It's really depressing to me that Destiny's benchmark at this point is "not as good as Halo, but better than CoD." The fact that Halo actually started getting coddly near the end of Bungie's run is such a shame.
I've been watching some Destiny let's plays and while Bungie seems to be the anti-Nintendo in that they're trying to bring random online socialization back, everything is just so safe compared to Halo. The combative enemies are either knife n' rifle-toting humanoids or abstract, simply geometric robots with no in-between. While the playable races were pretty homogenized in Halo, you at least had some diversity with wonky races like the Jackals and Hunters thrown in. The enemy types I've seen so far look insanely "rubber forehead alien" and not alien alien. The Elites and Brutes had neat dynamics among ranks with bosses getting more vibrant, ornate colors and armor along with exotic weaponry, while bosses like Riksis are literally just tropes like "big Fallen with more health."
That being said, Destiny absolutely strikes me as the game Halo would have tried to be if Bungie had a huge budget, all the time in the world and complete creative control, so I can't necessarily say I'm surprised by it. Bungie had a nice little exception-to-prove-the-rule with Halo, but everything else of theirs is just way too "throw some fantasy, space lore and Ghost in the Shell on a dartboard and see what sticks" for me. The Fallen Devil Walker is literally a Star Wars Tachikoma. Bungie's stuff always comes out best when they've got restrictions on content placed by the big wigs upstairs and they're in perma-crunchtime with a more humble budget, which is how you end up with titles like Combat Evolved and ODST. If you start giving them the wheel, they start veering too far into baroque territory and get things like Halo Reach and Destiny. Maybe my opinion will change later down the line, but after seeing recent examples of classic arena shooter-esque combat making a return like with Wolfenstein: The New Order, it's equal parts sobering and somber seeing Bungie coming up with Star Warderlands.