Friday, January 9, 2015

Why Destiny Both Succeeds and Fails in Terms of World Building: An Intro

Ask anyone who has played Destiny, and the majority of them will probably say it's a great game that they can't stop playing. In fact, Destiny was recently awarded the Game of the Year award for both PlayStation 3 and 4, in addition to Best Shooter from Game Informer. Of course, Destiny has its fair share of problems, but that's the case with any game. In a way, that should almost be expected with a brand new franchise that's largely still trying to discover itself.

The fact that it received the Best Shooter and Game of the Year titles is incredible. In terms of shooter mechanics, Destiny is rock solid. But beyond basic mechanics, perhaps the most important thing that Destiny needs to succeed is a rich, amazing, and fascinating world in which the game itself takes place. Unfortunately, this aspect of Destiny seems to be the one with the most rocky terrain. One can site numerous examples of both amazing successes and epic failures within Destiny in terms of world building.

Perhaps this shakiness is due to Bungie's relative inexperience in terms of massive world building. Sure, they created a captivating mythology in the Halo series, but since that series is a narrative-driven game with eight-hour campaigns, the world building didn't need to be very extensive. Or, perhaps it is due to the fact the Destiny is still in its infancy, having been out for barely four months. Whatever the reason is, the plain and simple truth is that the world building in Destiny can be seen as a paradox (like a few other things within the game). It is both good and bad at the same time. In this ongoing series of articles (at least as far as I can tell) which I will be calling "Destiny World Building Successes" and "Destiny World Building Failures" I want to take a look at specific cases where Destiny either fails or succeeds in this regard.

So stay tuned and we'll be looking at everything from NPCs, loot, lore, enemies, and more!

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