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Halo: Reach and Destiny -- Do they feel the same to you?

Destiny is the next evolution of the gameplay ideas in Reach. Bungie was able to branch out a bit and make them even better since they don't have to follow the Halo tropes anymore.
 
Get off your high horse, playing Halo in single player is hardly Starcraft

Nor did he say so, but Halo has plenty of strategy, even when they are less in the form of long-term decisions. What weapons you grab, which way you run when a grenade is thrown at you, how you approach a situation, what you do when you are running out of ammo, grenade management. Halo is very far away from aim, shoot, win.

Read my post above, of course there are a world of differences, but I am simply talking about the feedback you get when walking, running and firing the DMR vs. the Scout Rifle or Jetpack etc.

The sound design is also vastly similar. Basically all of this is to be expected, but what made Reach feel different from Halo is apparent in Destiny. That's what I'm trying to get at I suppose.

It doesn't feel like Halo, it feels like Reach.

EDIT:

Very interesting so far in this thread. Subjectively, the games either feel similar or they don't. I would have expected similarities in look/feel to be something that is observed as being the same for all gamers.

I know you are talking about those differences, but I doubt your friend was talking about those differences when saying that one sucks and the other does not.

halo reach was quite shit but destiny takes shit to a whole different level. if this was the direction bungie was headed to with halo im glad 343 are now in charge. they screwed up halo 4 but halo 5 is sounding good so far

I...what. Am I supposed to quote your username or something? Barely anything is known about Halo 5 anyway.
 

abadguy

Banned
They dont

Id much rather play Reach PvP then Destiny's.

Reach may be extremely flawed, but it still has some core Halo elements of map control and teamwork.

Destiny is just space COD and... its boring.

I agree with this. With the ADS and quick kill times. I played a few games of Crucible and it's just not for me at all. I will stick to questing/co op in Destiny.
 

Izuna

Banned
I know you are talking about those differences, but I doubt your friend was talking about those differences when saying that one sucks and the other does not.

Not to accuse my friend as a fanboy, but he had a period of "should have gotten an XBone" because of the games coming out this year. Destiny is the last game he is hyped for so I immediately assumed he would be disappointed because he told me he didn't really care for Halo all that much.

When I asked him, he said he couldn't feel anything as the same at all. Reach was poop, he hated the Snipers being inta-kill (what?) and so on. I ultimately feel that Halo felt very foreign to him because of the way it is played with energy weapons and so on. I know Destiny is much easier to get into since Halo requires a lot of knowledge about the franchise before it can be enjoyed all that much, and if you start with Reach it never actually teaches you what the weapons are for.

However... When he said it feels nothing like it from movement perspective, I wondered if it was him not wanting to have any care for Halo, or if other people felt that way. According to this thread, they don't feel the same at all to some.
 

Synth

Member
Not to accuse my friend as a fanboy, but he had a period of "should have gotten an XBone" because of the games coming out this year. Destiny is the last game he is hyped for so I immediately assumed he would be disappointed because he told me he didn't really care for Halo all that much.

When I asked him, he said he couldn't feel anything as the same at all. Reach was poop, he hated the Snipers being inta-kill (what?) and so on. I ultimately feel that Halo felt very foreign to him because of the way it is played with energy weapons and so on. I know Destiny is much easier to get into since Halo requires a lot of knowledge about the franchise before it can be enjoyed all that much, and if you start with Reach it never actually teaches you what the weapons are for.

However... When he said it feels nothing like it from movement perspective, I wondered if it was him not wanting to have any care for Halo, or if other people felt that way. According to this thread, they don't feel the same at all to some.


I really liked Reach, and am completely unimpressed with Destiny so far, so I'm on your friends side in this. They may have similar feels in terms of movement, but you've already identified tons of other aspects that can cause someone to like one of the two and hate the other.

Enemy behaviour for example is something that can easily give the perception of a game feeling different. Let's take Perfect Dark Zero for example. I don't think the aiming system for that feels bad at all (had tons of fun in MP with it), however it's easy to convince yourself that it feels like shit when playing the single player game because the psychic enemies are busy dancing around your crosshair when they shouldn't even be able to see you. Another example is something like the Quake 3 Arena, where my perception of how each weapon felt, and which ones I wanted to use changed dramatically depending on if I had Quad Damage or not. Nothing had changed about the weapons mechanically, and all were scaled by the same amount, but it was all about the Lightning Gun and Plasma Cannon for the next 20 seconds, and the Rocket Launcher was suddenly no fun at all.

Similarly your perception of movement can be affected by the movement of your enemies. Resident Evil's tank controls are fine as you're leisurely picking off slow shambling zombies. However the second you're getting chased by a Crimson Head, or trying to avoid attacks from the Tyrant on a plane, it suddenly feels like the most crippled movement system in the world. You feel godlike in Toejam and Earl with the Icarus Wings or Super Hitops, but that's only a result of your enemies' movement comparatively. Everything I fought in Destiny so far has been grounded and easily manageable. There's been no Covenant ships shooting at me from overhead. No Hunters charging at me like an unstoppable train for daring to get in their face. No suicidal Grunts that'll kill you dead in one hit for failing to get enough distance. I can definitely see how someone could feel like the movement is different as a result.

