Feather
After playing games on the 3ds or even the WiiU going back to the One is always a bit of a shock in graphic quality. Destiny is no exception and in fact has some of the most stunning environments to date. One of my favorite things to do is to find a high point in the tower and stare out at the Last City and Traveler and watch as the sky changes as time goes by.
The world, or at least what we can see, is just as well done. Clothes and hair have physics, light is refracted on shiny surfaces, and the cut scenes are easily movie quality. All in all, what we have is amazing in quality. It is by far leaps and bounds better in quality and design then their epic game Halo, though to some extent it is because today's technology (this of course doesn’t count 343’s updates in graphics over the last few years).
Now, up until the news released on their newest DLC House of Wolves, I had a big problem with their armor variety. Mostly because of its limiting choices and their narrowing looks as you climbed the ranks. After Crota and achieving level cap, I was ready to flip the table, because to me it said “Congratulations, you now look exactly like everyone else in your class!” Apparently to achieve the highest rank you must conform to the masses.
Thankfully this has been fixed with their newest DLC, and I commend them on that point. Customization is one of the biggest things to have in games for the art score. Customization is one of the things players have a real choice and impact on, many people may argue that this is not too important, but to me being able to create my own character is a major selling point on whether I buy the game or not, and if it looks good, then even better.
Fang
This of course brings me to the problem I have seen occurring in the art style of Destiny. There is no real problem with what they have, but rather there is a stunning lack of it in areas. Now as I've said before, the game is very eye appealing, but I've noted a bit of a showstopper for some people is the lack of options. I spoke of customization before, and we all know that armor customization will now be much better in the near future. That still leaves other things though, and after speaking with different gamers, here is what has come forward.
Guardian marks are a cool, tiny things that do nothing for your character except makes one feel badass or complete. Hunters have cloaks, Warlocks have armbands and Titians have sashes. Class differences check, but here’s the thing, right now, each mark only has about 8-10 different styles and designs. Not only that but most of the easy to pick up ones are boring and once again, everyone has one. So what do we do? We go to the Speaker and raid his stash of super awesome, can’t get anywhere else marks.
But wait, aren’t these the same ones they had last week?
Speaker: “Nonsense! These are all new!”
“No, two of those cloaks were here last time and the other was here no long ago; you just shuffled them!”
Speaker: “I know nothing of what you speak.”
As it is there are about five different designs for each class mark that you can get from the speaker. Not only that, but in some ways even those don’t have much of a verity. For example, let’s take a look at Hunter cloaks: we’ve got, hawk, falcon, snake, two wolves, and two skeletal deer.
This problem can also be seen for other things in the game. A complaint I’ve heard a lot is for ships (once again there seem to be only about a half-dozen different designs that are then taken apart and randomly put together) and sparrows. Your stuck with the color you get, so you better like it! I love my ‘little light’ ship but I’m not a big fan of lime green. There have been rumors of ship and sparrow shaders in the past, but so far there has been no concrete proof.
Now I mean this as nothing more then what I’ve seen. I have faith in Bungie and I hope with time, that these things will be made better. After all they fixed the armor problem. This is a new game, some would argue that it is still in Beta, but the truth is it doesn’t matter. They don’t call it a Beta Destiny, so people have to look at what they get and hopefully Bungie will listen to what fans have to say. Customization Bungie, customization.
Feather
It is a tale of what had been, what we have achieved, and then, what we lost. In a world where our safety is at risk, we venture forth to stop the encroaching Darkness, not even fully understanding what it is.
It is an epic story of good versus evil, with a single straight story line and interesting characters. You hunt the Darkness, following clues left behind by dead guardians and ghosts. You follow the instructions of a mysterious hunter who appears but never reveals much. It is your destiny to fight this evil and protect the Last City, hoping and waiting for the Traveler to recover.
The story is captivating enough to pull people in and keep them interested through the entire campaign. It keeps you wanting, waiting for more answers as you travel through the rubble of lost worlds and destroyed achievements.
My personal favorite, as I’m sure it is for most is Ghost. While he has no face and is an AI, Ghost is one of the most captivating characters in the story. His remarks are witty, his “expressions” are somehow amazing and make me smile and even his constant annoyance that people can’t seem to call him what he is (instead its “the ball” and “little light”) is quiet amusing.
Now is this fact, that a side AI character is the most interesting, really a good thing? I’ll leave that for you guys to ponder over.
I would also like to commend Bungie for their choices in reference and inspiration. Borderlands’ style seems to be a big player in the game’s mechanics and the Dark Souls series seems to have influenced their story. I’m a big fan of the Dark Souls games as their stories are amazingly done and the fact that they left fans to come up with filling in the blanks for plot holes (while still giving us enough information to make good inquires) is a very different way of going about things. The mentions of key parts of Dark Souls showing up in Destiny is a fan-cheering find that made me very happy.
Praise the sun people, Praise the sun.
Like many I grew up playing the Halo series and adored it. I was only twelve, in fact when the first one was out. I was at the time, awestruck as I watched my brother playing it. I soon found myself playing it as well. The world of Halo is amazing, expanding from games to books and then back again; creating a 3D world that one can truly sink their teeth into, even from game to game. The characters are timeless and not just Master Chief or Cortana, for me Sargent Jonson and the Arbiter (still hoping for his own game…) were just as good.
