The Last Days of Destiny

I'm not ready, guys.

Unpopular sentiment, perhaps, but there it is: I'm not ready for the end of Destiny.

In the past, finding a favorite game and playing it into the dirt left me starving for the sequel.  I played a fair bit of Final Fantasy on NES, then really rocked out on Final Fantasy II on the SNES.  I was beyond ready for Final Fantasy III.  And then that became my new favorite.  Play-through after play-through, with hours spent grinding Ultima casts in the T-Rex forest.  Anyway, Final Fantasy was just one manifestation of my hobby.  Even during any period of grinding out play-throughs, I'd still be playing other games.  Because the hobby was gaming.    

Once I started my current career as an attorney, though, I probably would have abandoned the gaming hobby altogether.  Kids, work, limited free time, the usual.  Not exactly an unheard-of result.  But then, my one buddy achieved his long-standing dream of working full-time on AAA games.  He was with Microsoft Studios, and he touched several IPs in his time there.  He'd work on a game, I'd pick it up.  Of those, my favorite was definitely the original Mass Effect.  I sank so much friggin' time into that game, and coming out of RPGs I loved the unwieldy item management system.  Mass Effect 2 was a big improvement in terms of controls and game play; a step back for item management and story structure.  Throughout, though, the hobby was gaming.  Again, Mass Effect was just a manifestation of the hobby.

Then, more life stuff.  More kids, moving, longer work hours.  The hobby was fading once more.  I hadn't played anything in almost a year.  This was June 2015.  My buddy was coming to visit, so I figured I'd better have his current game on hand.  Now, my buddy had spent a lot of time stationed by Microsoft Studios onsite with one particular developer.  So when Microsoft Studios became 343 and this one particular developer poached a bunch of folks, my buddy was among the poached.  That developer, of course, was Bungie.  The game, Destiny.

I was slow to pick up what was going on with this game.  To that point, my social gaming had been limited to split screen Goldeneye in high school and dorm LAN Quake in college.  So I was wholly unprepared for just about every aspect of Destiny.  First forays into crucible were a shit show as I ran headfirst into the Thornpocalypse buzzsaw.  Over time, though, something happened with the mix of gear grind, PvP improvement and community.  I mean, you can interact with the best players, run into them in pubs.  Imagine randomly having John Daly on your card at the golf links.  Anyway, all this went into turning Destiny into more than a new favorite manifestation of the gaming hobby.  

Destiny became the hobby. 

That's why I'm not ready for the sequel.  Destiny 2 is not my hobby.  Sure, it may become my new favorite game.  It may even become my new hobby, but that is far from certain.  And this has never happened to me before.  I've never had a hobby just kind of . . . expire.  

And it's already happening.  Content drought, player population drop-off.  Clan's a hundred strong, and only ever two or three members on Destiny at a time.  But even so, every time I log on is my favorite time ever.  I'm scared of losing that feeling.

So no, I'm not ready.  But we'll get there, guardians.  

I hope.

Pretty much the above but spoken aloud by me, at times flubbingly because 2yo kid was talking to me at the same time:

The Last Days of Destiny on Subtimus Prime's Slapdash YouTube Stinkpot