My reply to Casey's Planet Destiny look at the new strike, which you can find linked here. Someone asked if they could post it on the forums, so I figured I'd do it myself. This looks fun, but it highlights a scary possible future for Destiny PVE. Destiny took a lot of criticism early on for it's basic mission structure--voice over, run through stage, release Ghost, fight waves and add a bullet sponge if it's a strike. Excellent gunplay has saved it, but this tired structure is already showing its age. There are no notable vehicle mechanics, very little new enemy art and almost nothing in the way of new stage mechanics. There are also no notable NPCs which is a byproduct of terrible storytelling. Is our future just new loot on top of the same story and missions we've been doing since day 1? We're supposed to be in some war against the Darkness, but there are no battles. The factions mean nothing. The Traveler and Speaker haven't briefed us since September. We're just bounty hunters running errands and fulfilling expositional criteria that no one cares about. The gameplay is frozen in time trying to maintain the GroundHog's Day status quo. (End reply) This is not just a rant or a complaint. Destiny is my favorite game next gen. You can look at my stats and see what kind of player I am. I love what Bungie has done to improve PvP, the systems and the balance. My concern is that they don't get it when it comes to design the bulk of the game. The raids are great, but the missions, bounties and strikes are very simple, repetitive design. I can empathize with their challenge. They have to design the game for a wide range of skill, and do it in a way that replayability supersedes novelty. What good is an awesome cut scene after we've seen it a hundred times? That having been said, this game will come down to Raids and PvP until Destiny 2 if Bungie doesn't show us improved design on the rest of the game, which is actually most of the game. This world is still a hollow boned skeleton in desperate need of fleshing out. We are not in an epic space war. We are not part of a story. Destiny is not a world. It's a matte painting backdrop that falls over the moment you get close enough to touch it. I don't mind the feedback loop of doing tasks to get loot to do tasks to get loot...as long as it's going forward and not a hamster wheel. I hope Bungie figures it out, but right now the Missions, Quests, Bounties and "story" are looking like reskinned versions of what we've all done before. So far in the vids, the music in the Prison of Elders is recycled from current content. I really hope that isn't the case in the final release. Vanilla Destiny had a brilliant soundtrack, but since they fired the original composer we have yet to see if the future of the franchise's music is in jeopardy. Bungie has been great about listening to the community, so let's make sure they know we don't want reskinned, rehashed, remixed content. They have to keep innovating the design of the actual missions the same way they've done with Raids and Game Systems.