Ryan Gilliam is a Destiny lifer and former Polygon journalist who now writes at Rogue.site.
For over a week now, Destiny fans have been falling in love with Destiny: Rising. The game is a blast, and NetEase has done a fantastic job capturing the exploration, discovery and general vibe of the Destiny franchise.
But the Destiny community’s reaction to the game goes a bit deeper than ‘wow, this Destiny mobile game is surprisingly good’. It encompasses a decade worth of frustrations – some valid, some not – with the way the mainline Destiny games have ebbed and flowed since the series first launched in 2014.
Any search on social media for Destiny: Rising will bring up a host of fans praising the game for its varied features and Destiny-like feel. And while some have started to hit the ‘gacha wall,’ most are also surprised by the game’s generosity – a common sentiment for the first few weeks of gacha games.
But these comments aren’t just positive toward Rising, they come alongside barbs at Destiny 2. Most of those criticisms state that Rising has many features players have been requesting in Destiny 2 for years. For example, the Sparrow Racing League was a silly, but well-liked racing activity in the original Destiny. Where Bungie has yet to add anything similar to Destiny 2, Rising already has the Sparrow Racing League as well as Clan housing and other features that the Destiny 2 community is jealous of.
The reaction to Rising has been very different to the reaction Blizzard’s Diablo Immortal got a few years ago. Back then, Diablo fans eagerly awaiting Diablo 4 were angry that the next entry in the franchise was a mobile game; today, Destiny fans are wondering why the mobile game is doing everything they wish Bungie was doing with Destiny 2.
This phenomenon is relatively easy to explain, as Diablo 4 was only a concept to the community at the time, filled with all of their wildest hopes and dreams. Destiny 2 is a tangible product and has been around for a long time; it’s very easy for players to look at it, see all of its flaws and compare them to this exciting new mobile game.
Diablo fans now treat Immortal in much the same way that Destiny fans are currently treating Rising. Immortal has had several updates (like the addition of the Blood Knight class) that Diablo 4 players would love. Because, unlike when Diablo Immortal launched, players now have the beautiful but flawed Diablo 4 in their hands, which they’re now free to poke fun at while they look wistfully in the direction of a mobile game they don’t really want to play.
And that is the central conflict at the heart of all Destiny fans at the moment. Rising is a great Destiny mobile game – about as good as anyone could’ve hoped for – but it isn’t the much-requested, yet still unannounced Destiny 3. Even so, because Rising comes at a time where players are deeply frustrated with Destiny 2, it’s exactly the right thing for players to place their hopes and dreams on.
Eventually, Destiny players will all hit the ‘gacha wall’ and likely begin to resent Rising in a different way than they resent Destiny 2. But, right now, the game is giving players something refreshing and new.
If anything, the popularity of Rising shows Sony and Bungie that players are so ready and ravenous for a new Destiny that they’re willing to download an emulator on their computer and deal with gacha mechanics to get it (NetEase advertises its own MuMuPlayer emulator on the Rising website).
Nobody knows if or when Destiny 3 will happen. But for now, Destiny fans are gladly flocking to Rising just for a taste of something fresh in the universe they love.
