Did you really think we would let this week go by without a special bonus episode of Destiny fancast Kotaku Splitscreen?
Kirk went to the Destiny 2 reveal event in Los Angeles, and I, uh, watched it on the internet, so come listen to us talk about our initial thoughts:
An excerpt:
Jason: Do you think it was a mistake that they just showed a lot that was similar to Destiny 1 as opposed to the open-world newer stuff?
Kirk: I don’t know if it was a mistake. I think they will show that stuff. I think by showing it this way they put more of the onus on that stuff to be really good when they do show it. I’m assuming it just isn’t ready and would be way harder to demo. When you make a demo for an event like this, this must have taken developers at Bungie, coordinating with people at Activision, this must have just taken months and months to put together that they could’ve spent making Destiny 2.
Doing that for an open-ended area with exploration would be, I would imagine, not even doable. I think it just wouldn’t have been possible. At some point I think that stuff will be explorable, hopefully in the beta. I think it’s going to need to be good, after having played the stuff that feels like, “OK, this is a Destiny strike, a Destiny story mission.”
Jason: So the European Dead Zone I’d heard was one of the first things they built for Destiny 1, and then they wound up cutting it at some point when they were changing scope, because Destiny 1 changed scope many many times. And they eventually moved it to D2. So the way it was described to me is, it’s this big complicated map and it’s got caves and dungeons and you can explore it in depth. Someone said to me a couple years ago, “I can’t believe they still haven’t shipped it — it’s friggin’ awesome.”
So if you are kind of disappointed at the idea that the strike and the feel of the game is just more Destiny, Destiny 1.5 or whatever, I think the new areas could be the way that it really shines and feels like a different game. But I do think what we’ve seen so far is Destiny 1.5.
Kirk: I think the new areas are a big question mark, and they could be very cool. The environments I was going through, and even the environments I was seeing in that demo — I’m most concerned with the environments being fun to explore, right? If the European Dead Zone is really fun to explore, if Nessus is really fun to explore, great. At the same time, Nessus is a Vex planet, it looks kind of like Venus. The European Dead Zone could look kind of like the Cosmodrome.
Jason: I think it will look more like that one PVP map.
Kirk: But it will have that kind of washed-out, desaturated European look. It won’t be like, “We’re in the jungle!” or something crazy.
Jason: I dunno, there are some shots of a red forest.
Kirk: I thought that was from Nessus. It could go either way. But from what I’ve played, it was very: You’re shooting Vex on a Vex planet. You’re fighting Cabal again on a Cabal ship, and you’re shooting their little heads, and they have shields. The environments in all of the demos I played really — and that was one of the most striking things — just felt like more Destiny.
Jason: That was the thing that really disappointed me: Same classes, basically, other than a few new subclasses. Same enemy races.
…
Jason: Now, three years later, this might feel like Destiny 1, but now they have this opportunity to start from scratch. You made this point in your hands-on impression piece, that this feels like a reset. They have learned so much from the past three years, of fucking up and doing all these things that made players feel shitty. They took their licks and now they have this chance to make a new game that takes all the good things from Destiny 1, even if it feels a lot like Destiny 1, but also doesn’t repeat the same mistakes that they made the first time around, with story and balance and everything like that.
Kirk: I agree with that, and if they kept the good things from Destiny 1, the fact that it feels like Destiny 1 is because Destiny 1 was a fundamentally good game. So of course it feels like Destiny 1. If it ain’t fixed, don’t broke it. Or — what’s the expression?
Jason: If it ain’t broken don’t fix it?
Kirk: If it ain’t — Fool me once, shame on you.
Jason: Fool me twice, can’t get fooled again.
Kirk: Fool me twice, can’t get fooled to the don’t broke it.
As always, you can find Splitscreen on Apple Podcasts and Google Play.
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