Next generation games consoles, Xbox ONE and PlayStation 4, are just around the corner now and with them is planned a horde of monstrously immense games to hone your reflexes and decision making skills on. While there’s an impressive launch roster for both consoles, a lot of the more anticipated games, including Bungie’s immersive shared world action first person shooter, Destiny, will need a little more patience from gamers, but the question is, will it live up to the hype when it eventually fires up into action next year.
The first thing to bear in mind is that Destiny isn’t, strictly speaking, a dedicated next generation console game, because in addition to its launch on the Xbox ONE and PS4, it’ll also be released on the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. What this means is that for it to be genuinely amazing it’ll need to look stunning and play excellently on the existing consoles, while taking things up to the next level for the next gens.
Set for release in summer 2014, there’s still a long way to go, and developers will be frantically coding, tweaking and rendering like beavers hepped up on fizzy pop and candy poppers as we write to hone the final production. However, our initial take is that the real difference between gen 7 and gen 8 versions of Destiny will mainly be graphical, considering the plan for a dual release.
That said, and from initial demos, trailers and gameplay action, the game does look like it’s going to be genuinely mind blowing graphically across all systems. However, this will inevitably be more polished, free flowing and detailed on the Xbox ONE and PS4, so for gamers looking for the most beautifully rendered gaming experience, the next gen ports of the game should be what you’re aiming for.
The real difference will be something called draw distance, which relates to the distance at which polygons can be drawn on a screen. You can see this easily now in games like Assassin’s Creed 3 where objects in the middle distance sort of draw themselves as you approach, which Ubisoft managed to get around conceptually in their open world setting with the idea of the Animus. For Bungie and the release of Destiny, what this means is that for current gen consoles you’ll get a similar situation as in Assassin’s Creed 3, but on the Xbox ONE and PS4, you’ll get a much bigger scale of draw distance, so your environment will be more free flowing and detailed without slowly materialising in front of your eyes.
While the difference in this will be pretty significant between old world and the new, we’re also anticipating a minor variation between the two new consoles. The reality is that the PlayStation 4 is more powerful than the ONE, so we’re expecting it to be able to cope with a larger draw distance, which you could argue about till you’re blue in the face, but probably won’t be all that noticeable. From what we’ve seen, the cloud factor won’t have any significant impact on bridging the power divide for Destiny, but we don’t think the divide will be that great in the first place between the Xbox 1 and PS4.
There’s a lot of talk on forums and websites about the possibility of online lag being higher on the older systems, which some of you might be concerned about. Our take is that this is highly unlikely as any lag most gamers experience now is usually down to connection speed rather than the speed and power of their console itself. Added to that is the fact that Bungie has officially announced that the online experience of the game will be similar across all consoles old and new, so we think this is one that you can put to one side.
The company is yet to announce their full pack on console feature variation, which could range from voice activation features on the Xbox ONE to touch pad action with the PS4 controller. We’ll update here as soon as the variations are announced.
The shared world sci-fi experience that Destiny will create, with its ties to massively multiplayer online titles, and its heavy focus on first person shooter adventure, should be a new one for gamers. The developers are promising elements of intrigue and mystery for all gamers, as well as all out action and fun, and while they’re still tying off the last of the knots, what we know is that most of them will be the same ones, but with different visual boundaries, no matter what console you play it on.
