This is a good point and always brings to mind just how much was truly impacted by everything they had to cut out of the game. Is this a case of laziness or carelessness? or was it just sloppy editing once content was cut out? I figure you must have a lot of things bugging you about this game because you were our Hawkian of Halo 3 and Reach and I expected you to really get into this game haha Do you have an Xbone? I just got mine last night and was setting it up and saw you on my FL but didn't look as though you'd gotten on XBL recently. Granted, I merely glanced at your name and didn't drill into your profile.
I have a bunch of thoughts on the game but I haven't gotten around to posting them; partly since others have done it better than I have, partly because of time.
I am sucked into the game pretty well, though, despite all the issues. The core shooting mechanics are quite enjoyable, and there's enough other goodness to make it fun despite the macro-level problems. I have a PS4 for this gen.
I also noticed that spot as one of the few places in the campaign where the geometry had a lot of potential. The Gate Lord mission is also good on that planet and there the spawn points are a lot better managed, but Destiny at its best is still mediocre relative to Halo.
There are a lot of problems that drown some outstanding design. Cannon fodder everywhere, too many "horde mode" type siege encounters, RPG-ness eating away at quality weapon variability... anyway, back to the IB I go.
Yeah, it feels like the environments were designed first, and then missions dropped onto them, seperate from the story development. In general there is a lot of underutilization of spaces in the game, and even too much flat out empty space. The Rocketyard area of Old Russia could house a fantastic set of encounters, but it's never used in the story, we blow past it in a strike, and in Patrol there's just a gaggle of respawning enemies here and there. I think of the level of effort to design, model and spec out that space against how it's used and it's kind of tragic.
Before Destiny came out I wondered how the game would be impacted by Bungie growing to 500+ people. I think a big part of the answer is, they suffered the fate that many large organizations do: compartmentalization, or silos. Divisions working on their own massive charter not fully in step with the rest of the project, and there were big gaps when it came time to pull it all together.
(Thanks for the long reply, Hawkian; I agreed with your post entirely.)
