Here is the evolution of my thought process with Destiny. From the perspective of someone with ... peeked interest since the reveal.
You can read through my post history on my past hype with Destiny.
Originally, from the original e3 gameplay reveal I thought Destiny was basically ... Star Wars Galaxies / World of Warcraft within the Halo gameplay system. You know, pure FPS shooter, but inside a very large sci-fi world with planets to explore. The initial reveal made the game out to be a large shooter, where your friends can beam down to you on the spot or you can just be roaming around the open countryside and run into someone and then join up together and go fight.
See that mountain in the distance with a giant structure? Go to the structure. Basically, Skyrim. Yeah Skyrim. Skyrim meets Halo meets Borderlands but with 4-5 planets and other things to explore.
That was my original vision of Destiny, the one given to me by Bungie through concept art, the initial reveal, and early talk about how massive the game is, MMO, etc.
I wasnt really keeping up with the game too much from the initial reveals to the next or the next. I watched the VidDocs on PSN a ton of times though. Loved seeing how the game would look on my TV.
Then the e3 2014 video hit and I think this was the low point for Destiny, when it comes to the forum crowd anyway. Negativity everywhere. Still nothing really throwing me off my original thought on how the game would play. As I said, look at my past Destiny posts and you'll even hear me talking about how I think the game will be a huge open world to explore where you are riding around on your pike and just might see another dude doing the same thing off in the distance and you can get together and go cause trouble if you like. You can do this in the actual game, but you won't have any trouble finding anyone since there names are plastered all over your screen.
Then Alpha hit. The big question even then was " is this it? ". Imagine my surprise when I get into Alpha and Old Russia and see how pretty closed off the space was. Yes you can SEE far into the distance, and it is lovely, but when it comes to actually exploring around, all in all it is pretty much rails with spots to branch off. For example the opening area when you drop onto Earth. Right leads you somewhere, left leads you somewhere. Same when you are going to Skywatch. Left leads you to the planes area, right leads you to the forgotten shores ( which is just a split branch before going up to Skywatch ) and of course then the area leading you to Skywatch itself.
I saw that this was repeated on the moon. You basically just see trails leading off somewhere at a fork in the road. You will also see places you can very obviously reach, but the game gives you a coutdown and kills you for leaving the area. So, you have invisible walls as well.
So, there goes that old theory of mine where you have these massive worlds to explore and can just run into random people who are also out adventures. But then I read around and began seeing the same areas of Earth being mentioned alot. Old Chicago, Twilight Gap, etc. etc. So I was thinking, ah ok, you will have multiple " zones " within each planet, which is fine.
Wrong again! Old Russia is THE zone of Earth, it is not that big, and the pathing is basically an open world branching system with invisible kill walls.
So, the original vision has def. died away and been replaced by a shell of what I thought it would originally be. I mean, that didn't stop me from enjoying what it was and putting 25 - 30 hours into the Beta though and having a ton of fun. But I also can't lie and say I am extremely disappointed in what the original idea seemed to be compared to what the end product ended up being, in terms of scale.