If you have ever burned out on a video game, you know what it’s like. Suddenly, you’re exhausted any time the game you once loved shows up in your Steam library. Any time someone talks about it in your earshot, you’re filled with this pervasive cynicism that won’t quit. Nothing about the game is good, everything is bad, and nobody can convince you otherwise – even if you were its biggest fan mere months ago.
I’ve played – and dropped – a lot of games since returning to this hobby in 2016. But the game I feel like I owe the most to – and associate most strongly with work – is Destiny 2. I got into Destiny 2 at the request of some coworkers, and just as I’ve been working that same job for the past eight years, I’ve been playing Destiny 2 since right after launch.
Destiny 2 felt like a perfect game to get into right at the beginning of my reentry into video games. It was simultaneously simple and complex, a buttery-smooth, visually-stunning first-person shooter with intricate lore that sat in tension with what was actually happening in the game. I loved that tension point, and tried to sit inside it as much as possible, those lore entries setting my imagination on fire with the endless narrative possibilities they presented, even if nobody can argue that reading them for hours at a time makes for compelling gameplay.
