E3: Destiny (PS4) Preview
E3 2014: DESTINY PS4 PREVIEW
At E3, I finally got the chance to pick up and play the upcoming new title from the developers at Bungie, Destiny. I’ve been avidly awaiting the chance to actually play the game since my first glimpse of Destiny at last year’s E3. In this new role-playing, first-person shooter experience, gamers will play as Guardians of the last city on planet Earth in the distant future after a devastating cataclysm. At the expo, I was given the opportunity to play both the game’s single-player mode and the competitive, online multi-player mode.
For the first leg of the demo, I was able to pick out and customize my own character. In Destiny, a player can use one of the three specific classes of Guardians to play: Titan, Warlock, and Hunter. Each class has a great deal of customization options, which I like a lot. You can make your character male, female, a cyborg Exo, or a member of the Awoken. The Awoken are a class of ethereal, blue-skinned people who have interacted with strange energies and merged with other alien species in the universe of Destiny. Once character creation was complete, I was shown The Tower, the social hub for the game. This is where you meet up with other players and form teams before going on quests outside of The City. Unlike the regular gameplay, all of The Tower gameplay is in third person. I was told that while the game does encourage co-op play with others, there are areas throughout the world of the game you can play on your own. The Tower has a shop where you can buy new weapons and upgrades before you leave on your quest.
On our first mission, I teamed up with my group to explore a ruined area. The characters are led throughout the wasteland of the old world by a Ghost, a computer or artificial intelligence that acts as your flying companion throughout the game. Peter Dinklage provides the voice of The Ghost. According to hints by the developers, the Ghost might have a human soul, which would make the classification of Ghost quite accurate. The area my team explored involved crawling with malevolent alien mercenaries, dubbed The Fallen. These aliens appear to be the main enemies or foot soldier types of the game. Here is where I got my first taste of the combat of the game. The first-person shooter mechanics work very well. The play style is highly reminiscent of Bungie’s Halo. My favorite weapon of choice is the shotgun. While exploring the area, you can go more quickly by equipping your own personal hovercraft vehicle, the Sparrow. The Sparrows are a lot like the speeder bikes from the Star Wars franchise. Unfortunately, the Sparrows did not have weapons in the demo, but there are other personal vehicles that do carry weapons in the multiplayer mode.
After taking out the Fallen aliens outside of an abandoned, derelict facility, my team and I went for a closer look inside. As the Ghost led us through, we ran into a Fallen hive, and the aliens ambushed the team. I got the chance to play through this battle before the end of the demo.