Destiny

1. Keith gave me Destiny for my birthday a few weeks ago. (Thanks, Keith!) He gave it to me for the Xbox One even though I do not yet own an Xbox One. Then Keith also lent me his own Xbox One in order for me to play Destiny with or without him. Clearly, this is a man who wanted me to play Destiny. His stated goal is to begin performing raids - special six-player missions - with Sween, Trev, Tim, Ryan, and me this summer. From the moment I acquired Destiny, then, my goal has not just been to complete the story, but to beef up my character in order to contribute to an eventual six-man raiding collective; it's raid time, bro.

2. Finishing the dozen or so story-related missions was thus little more than a means to an end for me, but I think that's par for the course when it comes to Destiny. Everyone still playing this game, nine months after its release, is doing so in order to level up their characters through a variety of missions far harder than anything in the main campaign. The true goal in Destiny isn't to rid the solar system of invasive alien tribes, but instead to collect fancy armor and powerful weapons. In some senses, the game doesn't really begin until it has been "beaten" in conventional terms.

3. As for the story itself? It's bland and almost incomprehensible. You are what's called a guardian, and you spend the game trying to protect a "traveler" from "the darkness." You're assisted by a spinning floating robot called a "ghost," voiced by Peter Dinklage. It's hard to miss the parallels here between the Dinklage Cube and the Cortana character from Halo, Bungie's previous franchise, as both of them spend a lot of time spewing expository monologues that really serve as the only storytelling devices in the game. The conflict itself feels hollow and meaningless; no enemy displays as much as a nugget of personality, and most of the toughest battles come against scaled-up versions of the regular grunts. The story (and game) takes place on the earth, the moon, Venus, and Mars, and while each world offers a plethora of stunning landscapes, the missions on each one all blend together due to the lack of variance in, well, any aspect of anything that happens in any of them.

4. As a single-player adventure, then, Destiny is a total bore. Fortunately, it succeeds at being more of an open-world game. It's meant to be cooperatively played, almost exclusively. Aside from a few strikes, patrols, and story missions here and there, I've spent most of my time playing Destiny with Keith, and part of it with Tim and Ryan. I imagine MMO games are all meant to be played this way; this is simply my first experience with one, and it's an interesting concept to me. It's easy for me to see why Keith has been pushing so hard for his friends to bone up on the game and play it with him; it's a fun game, but one that mostly sucks to play alone.

5. Is this the beginning of a new era in console gaming? That of the MMOFPS, or at least the FPS in the always-online world? There's no offline play in Destiny; all gameplay, even the story missions, are carried out with an active Internet connection among a slew of other gamers doing their own things. It's a cool concept, but it also means you can't, for instance, pause the game. It also means that you might be saving the galaxy at one point, and fifty feet away from you another guy is collecting helium coils and robot parts for bounties; he's either already saved the galaxy, or hasn't gotten around to it yet, but it does sort of further cheapen the story. I've vanquished the final boss of the game, but the same old enemies are chilling around in the same old places, rendering my accomplishments very apparently and obviously meaningless. But, again, none of that really matters. I've beaten Destiny, but I'm not done playing it. My warlock character is only at Level 25 right now, and I can get him all the way up to 34 if I keep on grinding. And there are bounties to collect, and there's DLC to play. And we still have yet to raid! In all seriousness though, I'm hooked. I spent hours playing this game over the weekend, and I'd probably spend hours on it tomorrow if I didn't have to go to work. Story be damned, we've only just begun with Destiny.