Reaching For The Stars: 5 Things You May Have Missed In The Destiny Beta

3. The Fallen Aren’t The Only Race Of Aliens That Want To Kill You

You’ve seen the Fallen before; they’re the four-armed space pirates that you’ve seen in all the gameplay demos since the game’s announcement. But they’re not the only extraterrestrials that want to drive the human race to extinction.

The beta introduced another race: The Hive, a race that shares more than just a few similarities to the Flood from the Halo series. Unlike the Fallen, a race that exhibits high intelligence and coordination, the Hive – owing to their name – behaves like a swarm. Thralls, the basic Hive enemy, will charge at you without thought in an attempt to outnumber you with sheer numbers. 

But don’t despair, the Fallen and the Hive aren’t exactly the best of friends either, and there are multiple occasions in the beta where you stumble upon the two races entering into conflict. The three-way conflict feels vaguely similar to the Covenant/Flood/Human one of the Halo series, but the similarities end there, the Hive is a far more intelligent race than the parasitic blobs that Mater Chief had to endure. 

2. The Tower – Home Of The Guardians, Will Function Similarly To The Citadel From The Mass Effect Series

With Earth’s population on the brink of extinction, only one city remains that houses any life. With the Traveller supposedly dead, its ominous presence above the city is the only thing that stops the Fallen and other alien races from annihilating the Human race. Within the city is the Tower, home of the Guardians, and the last line of defence for Earth’s inhabitants. 

Like the Citadel was for the Spectres, the Tower houses everything the Guardians need in their war for the defence of Earth. From weapons and armor vendors to NPCs that help the player understand the world they’ve found themselves in, the last bastion of defence is a safe haven for Guardians to relax, upgrade themselves and generally have a potter about until the next mission calls for Guadian intervention.

While the size of the Tower was rather minimal in the Beta, don’t be surprised if the full game expands upon its facilities to a much greater degree. There were a few areas that were obviously blocked off by invisible walls and barricades.

1. Destiny May Be An Entirely New Genre Of Game

So here’s the biggest and most speculative entry on this list, and depending on interpretation, you may or may not be in agreement as to whether Destiny is an entirely new genre of video game. A massively multiplayer first-person shooter certainly isn’t a new concept, but a shooter incorporating such traditional MMORPG features into a FPS certainly borders on something new. Not only does Destiny feature seamless multiplayer outside of the standard competitive modes, but it incorporates it into a world that is both open world simultaneously instanced. Even the game’s closest relative in terms of structure (the Borderlands series) only features four-player cooperative gameplay, and being able to encounter other players in your world without first inviting them is a feature that doesn’t exist.

Here, however, it’s the fundamental mechanic that sets Destiny apart from everything that’s come before it. There’s still much more to see and be revealed from Bungie, but judging by the Beta build, this may indeed be the very first of its kind. Has the term MMORPFPSG been patented yet? Don’t be surprised if Bungie owns it if it has.