We thought we were done with Destiny after our Game of the Year award troll and a year of slating it, but it just so happens that the topic of this feature encapsulates it quite well. We’re quite sure people will argue that it’s still an ongoing endeavour and can become worth it at some indeterminable point in time (or for some it’s already worth it), but for us Destiny was all hype and nothing to show for it. We gave it a very mixed review, and critics and users were definitely polarised and conflicted about this one as well, and things didn’t change much a month after its release. We’re comfortable in saying that Destiny was one of the most overhyped and most disappointing titles we’ve seen in perhaps the last decade of gaming. We were right to be intensely sceptical of it, ever since that “$500 million” budget for the franchise’s future became a buzz phrase flying around, and it was repeatedly stated with pride how Destiny is the most expensive video game ever made. The budget for the first game alone with advertising is estimated to sit around $140 million, and even that is far, far too high considering the final result was barren, shallow, agonisingly repetitive and eventually boring and lifeless. Subsequent DLCs did little to revolutionise opinions towards the game either.
We suppose if we approach this from a strictly sales and revenue perspective, Destiny was worth it for Activision and Bungie, but as a game and for us it was far from it, especially when considering the ludicrous overhype. Not to mention the potentially negative impact it could have on the gaming industry with regards to excess, unrealistic expectations and building games around requiring gamers to invest full price first (and more) in the hope of seeing results emerge later.