Talking about what Destiny was meant to be back then seems mandatory when speaking of the game itself, and how couldn’t be? This was Bungie’s new baby, THE Bungie that created one of the most prolific shooters in all of videogame history, jumping onto not only a brand new IP, but what was meant to be the ambassador of the ‘’next-gen’’, a console exclusive (in the most literal sense of the word to this very day) that supposedly would redefine a new kin of MMO, a more welcoming, smaller scale one, but that also kept all the spectacle and fun of the sci-fi shooter genre. It didn’t matter what TV channel you were watching; you were bound to see AT LEAST one ad with Destiny as its main focus, the marketing bills must have been off the fucking charts for that one, it was insane. Talking about all this and what would happen after is, under any eyes, the only sensical approach, something so intrinsically related with the final product, whenever it wants it or not, that you can’t look the other way; the story practically writes itself.

Today I have a different story.

Back during the 2000’s and early 2010’s, my father liked videogames, and by that I mean he REALLY was into gaming. At first he never really had much of a interest for them aside from trying out some arcades back when they still were a thing in my hometown and playing on his friends’ personal computers and Ataris from time to time when he was a kid, at least from what he told me; by the time 90’s rolled around he believed that was a train he wasn’t meant to catch, a possible pastime too young for him, something that not worth getting into. Over a decade later, he would clearly change his mind, and tho that interest would be lost in 2016, during those years his appreciation for the medium wouldn’t be something that he’d speak of, but it was clearly visible to me. With what was back then the best gaming laptop you could get (back before the age of the LEDs) my father would discover his love for Shooters, both of the first and the third person variety, sandboxes, and even simulation and strategy like Age of Empires. He liked those types of games and every time a new big release would come around, he knew what he’d do when he had spare time and my mother had to go to work, and he gained even more interest in other aspects of the medium little by little; he even began to toy with emulators at some point! Me, on the other hand… I was what you would call, a Wii-lad.

By that I do not mean I was a Wii user only (tho for a long while I was), rather that I was rather closed to what some refer to as some ‘’hardcore’’ experiences, and tho I highly dislike that term along with ‘’casual’’, it is true that during the early 10’s I was anything but a shooter enjoyer. I was a fan of platformers and more simpler experiences, something that still holds up today, but that was especially true back then, to the point it was pretty much everything I played and enjoyed playing. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with that, even if I prefer to be more open to every possible style of game as I am now far more, but the fact of the matter is, as you may have been able to point out, is that there wasn’t much overlap between my father’s tastes and mine. We both enjoyed the medium, but struggled to actually connect through it; that isn’t to say we didn’t try and that we didn’t had wonderful experiences, the memories of he playing Super Smash Bros Brawl with me and me watching him play Far Cry 3 and even sometimes helping him beat parts he just couldn’t are one I cherish to this day, and while those moments were cool as hell and wonderful, they were clearly moments in which neither of the two were fully comfortable with adventuring outside our own gaming comfort zone; there was still that clear lack of a middle ground, something that caught both our interests, something that we both could truly enjoy and talk about, something that really didn’t seem to be happening any time soon.

…and then Destiny was announced.

To my father, it looked simply astonishing, a visual sci-fi spectacle that seemed tailor-made for him; his favorite genre in all mediums brought to life in a way that was a sight to behold, a cosmos worth traversing and shooting through. To me, it looked like the coolest fucking thing I had ever seen, a space odyssey made videogame that promised adventures galore; I myself was also very much into sci-fi, and maybe that was what made Destiny tickle my ‘’only platformer guy’’ bone and made it crumble, this was not the first time a game presented me with worlds I desired to explore, but it was the first time I saw it to this scale and promise. This became the thing we would talk about every time videogames would become the main topic, we jumped onto that hype train and didn’t let it go for dear life; we knew everything that was coming out about and all news, but not much beyond that, we didn’t really knew who Bungie was, or what some of its promises and buzzwords like ‘’MMO’’ could really entail or not be, but it didn’t matter. Every image, every trailer, we were there watching it and talking about it, it became less of a game and it turned into something more, an experience to share even before it was for us to play. And then, during that year’s Christmas season, tho I cannot recall the exactly, my father came back home with a copy of the game; a present for me as much as it was for him. I still remember waiting together for everything to install, a process that took like half a day thanks to Destiny’s sheer size for the console and the shitty wi-fi we had back then, and it almost completely killed the mood of child-like excitement we both had… almost.

