Does Destiny Suck?

For nearly the last month the only game I’ve played is a small independent release called Destiny 2. In this game you shoot aliens, collect shiny guns and fashionable gloves, then participate in a ballin’ space frog’s idea of the Olympics to prove you deserve his vast stores of knowledge. Those things are what everyone who plays Destiny 2 will agree upon. The rest, well, nobody can seem to agree upon, up to and including the simplest question of all: is this thing any good?

This is really nothing new. Ever since the original Destiny was in beta nobody could agree on whether the game was good or bad. The shooting is certainly tight, this is one thing Bungie has never gotten wrong, but the game was such a grind that even having enough light to simply enter the first raid was a hurdle many players could not leap without 40 hours of play. As that game went on, added DLC (especially Taken King) it grew into something that everyone could accept was good. In places. Most of the time? Who am I kidding, nobody agrees about anything Destiny. But with the release of Destiny 2, I think we have a better grasp on why.

Destiny 2 is, largely, a streamlined Destiny. It attacks some player’s problems with the first game, for instance; having to grind for the ability to re-roll ‘perks’ on each gun to optimize them and segregating the player base by light levels that can only be reached via the most difficult and time-consuming tasks in the game. The problem here is that, to the other portion of the player base, the portion that did not stop playing Destiny between DLC drops, those things were the main reason to play. By ‘fixing’ Destiny, Bungie actually made it much worse for some other people who play Destiny.

This isn’t Bungie’s fault. It’s nobody’s fault, really. Destiny is a game that is made in such a way that it will never please everyone. The approach being taken here seems to be that it is better for everyone to like some of Destiny than for some people to like all of Destiny. I can understand the business model, but it also means that every single person can find something they hate about it, too.

Bill Simmons has worn out his welcome about 1000 times over, but he sometimes says something useful, and I think one of his Bill-isms explains the Destiny phenomenon quite well. The ‘Russell Westbrook’ is when someone is 95% amazing at their sport, but the other 5% is so glaringly bad that it’s all anyone talks about regarding the player. So, despite them being fantastic overall, the majority of coverage of them trends negative. That’s the situation Destiny has always found itself in. It’s far too good for people to stop playing or talking about it, but the things it does wrong are so obvious, and different for each person, that it seems to be all people talk about. Even while I am playing Destiny I find myself talking to people about its failings.

I can list so many things that frustrate me about Destiny 2 right now. They still haven’t fixed the incredibly annoying glitches that plague the final boss in the Leviathan raid. Well over half the exotics you can acquire are awful, useless, or both. Single-use shaders, guys? The level cap is 305, and the prestige raid doesn’t allow you to go beyond it. Trials and Iron Banner are both just normal multiplayer matches now. This is all right off the top of my head!

Why does this bullshit exist

And yet. And yet. I have played this game for over 100 hours now. I like it a lot. I plan on continuing to play for the foreseeable future! And the reason why is the answer to the title of this post: No, Destiny does not suck. Destiny is great. If I ranked it on a scale of 1-100 I would give it a 95.

But man… those 5 points it misses.