Now that the day is winding down, I've had plenty of time to reflect on how I feel about Destiny, as well as taking in the opinions of people outside of Bungie.net. I love the ideas behind Destiny. They are exactly what I was hoping for ever since Bungie had asked what would happen if we had a world that was always there for us. I can't wait to see more. I know a lot of people here are very excited, as well.
Browsing outside of Bungie, however, I feel like we're in the minority. The overall reception to Destiny has been lukewarm at best. I understand some of the complaints and worries that some people have raised, but to me, I feel like Destiny is sort of the next step in what a console game can do and what it can give to players. Part of me thinks the criticisms being leveled are a knee-jerk reaction to a change in the status-quo.
Which made me wonder: what was the initial reception like for Halo: Combat Evolved? I believe I'm correct in saying that at that time shooters were still primarily PC-based, and though there were some successful console shooters prior to Halo, the FPS genre was generally considered PC territory and that only. And yet Halo was a major player in making shooters on console common and popular. I can't possibly know the reaction to it though as I was only 7 years old at the time. Did people like the ideas of Halo right away? Or was it like we saw today with Destiny, met with extreme skepticism?
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I know that my friend's 20-something year old cousin that 10 year old me first played it with about a month after release was telling me it was "completely different and going to change everything". Now I find myself in his shoes. That's all my firsthand knowledge of academia's view of it. With my age group I remember it was about half and half, a lot of kids weren't all that into it because it wasn't fun enough or something? Giving me a break, the rest of us couldn't get enough of it. My friends and I were still playing campaign and multiplayer into the days of Halo 3.