The moment that bar filled completely, we sat down, I took the controller, and what followed was… the cutscene that made everything kickstart, the character creator through which we made a space wizard alien destined to safe the entire solar system, those quite jingles that lead to that angelical soundly chorus that rose as the menu showed that mysterious whiter orb at the center of all, even higher than earth, and as we begun our adventure through the desolate wasteland of what once was Earth, being alive when we really shouldn’t have and fought against dangers that should have beaten us into a pulp, is nothing short of… magical, something that no game had made me felt ever, something that I couldn’t find the words to even begin describing, something neither of us could stop looking at in sheer awe. For but a moment, Destiny transcended even further, became something I could have never anticipated, something that back then I could only call… perfect…

What follows is a collection of thoughts of everything I dislike about Destiny:

The faults of Destiny, are so apparent that I’m surprised the disc didn’t crumble as soon as I touched it, some things now so utterly obvious it’s kind of adorable. Destiny is eternally confused, something that by definition works, but tries to bite so much it’s not that it can’t chew it, it’s that it can’t even bring itself to close its mouth. Its promises of a ‘’Small-scale MMO’’ don’t go much further than the main hub and the one or two other folks you can come across during the missions: if you aren’t planning on playing it alongside one or two friends directly, then what you’ll get is an experience that encourages meaningful player interaction so little that most won’t even bother making the slightest interaction during the levels themselves; most didn’t even bother engaging with PvP ‘cause… why bother? Not much is truly gained through direct conflict, and even tho random jolly co-operation can happen and it can be pretty fun, even at release most of the time what would you encounter would be players much stronger than you repeating past missions to farm exp and loot, and by proxy rendering the mission you were about to play pretty much to a cinematic with a bit more interaction. There are clears attempts at creating a more in-depth space for interaction for a console only environment, but it doesn’t stick the landing at all; the main central area is nothing more than a very empty street market 90% of the time, and again, this is an environment in which the bulk of players won’t bother to connect a mic, something that in an online matchmaking mode can completely fly and doesn’t even affect the experience, but for a supposedly far more open and interaction dependent shooter like this, it makes night and day. It all feels half-cooked, and the reason is obvious; Destiny also needs to work as a single player experience, something just one random fella on its own can fully beat, and the results of mixing both design philosophies are less than desirable.

Bungie was clearly aiming for the stars, to accomplish something different from what they did the last 5 times, yet they seemed too scared of getting inside the rocket; Destiny’s own foundations is highly inspired by Halo, which is a prospect that in paper sounds great until you realize this isn’t the basis of that series expanded to completely new horizons, but rather it directly clashing with the new elements and promises, resulting in this weird amalgam that compromises both visions. There are no grand encounters or missions; with the exception of the first and final one for each of the levels, all tasks can be summarized by ‘’go to x place and kill this thing/scan this this thing, repeat x number of times’’ with no great surprises in between; the down-time is always the same, the enemies you can face are always designated by the planet you are on, and every single encounter with enemies is an arena style fight divided into ordes each and every time, which it’s definitely the easiest way to design levels in which three players have something to shoot, but not the best way to design actual interesting challenges for neither of them, much less for only one. The game cannot even create challenges that interesting despite having an admittedly non-stop-moving basis to work from; the act of shooting and using abilities IS fun, not gratifiying once you realize you have to do it again and again, and so, because the arenas where the fight happens are never really that varied, the only way the game can generate difficulty is by throwing bullet-spongy bosses and high level enemies… notice how I didn’t use the word ‘’engaging’’ there. It’s just more mindless blasting, and again, there’s room for coordinated strategies if you have a buddy or two to play with, but that simply is not a real possibility when you are alone or random strangers, and so, it'll come a point when you’ll get stuck at a certain mission, and inadvertently, the game encourages you to repeat past missions to slowly level up, which encourages farming, which then encourages looting, which then encourages selling, which then encourages buying, and that encourages the entire process to play out once again with some pointless visits to the Cryptarch thrown in there from time to time (seriously, why would you be able to buy him encrypted weapons for only to decrypt them right after? That’s just gambling with extra steps). I’ll give the game this: it’s not a fun process, like, at all, but it is a marginally engaging one.