I'd imagine the enemies being much easier to take down (Elites was assholes in Reach...), being able to choose one weapon and use it for eternity, having melee as a relatively safe option etc, is going a long way towards obscuring the mechanical similarities Reach and Destiny may have. Combine that with a loot system, EXP levelling, having permanent access to a vehicle, ADS (rather than a toggle zoom, that you get kicked out of when shot) and other differences, and I don't think liking one and not the other really says much about a person.
 

FStop7

Banned
They don't feel anything alike, to me.

I wouldn't say one feels better than the other, I like them both. But they're very different. Destiny feels, to me, much closer to Borderlands than it does Halo.

People really don't like the inclusion of ADS? Seriously? Come on, it's 2014.
 

Slixshot

Banned
Reach is one of my most played games ever. I get a similar feeling, OP. You're not crazy. I think destiny is better in general, but I get that vibe.
 

DeckardOfAstora

Neo Member
I agree with OP, they are similar, and that's great!
Reach had not only great gameplay, it had great art and aesthetic, and Destiny feels like a step up in every way.
Destiny feels less floaty it's true, and that's great too.
I just wished that Destiny had more weapons or that they could balance hand-cannons to be more useful
 

DOWN

Banned
Destiny feels like the Reach studio copied Borderlands for the Halo universe setting but then had the license ripped out from under them and ended up with a shoddy Cortana/Guilty Spark derivative called a ghost, infection species not called flood, alien species not called covenant but using the same drop ships and pods, and a bunch of armored military borrowing iconic legend names for their classes but not Spartan but let's go with the other Greek name Titan.

But damn, it's pretty and plays well. Except that I can't run off the numbers and some other HUD elements so it is forced to look even more like Borderlands.
 

TheXbox

Member
Not even close. They're so fundamentally different I'm not even sure how anyone could say that the two are even remotely similar. What's the only link between them? Armor abilities are sort of like the magic powers in Destiny? Yeah, alright.

EDIT: I didn't really think this one through. Destiny movement speed is actually similar to Reach. (read: plodding) I thought it was more like Killzone with greater verticality, but I can see the Reach comparison. The shield bar and motion tracker certainly bare resemblance to Halo as well. The iron sights and kill times are really what do it for me.
 
Destiny environments definitely remind me of Reach, as does the general Bungie feel of movement and shooting. The fights themselves though? Not really, but there are some shared elements.

Boss enemy AI in Reach was pretty much super armored heavies toting one-hit kill weapons with splash, so yeah, that reminds me of Destiny. The flow of headshotting grunt after grunt after grunt, tossing grenades to strip an Elite's shields before charging at them with an auto or melee hit, taking them down and watching the demoralized grunts flee for their lives, popping Jackals in the hand to knock aside their shield and open them up for the headshot - or shooting at a whole pack of em to make them all plant themselves with their shields raised as your grenade lands right at their feet, or raining death-from-above needler hell upon Brute Chieftains before picking up their gravity hammer and unleashing hell upon their minions... yeah, not really feeling any of that in Destiny. Destiny has its own flow, certainly, but its more of a gear check than a skill check and I haven't seen many interesting behaviors or ways to play the AI.
 

BraXzy

Member
It is kinda funny how many times I've compared stuff in the beta to Halo in general. Oh, I have an AI comapnion who picked me? Cortana? Oh, no it's Ghost. A covenant drop ship has just appeared to drop another wave of elites.. oh, it's the fallen. Ordanance drop incoming on the map, oh no it's heavy ammo for my heavy weapon.

Destiny is definitely its own thing. But considering they wanted to start fresh on something new, there's a lot of stuff that they've brought with them.
 

Murtrod

Member
Loading up Reach then Destiny "Beta" (360/Xbox One) and switching back again, I cannot spot much difference between how it feels using the DMR and Scout Rifle.

Obviously the two are very different games, and your preference may skew one way or the other, but a colleague of mine swears that Reach is garbage but Destiny is the shit. I don't understand how anyone could think like that.

Going between the two, I notice a feel differences in look and feel:

- Frame-pacing(?) is much better on Reach. It feels smoother.
- Character movement is tighter on Destiny, where unless you are sprinting on Reach, it feels little floatier when changing direction.

Am I wrong for thinking that Destiny feels like a Reach mod?

EDIT: I think I would prefer Destiny if there was a way to hide damage numbers and enemy health from the screen.

Way too complex and drastically different to be referred to as a mod, but it definitely feels almost identical to Reach. At least the Alpha did. But I find that to be a positive (as I am one of the few who loved Reach to death).
 

Rockyrock

Member
Kind of surprised with how much love the Destiny gunplay is getting.

The sticky-aim in this game is off the charts. Its so easy to lock on to people's heads, it's almost as bad as GTA in that regard.
 

Vire

Member
Considering there's aim down sights in Destiny...

No, not at all.

One is run and gun, the other is run or gun.
 

RSB

Banned
I'd much rather play Reach (classic Slayer) than Destiny's PVP.
Yep, me too. And considering Reach is my least favorite Halo MP... :sadface:

Forced ADS, accuracy penalties for movement, headshot capable AR's (lolwut? seriously Bungie?) completely busted weapon balance, way too fast TTK for a game with such a high degree of aim-assist, low FoV, the players blend-in with the maps too much, insta-win button for everyone, killstreaks... Destiny PvP is just horrible.

So, about OP's question, no, Destiny doesn't feel like Reach at all. And before playing the game I would have thought that was a good thing (as Reach is the worst Bungie-made Halo game, at least gameplay wise) but after playing it, I'd rather have Reach 2, TBH.
 
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