Destiny First Impression.

*The following is a first impression of the PS4 Alpha of Bungie’s Destiny and does not reflect on the finished product.

Alpha this is a word I historically avoid. I find Alpha’s and Beta’s leave a bad taste in my mouth. They have also lead me to avoid purchasing the final release of games *cough* (Elder Scrolls Online)*cough*   However when it comes to Destiny something just felt right.

I check my email on Friday and see that I have a beta key, boot up the PS4 on my iTouch and download it from the store. Once the download finishes I sit down with my girlfriend and we are greeted with somehow nostalgic music reminds that reminds me of classic jrpg’s, mixed with some Hanz Zimmer.

After pressing start, setting up some video settings, a user-agreement and getting some Love from Bungie, you are greeted to a choice between the 3 starter classes. The choices currently are Titan, Hunter and Warlock the races are Human, Awoken, or Exo. The Warlock felt less generic to me so after some customization I had my Human Male Warlock with the pre-selected sub-class Voidwalker.

You are instantly dropped into gameplay in a level 3 mission and hit with what is in my opinion the one thing I did not enjoy in this Alpha, that one thing being the Narration which is presented by a small AI robot “Ghost”. My girlfriend sitting beside me who rarely plays alphas or beta’s immediately said she had hoped this was not the final cut. I couldn’t agree more it was bland, lacking emotion. Although there will undoubtedly be the game of thrones fan-boy protection it is supposed to be an AI, I couldn’t help thinking of Portal 2 or Borderlands in which AI’s were handled in a terrific way.

Once you get past the silent protagonist and his sidekick who seemed less endeared and engaged as I was, you get a spectacular experience. The sound, the environment and the characters are all incredible for what is supposed to be an alpha experience. After fiddling around with the controls and accidentally going into orbit I was able to summon my personal vehicle which was quite a nice addition. I then proceeded to ride my way to the mission start.

You are greeted with some standard running and gunning in the abandoned Russian satellite station amidst some great action, music flashy explosions. After the Ghost hacks a panel for me and some further dungeon crawling you reach your first mini-boss “The Wizard”. This was surprisingly difficult my first play through I died a couple but eventually pulled through, my first mission in Destiny completed!

This is when things got interesting. Your next task was to reach the hub world called “The Tower” which gives the 3^rd person MMO experience which also blurs the lines between an MMO and mass effect. You are introduced to some NPC’s who will sell, buy, train, and even give ship upgrades foreshadowing what I hope to be intergalactic space battle channeling my inner star wars fan-boy. After grabbing my standard MMO style quests and some bounties which seem to be split into PvE and PvP I dropped back into the world.

Without getting into details of everything destiny has to offer from PvP, Strikes, Free Roam and Co-op, Destiny has what appear to be the foundations of something amazing. I believe it will have something that will appeal to everyone, PvP, MMO, Loot Grinders, Roleplayers and everything in between. Bungie has placed a massive budget into this franchise and their plan to dominate with destiny over the next decade of expansions, seems to have one foot in the door to being one of the next big things.