Bungie’s reluctance to abandon the old ways are also present in the way the wastelands where the missions take place and everything in them are designed; the four main areas are essentially mini-sandboxes, small open levels with certain parts restricted to certain missions, but that are completely free to explore otherwise, and hold some random encounters and fights across the map. I… like them, these zone really feel like desolate places, divided in cut and clear zones taken by different factions and commanders, areas that hold quite the amount of secrets and are super fun to go through with the speeder. Sometimes the optional combats in the open areas are even more fun than the ones found in main missions simply because they feel like they take place in an actual location and not just in an abandoned warehouse or ancient ruin, I genuinely don’t have much complains with how these are designed. My problem, instead, comes in how… static they all feel. Everything I mentioned is forever the same; batallions of enemy will be right there were they once stood after returning to the planet, the Vex and Cabal will be fighting in the exact same places locked in that neverending shoot-out, nothing will change with new descents or missions, it’s as if time loops every time you come back to the main-land. This wouldn’t be a problem if you visited these places once, but you don’t, you traverse them MANY times, and I’m convinced that they would have implemented changes here and there after certain missions… if it weren’t because, once again, this is a mini-MMO, and the one of the three players could have been on Mars a thousand times while other could be arriving on the first time; the game simply cannot craft variation in a way it doesn’t fuck up with the experience, but by also doing nothing, it can’t avoid shooting itself on the foot.

Not even the narrative is safe from Destiny’s eternal confusion; I’m not gonna act like I’m a seasoned MMO player because I’m simply not, but even as mostly a bystander, I can understand why many of those games stories revolve around the world itself or some major characters. You simply cannot make each and every player the main character, and so, you make them a part of the world, be it dividing it by factions or anything else, all of your player base is the protagonist, and even if they are not the real major players of the story, they serve a humongous part on it, they feel seen and like they can actually make a difference. Then here over Guardian-land ft. Nolan North (Peter Dinklage was sent to an undisclosed location), you do actually play a major part as the main character! You appear in the cutscenes, you talk with leaders and kingship, you are the hero… but you are also just a hero. It’s like the game really wanted to put players at the forefront, but then it said ‘’oh shit wait, hold on a second’’ and realized that wasn’t going to cut it if they wanted to make players feel like this is an actual expansive universe, so your guy is just… there, present in the cutscenes, yeah, but with everyone else doing the major talking and exposition; there’s a ton lore and exposition, but there’s not much actual story. There’s a conflict, yeah, dark bad light good and all of that, Ghost and the other fellas aren’t shy on telling you why you need to go ‘’pew-pew’’ around the solar system, but there’s not actually much happening: no real character moments, no real feeling of advancement, you just party along and see what’s up, and at the end after killing the big bad you get a cool weapon that’s probably useless from a character that appears randomly like 4 times and… roll credits! It’s obvious that DLCs and expansions were always a own with this, but as it is, the thing that came in the disc back in 2014, it feels unfinished, rushed, and like it doesn’t really know what to do with its storyline aside of having you at the side so you can see the cool character you made alongside a bunch of people I don’t even remember the names of. The game is in this constant tug of war with itself, this conflict that loops forever, and one that had never a clear answer for. It’s a fun enough shooter with so many issues and half-baked stuff I fell I’ve left a ton yet to speak of, one that doesn’t even scrap that level of greatness it promised, one that is barely a shadow of what the studio probably wanted it to be…

Now, I’ve been the one telling you all of this, the me of 2023, the me 9 years after the game originally released, talking about the problems now I see with this game, as I were to play it for the first time now… but that’s not what happened… and my me of 2014 and my father had a whole other version to tell.

To be right there, not at they it launched or during the first months after the game’s release, but just there, sitting down in the couch, with the controller in my hands, and letting myself be completely immersed in these lost passages of a dying cosmos, seeing this larger than life of a decaying empire wither again only bathed by the light of stars or the last rays of sun after another day without hope, to explore them as I made my way through war and darkness with my father sitting by my side, also completely submerged in the game and handing him the controller in a part I just couldn’t beat or when he just wanted to explore somewhere, that is something I still cannot find the words for.

