Notes on Destiny (2014)

A fan's look back at the first game, before the sequel took over.

Destiny came out on September 9, 2014. Bungie made it and Activision published it, on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. It was Bungie's first big project after leaving Halo, and it tried to mix a console shooter with the always-online, loot-driven structure of an MMO.

The setting

Centuries before the game begins, a huge white sphere called the Traveler arrived in the solar system and set off a golden age: longer lives, colonies across the planets, technology that looked like magic. Then the Darkness came, the golden age collapsed, and the Traveler went still above the last safe city on Earth.

You play a Guardian, a dead soldier brought back by a small floating robot called a Ghost and given the Traveler's Light as a weapon. The Ghost was voiced by Peter Dinklage at launch. Nolan North later re-recorded the part for The Taken King.

Classes

• Titan: the armored front line. Its Defender subclass could throw up the Ward of Dawn bubble, which saved plenty of raid wipes.
• Hunter: the scout and gunslinger, with Golden Gun and the cloak-and-knife Bladedancer.
• Warlock: the space wizard. Its Sunsinger subclass could revive itself, which made it a raid favorite for years.

Enemies

There were four main factions at launch. The Fallen are scavenging pirates. The Hive are an ancient, death-obsessed race living under the Moon. The Vex are time-bending machines. The Cabal are a military empire on Mars. The Taken, warped versions of all four, arrived later with Oryx.

Raids

For a lot of players, raids were the reason to stay. The Vault of Glass on Venus asked six players to talk to each other, split up roles and learn mechanics nobody explained. Fights like Atheon and the time-travel portals are still talked about as some of the best encounter design in the genre. Later raids were Crota's End, King's Fall and Wrath of the Machine.

Expansions

• The Dark Below (December 2014): Eris Morn and the Hive god Crota.
• House of Wolves (May 2015): the Fallen Queen's Wrath, the Prison of Elders and Trials of Osiris.
• The Taken King (September 2015): Oryx, the Dreadnaught, and the expansion most people say fixed the game.
• Rise of Iron (September 2016): the Iron Lords, SIVA and the Plaguelands.

Things people still remember

• The loot cave on the Cosmodrome, where players shot into a cave for hours to farm engrams.
• Waiting every Friday to see whether Xûr was selling Gjallarhorn.
• Grimoire cards, which put most of the story on a website instead of in the game.
• "That wizard came from the Moon," the line that summed up how vague the launch story was.