Perhaps, this is why Destiny took such a big fall in book. Maybe I was expecting too much, maybe I had put Bungie on a pedestal too high to meet with a new title. Either way it was horrible let down with Destiny’s story.
Anything good about it I have said above and I’m afraid, that is truly all I have to say that is good about it. The story is lackluster at the very least, leading the player forward on table scraps and promising a big show stopper, which fell flat. While the prospect of the game was intriguing and the “good vs evil” is always a good pull, the bulk of the games story felt unfinished and unoriginal in almost every aspect. It is true that an original is almost impossible these days. Most ideas are a spinoff of something old, but it’s the way one spins it off that truly makes or breaks it.
Before I dive any further though, I would first like to say this: Bungie you have an amazing start and a good Solid game. I love Destiny, truly I do and if I didn’t I wouldn’t be writing this.
Now that I’ve made that clear let’s get down to the gritty stuff, the content, or rather should I say the lack of content?
Blunt, I know and it is hard for me to say it. The story is just too vague, there’s too little to work with to get the story across the only things we really know about the world are what I basically already covered. Now I get that this is a long project and that they plan to add more to it, but you shouldn’t need to add more to just get a cohesive story across.
Lets take the Speaker for instance. He has an important role as he talks for the Traveler, yet you only ever speak with him once in a cut-scene and then hear him talk briefly at the end of the main story. Besides that he only sells marks and that’s it.
The guy doesn’t even have a name. He has a title, but that is all we know of him in game. If he’s not going to be a big part of the game, why have a cut scene with him though? Normally this means they are important and that you will revisit them over and over and not just to turn in quests and buy stuff. The guy simply needs more meat, as do many of the other characters.
I could talk hours about the Stranger, but I won’t. I’ll just say this: for a key character in the game we know next to nothing about her. While that’s okay, I found it a bit annoying that none of the DLC so far even mentioned her. They instead gave us a new NPC. Safe to say if they continue to ignore the Stranger, then I will not be happy.
All of this is very sad to me, seeing as they said it was like Dark Souls with story content. I can see that they DID indeed try, but they missed the target. Having key points about character and history in items is an interesting way to go about it. The problem is that with a game like Destiny, where items are given by chance and some are only for certain classes. This means no one person is likely to find a story without having to really try.
The content is told in random segments and doesn’t cover enough, I will admit that this is a fine line. To get my point across. Let’s look at one item from Dark Souls and one from Destiny. The Alonne Captain helm in Dark Souls, worn by a normal mob in one area says this:
“The accouterments of the Alonne Knights, who served the Old Iron King, were created with an advanced crafting technique. They remain solid and handsomely crafted. The design is styled after the armor worn by an unusual knight who trained the Iron King's men in the sword. He was said to have deserted his liege after bearing witness to his descent into depravity.”
What does this tell us? It tells us a piece of the area’s history. It tells us of a man who trained soldiers in the way of the story and served his king. It says that at some point the king fell into depravity and the Capitan couldn’t stop it, so he left, leaving the kingdom to fall. Even after all this time the men he trained lived on in suits of armor still doing their job.
Now let’s look at an example in Destiny, the Titian helm, Battle Cage of Kabr:
“Kabr fought the Vex alone. But somehow they didn't kill him.”
Why do we learn from this? There’s a guy named Kabr who fought the Vex and died at some point. He was a titian… yeah and that’s it. We don’t know who he was, why he did it, or even why he was important. We assume he was because they named a helmet after him, but again that is it.
Yes you can go online to read the Grimoire cards and learn a tiny bit more, but let’s face it most gamers are lazy. They don’t want to sift through information to just to figure things out. It would have been better if the Grimoire was in the game, but its not and even then it still doesn’t explain much.
They missed their mark, which is saddening, but this could still be fixed if they wanted too. I suppose that’s up to them, but either way it’s not up to par with Dark Souls. The references are still nice, but just lacking.
The lack of story references is a somewhat small thing, but it bothers me because it feels like Bungie was uncreative. Halo was amazing as I’ve said before, the names of things fit so well. What else would you call a parasite that multiplies so fast and eats everything and comes in swarms that won’t stop?-The Flood. There is nothing else it could be called. But the Darkness? Are you kidding me? How many books, games and movies call the unknown evil “the darkness”? I was hoping it was something that would be discovered and changed in the story but it appears not to be so.
Other names are very similar, and are actually repeats from Halo and not just once, but on several occasions. It could be a nod to their first game, but if they wanted that they should have maybe had one item that could only be bought for a short time. Having large characters and such being named the same just feels…lazy and I know they could have done better. It might just be me and it’s not such a terrible thing, but I have listed a few of them bellow, if only just for giggles.
Also, while not necessarily a bad thing, there is a very distinct similarity in color and shape with the Invective shotgun in Destiny and the Forerunner shotgun in Halo 4, which Bungie didn’t have a part in.
With this I have covered all that I feel I can cover right now. All in all I believe that this is a good start, but it has room for improvement. I hope you all enjoyed my review and I’ll see you next time for another FeatherFang Art and story review. Be sure to look below for scoring and related fun!
For Lore and things you might have missed, be sure to check out TerraMantis on YouTube, he does a really good job.
For fan created songs, check out Miracle of Sound’s Cataclysm as well as JT Machinima’s Legends.
As always all content belongs to their respected owners and I take no credit what so ever.
Bungie, his has to happen, you know it does!
(Photo manipulation by FeatherFang, content Copy Written to respected parties.)
