Reaching For The Stars: 5 Things You May Have Missed In The Destiny Beta

The Destiny beta may not have let us travel across the solar system – instead restricting access to mother Earth and a sole expedition to the Moon if you played over the weekend – but that doesn’t mean there was nothing to learn from the temporary experience. On the contrary: Bungie’s first offering of Destiny’s gameplay to the public has helped to answer some burning questions you might have had about how the game actually feels and how its previously confusing structure works on paper.

But in case you missed the opportunity to get a hands-on with one of this year’s most anticipated releases or just overlooked some interesting features, here are five things that you should know about the game before it releases in September.

5. Manual Matchmaking Exists, But So Does A Pseudo Instancing System

Probably the most noticeable feature to appear on this list, as you’re likely to experience it within the first hour of play, Destiny not only features the standard, manual matchmaking system for you and a couple of friends to team up and play, but it also has an instancing system built into every facet of its gameplay.

If you’re not familiar with how MMORPG’s (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) work, instancing is a system that replicates a certain part of an open, shared world so that multiple players can play the content without being bombarded with hundreds of players all on screen at once. While it’s still not completely clear how Destiny’s matchmaking system works, it appears that each area will have a hub world of sorts (in the beta’s case, this is Old Russia) where players can interact with each other, with an instancing system being put into place when story missions are attempted. 

Many of these take place in dungeon like areas where respawning is limited to either having to be revived by a teammate or having to respawn at the beginning of the area rather than on the spot where you perished. However the system works, what’s most noticeable is how seamless it is. Every time a ‘dungeon’ is entered, you’ll automatically be paired with two other players partaking in the same mission. Obviously, this won’t be an option if you play offline, but being able to call on the help of others without having to sit through a tedious lobby system is an extremely good idea. 

4. Peter Dinklage’s Voice Work Sounds Much Better With Sound Distortion

Many players who had the chance of playing the Destiny alpha build noted how flat and unenthusiastic Peter Dinklage’s voice sounded as the player character’s Ghost companion:  a small, floating metal orb that acts as the player’s guide. Whether Bungie arguably intended to do so or not anyway is unclear, but Dinklage’s voice work has now been spliced together with some speech distortion effects to make his voice not only sound less human, but also more authentic in relation to the world that’s been created

Whereas the actor originally sounded uninterested in the dystopian and ruined world that he was leading the player through, his vocal makeover has added some much needed personality to the performance. Considering Ghosts are remnants created by The Traveller – the giant metal orb you see in all the promotional media for the game – it never made sense to have a human voice coming out of alien technology anyway. 

3. The Fallen Aren’t The Only Race Of Aliens That Want To Kill You

You’ve seen the Fallen before; they’re the four-armed space pirates that you’ve seen in all the gameplay demos since the game’s announcement. But they’re not the only extraterrestrials that want to drive the human race to extinction.

The beta introduced another race: The Hive, a race that shares more than just a few similarities to the Flood from the Halo series. Unlike the Fallen, a race that exhibits high intelligence and coordination, the Hive – owing to their name – behaves like a swarm. Thralls, the basic Hive enemy, will charge at you without thought in an attempt to outnumber you with sheer numbers. 

But don’t despair, the Fallen and the Hive aren’t exactly the best of friends either, and there are multiple occasions in the beta where you stumble upon the two races entering into conflict. The three-way conflict feels vaguely similar to the Covenant/Flood/Human one of the Halo series, but the similarities end there, the Hive is a far more intelligent race than the parasitic blobs that Mater Chief had to endure. 

2. The Tower – Home Of The Guardians, Will Function Similarly To The Citadel From The Mass Effect Series

With Earth’s population on the brink of extinction, only one city remains that houses any life. With the Traveller supposedly dead, its ominous presence above the city is the only thing that stops the Fallen and other alien races from annihilating the Human race. Within the city is the Tower, home of the Guardians, and the last line of defence for Earth’s inhabitants. 

Like the Citadel was for the Spectres, the Tower houses everything the Guardians need in their war for the defence of Earth. From weapons and armor vendors to NPCs that help the player understand the world they’ve found themselves in, the last bastion of defence is a safe haven for Guardians to relax, upgrade themselves and generally have a potter about until the next mission calls for Guadian intervention.

While the size of the Tower was rather minimal in the Beta, don’t be surprised if the full game expands upon its facilities to a much greater degree. There were a few areas that were obviously blocked off by invisible walls and barricades.

 

1. Destiny May Be An Entirely New Genre Of Game

So here’s the biggest and most speculative entry on this list, and depending on interpretation, you may or may not be in agreement as to whether Destiny is an entirely new genre of video game. A massively multiplayer first-person shooter certainly isn’t a new concept, but a shooter incorporating such traditional MMORPG features into a FPS certainly borders on something new. Not only does Destiny feature seamless multiplayer outside of the standard competitive modes, but it incorporates it into a world that is both open world simultaneously instanced. Even the game’s closest relative in terms of structure (the Borderlands series) only features four-player cooperative gameplay, and being able to encounter other players in your world without first inviting them is a feature that doesn’t exist.

Here, however, it’s the fundamental mechanic that sets Destiny apart from everything that’s come before it. There’s still much more to see and be revealed from Bungie, but judging by the Beta build, this may indeed be the very first of its kind. Has the term MMORPFPSG been patented yet? Don’t be surprised if Bungie owns it if it has.