without a fresh start with a 3rd game, Destiny is a dead game that some Guardians will interact with and many other will move on as many already have.  According to everyone with some measure of inside knowledge of Bungie, they are not working on a 3rd game. How is that player count Bungie? Yeah...

My Own Future with the Destiny Universe

The night before publishing this article, I jumped onto Destiny 2 for "The Season of the Wish" (I think Bungie titled that because they are wishing for answer to how to save Destiny) and I was rewarded with an experience that left me wanting something better. I do love Skyrim (first playthrough currently underway), but I miss the combat of Destiny. But I do not find D2 is just not worth it anymore and that makes me sad to another game that I loved go the way of HALO. I will not be playing The Final Shape and I will see how it ends via YouTube. I will see all of you on the streets of Whiterun.