Skipping around the internet consuming everything Destiny I have occasionally (foolishly) wandered into comment sections. The most common complaint?
“It’s just another generic shooter.”
It isn’t. Read Brenna Hillier’s piece on that over on VG247.
The most common compliment? It’s doing something new in the shooter genre, or it’s something new to consoles.
It isn’t, on either count. Trion did pretty much everything you love about Destiny with last year’s Defiance.
Defiance is a shared-world shooter with RPG staples like character advancement and loot mixed in. Open world events? Sure, plenty of those.
If you want to be really nitpicky they’re even both set after apocalyptic events kicked off by the arrival of aliens. But that’s neither here nor there.
Many of the quests in Defiance are done without ever leaving the open world and the rare times you do venture into a private area it’s only after traipsing across the terrain to get there.
Random events pop up as you wander from place to place, ranging from very simple roadblocks to storming crashed space ships, fighting your way inside and facing down an epic boss. There’s also large set pieces that are only active every so often and can draw quite the crowd.
There aren’t any classes in Defiance, instead you choose one of four key skills to have in your loadout and then invest further points in various perks as you advance. It’s fewer than Destiny’s options, yet affords a little more freedom since you’re not locked into one set of skills and perks.
Weaponry can be looted, awarded by quests or bought from vendors. There’s rarity levels for weaponry (plus shields and grenades) and in addition to a selection of built-in stat boosts you earn experience for each weapon, eventually unlocking a further boost. While Destiny has addons like scopes and barrels as part of the weapon skills/perks system, Defiance has scopes and barrels and stocks as individual items so you can choose which ones suit you.
Grenades are open season as well, with players able to equip whichever they like in Defiance.
It’s a recurring theme when comparing the two. If Destiny has something, Defiance usually does too. Often with a greater degree of freedom.
Yet ever since the Destiny beta opened it’s pretty much all I want to play. Everything just flows so much better, from the gunplay to the missions right down to looting new gear. Don’t need to press a button to collect my loot? Good heavens, such luxury.
Destiny’s not really a new idea at this point, though it may well have been when it started development. Bungie’s been dropping hints since 2009 and all that time has clearly been well spent as Destiny is a supremely well polished game.
If only it was on PC, not just the consoles. Keyboard and mouse for life, y’all.