Destiny is 10 years old, which is an eternity in video game terms. It’s also one of the most fascinating games of the past decade – sometimes for unexpected reasons. On the surface, it’s a lavish online prog-rock space shooter made by Bungie, the makers of Xbox classic Halo. You gather up with friends, drop down somewhere among the gleaming vistas of a futuristic version of our solar system, and then shoot people, aliens, and robots for better loot.
None of this is exactly unprecedented, and perhaps that’s the point. You could argue that Destiny’s bellwethers are games like Halo, for its gunplay, World of Warcraft, for its persistent online spaces, and – this is where it gets a little strange, of course – the immortal British retailer Marks & Spencer. That last point is because, above all, Destiny is a game of fluctuating fortunes, and those fortunes seem to fascinate everyone close to video games, regardless of whether they actually play Destiny or not. Just as many people in the UK seem to have a secret intuition about whether M&S is currently on an upward or downward trajectory – there is no middle ground – everyone in gaming knows whether Destiny is in boom or bust mode. Is it now better than it has been in years? Or is it a shadow of the game it was two, five, or seven years ago? Destiny is our ever-reliable talking point.
Surprisingly, this has been the case from the beginning. In fact, it has only been this way for a few years. before The beginning. Fate had great bad luck. be revealed as a commercial enterprise Long before it was announced as a fictional universe. Meaning it was presented as SKUs and Q1 financial outlooks rather than a world of fun and gunplay dreamed up by some of the best combat designers in the industry. When the first game finally arrived, it was seen as a beautiful core of action surrounded by stuff that felt a little rushed. It was an early star whose dust and fumes hadn’t fully settled yet. Sure, the right shotgun got the whole world singing along with you as you charged into battle, but the story material — the lore — was scattered across the surface of the game in a series of collectible cards, as if Homer had chosen to throw the Iliad onto a collection of coasters and hidden them across various battlefields.
But here’s the thing: People couldn’t stop playing Destiny. From the start, it was an online evening with friends that simply couldn’t be beaten. You went in, destroyed stuff, won stuff, and then compared what you had. Leveling up here felt important. New loot had genuine character. Scenes played out beneath space crates so vast and turbulent that they served as a reminder that, spaceships aside, Bungie’s soul had always been deeply romantic.
Part of the game’s enduring appeal is down to a series of striking images: the funeral mass of the Traveller, an artificial moon, suspended over the last city on earth. Claw-shaped eruptions of Martian rock, illuminated by sunlight, turned into a Valium haze by airborne dust. But from the start, Bungie’s game was also fused with the real world. Players could see their creations outside of the game, millions of raid WhatsApp groups sprang to life overnight, and websites and YouTube channels were dedicated to everything from leveling tips to piecing together a Frankenstein soap opera of a narrative.
All of this means that for the past 10 years, playing Destiny has also meant arguing about it, getting angry about it, and uninstalling it, then reinstalling it and enjoying it again as it eats up your nights once again. You can tell the game is important to people because it has conspiracy theories. A cave that yielded easy loot. and nearly broke the game’s economy for the first few months – bug or intentional piece of broken design? Raid areas with places to make cheese where players can safely take massive damage – a sign of a complicated map, or a canny developer creating a different kind of buzz?
Inevitably, when Destiny 2 arrived in 2017, people even missed those grimoire lore cards. Since then, there have been ups and downs. death of an important character Had everyone talking, but The price of an expansion also increased.People get tired of the routine or feel a raid is unfair. They complain (rightly) about the store, but they also (rightly) buy Destiny: The Official Cookbook. Complicating matters is the fact that, from the start, Destiny has been steeped in nostalgia for its own sake. There’s one final point of connection with M&S for you: Destiny is an institution.
Few people would argue that Destiny is, and always has been, a great action game. It’s got a charismatic gunplay core at the center, and then, moving outward, the evocative, disturbing sci-fi twist, along with Bungie’s long-established knack for sad, quirky naming conventions. This is the studio that once gave us Halo levels called Pillar of Autumn and Silent Cartographer. It’s no wonder “Destiny weapon name or Roxy Music deep cut?” remains a reliable drinking game. (It works both ways, too. I can easily imagine Bungie releasing an SMG called Sentimental Fool or Mother of Pearl.)
Still: fluctuations. The most recent expansion was received as one of the best in a long time, but player numbers have not increased significantly in its wake. Over time, Bungie has moved from questions about the cost of cosmetics to serious accusations about its internal culture. The studio has changed owners and recently suffered layoffs. Last week, Destiny 2 player count on Steam hits lowest level yet.
Still, we all keep talking about the game that has always been there to be talked about (including Bungie(Which has announced a developer blog discussing the game’s future that will be released tonight.) Many of us still feel nostalgic for a game that was born in nostalgia. And both of those things create a powerful draw. I remember the first time I picked up Destiny 2, long after everyone I know had fallen in and out of love with it. I found a game that was fun for a few frantic minutes, and those minutes could easily turn into hours. I also found a game world that might as well have been covered in those blue plaques that tell you a long-dead painter once vacationed here.
Ultimately, the Destiny game benefits greatly from Destiny’s conversation option. When I first met Devrim Kay, for example, Destiny’s knight sniper, I knew so much about him that I could have been his biographer. I felt like I was in the presence of a celebrity, even if he was just another one of my quest givers.