The Truth Inside Destiny's Loot Cave

The loot cave is dead, but its spirit will haunt other venues and hover over Destiny for a long time. Bungie will keep persecuting it, having barred item trading and proclaiming, "You should be able to tell a badass story for every sweet jewel in your arsenal." The Man Who Shot Into The Cave A Whole Bunch doesn't quite have that "legendary" ring to it.

It's easy to side with the loot cave, though, given Destiny's parsimonious grip on worthwhile weapons and armor in the endgame. The cave, an exploitation space constantly filled with enemies if you stand outside in just the right spot, is an oasis of rewards in a desert of so-so shotguns, and the ideal way to exact revenge against the game's overlords. Really, if you're looking for the most corrupt figure in games right now, it's Destiny's super shady Cryptarch – an embezzling creep who takes futuristic blueprints extracted from exotic alien corpses, disappears into his shop and brings back the equivalent of a rusty shovel.

And so you can either hit more things with your shovel, hoping a superior engram will fall out, or go shoot into the latest loot cave for a more assured fortune. It's poetic vengeance wrapped in weathered rock.

I haven't been brave enough to invest in this phenomenon of projectile-based spelunking, and it's not because I feel like it's unholy to cheat Bungie's system (which is still evolving). Destiny is a game I keep returning to, even as I mumble complaints under my breath. It's clearly doing something right, and that something can feel like an ambiguous cross between the painterly environments, the comforting cadence of shooting and the sense that you can't see the true edges of a huge universe.

There's less ambiguity when it comes to what I don't like about Destiny, and it's discomforting to have it staring right at you, like two glowing eyes haunting a black abyss. Destiny's scaffolding is exposed in the loot cave, and it demolishes the ignorance you need to think of Bungie's creation as an exciting quest across the galaxy. Without the artifice, without the music, without the challenge or need for concentration, you're just someone sitting on their couch, shooting into a glitchy computer-generated cave. Caves aren't even that interesting when they're real (no offense, speleologists).

This is not a realization particular to Destiny, and you can trace this line of thought back to a table claimed by Dungeons & Dragons. The old-school quest ran off rules and calculations, just like Destiny does. The mage hurls a fireball into the darkness, a dice roll determines whether it hits an orc, and the dungeon master tells you how much damage it does. This style of play, where the actions of the heroes are more abstract than the results, still exists in many traditional roleplaying games.

Now that we can quickly move and shoot precisely with our heroes in magnificent three-dimensional environments, action is less abstract and fluid enough to become the crux of most modern games. The calculations are still there, but they're either a bit fudged or entirely invisible. The game developer, or the game itself, assumes the role of the dungeon master, and we relinquish our imagination of the heroes, their follies and their deft maneuvers. Now there is one true imagination, and sometimes it's ... well, a lot has been said about Destiny's storytelling finesse (and lack thereof).

Destiny, we learn with every hour that we play, is a weak dungeon master. The attempts at lore fall flat, the essential context is sparse (HAHA, EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT THE BLACK GARDEN IS) and the best, most rewarding adventure is shooting into a cave. There is no imagination there, only the sobering image of glowing piles of guns and cloaks – all of which will seem less unique and vital when Destiny introduces its first expansion. Then you'll get more stuff, to kill more enemies, to get more stuff, to kill more enemies, to get more stuff, to ... what was the point again?

You'll never find the answer inside the loot cave, and that's why I'm too scared to go there.

(Meanwhile, on the other side of the solar system, a certain swindler is about to be taught a lesson.)

[Image: Activision]