To adventure in the chasms of the moon and fight against the restless legions of the Hive as they charge using all the might I can muster, exploring the green yet lifeless overtaken jungle of Venus, facing monsters beyond what I could even call ‘’alien’’ and discovering what secrets lied beyond the rift and the oldest imaginable truth encrypted in the twisted form of the Vex. To explore a no man’s land only to find another random fellow guardian, to par against each other, or to, despite no words being able to be spoken, to communicate through each other with dances and gestures, only to go back to the Tower and encounter bigger groups of players, and interact with any tools available, to trade, to explore, to just have fun. To find constant tangible rewards that make you feel as if every small victory, every mission beaten, every level up, everything amounts to something, something worth of rewarding, and something that makes you feel stronger. To create your own adventures, to play alongside friends and help each other find things the other may have never heard about, and lose yourself in the exploration and the thrill of the fight.

To talk with my father about it, about how immensely unbelievable it all is, how incredibly amazing it is to reach a new planet every single time, to theory about what’s truly behind this story, and to see who can go without dying the longest.

And to be right there, at the door of another reality, facing off against the warlords of time and metal, to be unable to defeat the impossible alone, and for my father to pick up the controller and managing to defeat it, both celebrating it was done, we had beaten this grand, seemingly never-ending adventure, that is something I think I’ll never find the words to properly describe.

Destiny, in its earliest of days and for a specific type of player, is everything that a true videogame should be; a chance to explore the unknown and discover what so many couldn’t, and do venture alongside friends, fight alongside friends, fight against friends, perhaps even meet new friends, those are tales that the people that grew up with Destiny aren’t shy of speaking about. The moments I played with friends were few and far between back then, but for me, Destiny was always the game for me and my father to play, a game that managed to be everything that we could have ever dreamt of and beyond, a true consistent experience that gave us so many memorable moments it was truly hard to just stop playing after we have done so much, after we had been through so many space voyages. Destiny was a place for fight, but it also was a place for peace, to seeing the limits of the small little worlds; it may have never been everything that it promised, but it certainly felt like it.

Destiny, as a game, may be nothing more than an unremarkable experience.

…but its memories are irreplaceable.

Form 2016 onwards, my father’s love for the medium started to fade, while mine kept on going and my interest went even further beyond, and I can’t say for sure I would have given a try to other games so relatively soon, such as the likes of Doom (2016), if it wasn’t for it. And even after he stopped playing altogether my father still kept a huge appreciation for videogames, and he was more than happy tho help me expand my horizons: teaching me the ropes of certain series and genres, giving a chance to some fighting games to play them along side me, or details such as gifting Maio Odyssey the day it released, one before my birthday. The things he taught me, even the ones related to gaming, are still ones I’ve never forgotten, and through each and every point during out Destiny playthrough, the laughs, the conversations, the pure joy in the act of sharing a moment to play a game together, those are ones I won’t forget. Ones I never want to forget.

Soon, it’ll be 2 years since he passed away. Even now, saying and writing that feels surreal, like a nightmare that shouldn’t even be happening. But it did. With each day that follows, it doesn’t get easier. For a while I thought it never could. Some memories were even locked, remembrances that my brain decided to hide as to not hurt me, as maybe an attempt to try and make it easier. The memories of Destiny were among them, for a while I couldn’t even recall anything about the game, it just all felt too close, too real, a place forever gone, and knowing what that implied would just break me apart. But now I do know that to do that is nothing short of foolish, it might not get easy, but with each passing moment, with each day, I accept it, little by little, and I grab onto those memories. Memories worth cherishing. Memories worth celebrating. Memories that I’ll keep alive for as long I’m able to. I never want to forget Destiny, not only because it feels as if I’d forget a part of him, but also because those memories warm me, they make me happy, and I’m glad to still have them within me.

Tomorrow is Christmas day. It also would have been his birthday.

He always said he didn’t like Christmas much because it was also a reminder of how old he was getting. And I just wish he could have gotten older, that he could have seen more….

It’s during these days that those memories, and among them… memories of playing Destiny together, memories of celebrating together.

I wish I had a more concrete answer for what I’m trying to express, a true finality, but no amount of words could truly define it, and I guess there’s never really one to begin with, for worse… but also for better. I’ll move forward and I already do, not only for him, but for myself, I’ll carry those memories within me forever, as I form new ones. To everyone that has experienced loss, hold on tight to those memories, remember them with joy, ‘cause they are worth, and as you do it, keep on going. Not only for them. But for yourself.

Memories worth shedding a tear for.

Memories worth smiling for.

Stay safe and strong, everyone.

Happy holidays!

…and happy birthday, Dad.