Published: Sep 21, 2016 12:00:00 PM

SIVA-chamber.gifDestiny is the game of the zeitgeist. It's the ghost of our time.

It rolls into town, beautiful, luscious, packed with things seen and unseen—and it's devoured. Following, we pick our teeth with its bones for the following six months, mouths watering at the thought of our next meal.

It's the Netflix of video games and that equivalency isn't because it's streamed (which it isn't). No, instead, Destiny is the Netflix of video games because it's binged, dissected, passed around, and its next content drop is anticipated.

Destiny: Rise of Iron is the greatest preview of the unnamed, eventual, inevitable Destiny 2 to date:

Destiny is the Netflix of video games.

What a wonderful piece of marketing hype. All applause to Bungie and its community on Rise of Iron's launch. I'm not even being a jerk when I say that. This was an artful, staged, paced content-launch that understood what it was and what it meant to the players.

The discussion is built into Rise of Iron's game-body. To be as general as possible, it's Buzzfeed-ready. No, it's Ghostlittle-ready. No, it's YouTube-ready.

There we go.

I don't have enough terrabytes of storage to study the psychotic underbelly of chocolate-covered gummi bears fueling the YouTube scene surrounding video game stream. Thankfully, Bungie has entire departments devoted to making sure their game, Destiny, is ripe for conversation.

Go to YouTube right now and you will find guides already on:

  • How to get Iron Gjallarhorn
  • How to get Khovostov
  • How to get Young Wolf's Howl
  • SIVA formation locations
  • Farming Archon Forge

All these videos, 24 hours since launch, and they're all SEO'd so hard your grandma would die on the toilet if the devil whispered in her ear the number of people had watched just one video.

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When I say Destiny is the Netflix of video games, I mean it knows how to start a conversation, well after everyone is done with the "product." Did you stop talking about Stranger Things when you finished the episodes?

No, you recommended it to your friends because it was so much fun, you wanted to keep it alive.

Does Rise of Iron end when you complete the story missions? No. And Bungie knew this. It may have taken them two full years of user-testing to discover Destiny's authentic soul, but it has at last revealed itself. It isn't the heir to Halo, it isn't a Call of Duty competitor, it isn't a Battlefield 1-level technical showcase, it isn't a mythological world alongside Mass Effect.

No, Destiny is the future-proof, always moving, always talking, always expanding video game for the modern age.

Bungie steered into the skid. When nobody could properly review Vanilla Destiny (except me, I wrote The Only Perfect Review of Destiny On The Internet), Bungie rode the internet's unending conversation and they've been surfing atop it for going on two years now.

How is Rise of Iron a preview of Destiny 2?

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You see Destiny's future in Rise of Iron's design. You see it in the expansive Plaguelands region, rising from the knee-deep snow, up the cliffs, past you muttering to yourself, "man, I'm climbing high—wow, there's a whole sort of level up here, I really don't want to fall," all the way to the battlefields visible further in the distance.

Destiny 2 may have a stickier story narrative, but don't expect Bungie to hang its hat on that hook. Stories like Halo's are consumed in a day. Destiny isn't that type of game anymore.

Destiny 2 is a game that will pack boatloads of enemies on screen, like Rise of Iron. They're leaving the PS3 and Xbox 360 behind for a reason.

Destiny 2 is a game that will motivate players to touch all it shines its light upon. Expect longer, more twisted quests that require conversation, and speculation, and entire YouTube video series to guide players.

Destiny 2 is a game that will update often. It's already in the news cycle. Why leave? It will be a living hype machine, similar to the Marvel movies.

Destiny 2 might even be a game that you can officially conquer in under 2 hours, just like I did with Rise of Iron (my full ~100 minute story mode playthrough embedded below).

 

 

As I've stated before, Destiny 2 will enter the conversation in February of 2017, just as Vanilla Destiny, The Taken King, and Rise of Iron were all formally unveiled in February. You will speculate. YouTube videos will rise. Thousands of hours of free advertising will burst onto the internet.

Bungie has built a thriving community. When they say how much they love their community, they aren't joking. Consider how much they do for their business?

It's deserved. Nothing feels like Destiny. Nothing is quite so automatically-precise. Nothing builds memories like Destiny.

You heard it here first.

-- Alex Crumb
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