How much of the GDC 2013 talk by former Writer/Design director Joseph Staten and then Art Director, now Game Director Chris Barrett is still relevant to the current design of Destiny? There's a lot to go through there, but the key points would be the goal of moving away from linear, one-and-done content, the Pillars of the World of Destiny, the Last City as the heart of this world, the aesthetics of Mythic Sci-Fi and Nature Ascendant, the use of postcards and the Style Guide as described. These are the things that pulled me in from the first minute I picked up the game. Sadly, D2 seems to have wandered away from virtually every point made here: Each successive content pack is self-contained and isolated; TTK was the only one to ever reuse old zones and recycle maps. Each of the Four Pillars are arguably non-existent at this point, with the biggest hit suffered by the notion of a "Hopeful and Inviting world" (stand in the D2 Tower for 5 min and compare the ambient chatter to D1). We see so little of the City that it serves as little more that the hub for loot and its storage, rather than a home we care about. Mythic Sci-Fi has given way to Fantasy, as seen in the armor and destination designs. Even beyond this move to Fantasy (Io, Nessus), Trostland in the EDZ and the Rig on Titan feel like CoD or Battlefield maps. The styles honed in D1 seem to have been dropped, and replaced with something... Less. The fallen are no longer a dark mirror to humanity, they're treated as irritants and vermin. The hive got gooey. The Vex got less inscrutable. The Cabal feel less like a Military Industrial Complex and more Generic Villain-y. The current Class models simply don't fit the postcards beyond the most superficial aspects. Even the well-received recent addition of The Whisper is not immune. As cool and interesting and exciting as it is, it's still a one-and-done style mission. Sure, you need to come back multiple times to get all the goods, but having to play Tsavo Highway four times doesn't make it Not Tsavo Highway. It's also exclusionary: as much I enjoyed mastering the run and claiming my prize, I actually had a conversation with my friends where we had to acknowledge that they simply weren't good enough, and that this activity wasn't for them. They conceded that they would never experience it and I had to leave them for some random others on LFG. It's a huge missed opportunity that this amazing area has nothing for those who aren't raider-level and able to sail through timed jumping puzzles. When was the decision made to abandon those original stated goals? Was it even a conscious decision or did it somehow just fall to the wayside? I still love that original, distant dream and if there was a path to bring it to fruition, I'd run it until my legs gave out. It's rarely helpful to be on the outside shouting in but hey, Holtzman broke through, right? Maybe someday I'll be able to perch again like I did atop the Mothyards, or scour the dusty carcass of a city like Freehold, or stalk overgrown ruins like the Academy in the driving rain. Maybe someone will be able to bring back these goals and ideals, and revive the quiet beauty that still sends me back to D1.