Another week, another batch of gaming friends asking why I haven’t played Destiny yet. I constantly say I don’t have time, and in part, that is true. I haven’t had time to play a second of Final Fantasy XIV, and that’s one I really do want to play. I do find plenty of other games to play instead of Destiny, even though I can now say I legitimately don’t own the game. I gave my CE to Blake, and he’s going to trade it with his regular copy of the game. We haven’t completed the trade yet, and it’s not bothering me in the slightest.
I know I don’t want to play Destiny, but it wasn’t until this weekend that I realized exactly why that is.
It’s only partly because I have people hounding me to play it. True fact: if you want me to do/read/watch/play something, don’t bombard me about it every time we chat or even every other time. Pass along your recommendation and move on. Constant barrages of OMG YOU HAVE TO DO THIS will only put off my motivation to do whatever it is you want me to do. Most likely, I’ll never do it. I never said this is one of my better character traits, but it is what it is.
So my friends asking me about it is only partly to blame.
The big barrier is the fanboyism. My Twitter feed is constantly full of people tweeting OMG THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVER! People proudly announcing how long it took them to grind to get enough light pants to reach level 30. I thought grinding was an annoying thing, not something to really celebrate. Then they talk about the emotes, Legendary gear or engrams or whatever, going on raids (but this is totes not an MMO!), blah blah blah and my eyes glaze over. I’m so glad you all love this game so much, but do I have to be inundated with frothing fanboy comments? This is just like Halo!
OH.
MY.
GOD.
OHMYGOD. I am having the exact same reaction I had to Halo. I refused to give Halo a chance, outright refused. Everyone I knew who was into Halo was a diehard fanboy and couldn’t talk about the game rationally. More OMG BEST GAME EVAR!!11!! crap whenever anything Halo-related was leaked. I never thought about touching Halo until I was assigned to review the Anniversary edition for Gaming Angels. I think my exact response was, “Well, fuck.” And I couldn’t get out of the assignment because I was the shooter gaming editor. You can’t not review Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary when you are the shooter game expert. Well, fuck. Fine. Give me the stupid game.
And as they say, the rest is history.
So there it is; I’m going against Destiny for the same reasons I went against Halo. Perhaps if I play Destiny, I’ll love it as much as Halo. My boss says that won’t happen. He swears I’ll quit after two hours because of the grinding and lack of story. That may be true, but what Chris said about the game also has me intrigued that I could like it.
Nothing I can do about it now, as I still don’t have a copy of the game and I still have other games I will play instead. But Extra Life is coming up. That could be a good time to play the game once and for all and be done with it one way or another.
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