In many ways, Wikipedia’s tongue-in-cheek description of the project as a “massively multiplayer online action role-playing first-person shooter” is accurate – although in reality the emphasis is very much on the action part – hence the developer’s own preference for the term, “shared-world shooter”. Sitting down to play the game at Bungie’s cavernous studio in Bellevue, Washington, there’s really one thing on everyone’s minds – what actually is Destiny? It’s a question the studio has purposefully danced around for several months and one that journalists have so far struggled to answer via the fractured glimpses of the game shown at E3 and Gamescom. And now, at last, we’re able to pick some substance from the seductive, skilfully orchestrated hyperbole. 'We like to tell big stories and we want people to put the Destiny universe on the same shelf they put Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter or Star Wars,” said Bungie COO Pete Parsons last August. The futuristic apocalypse is a sci-fi staple, explored in countless games from Halo itself to Gears of War, Mass Effect and Resistance: Fall of Man – but it’s the scope of this project that has dazzled. Sure, the background narrative is achingly familiar. Now, backed by Activision’s huge investment, it is promising to go further. Years ago, Bungie brought immense stylistic verve and beautifully wrought mechanics to the shooter genre with its Halo series. It is a perfect storm of technological ambition, hype and fan expectation, arriving at a time in which everyone is grasping for the future of games. First whispered about three years ago and now surely one of the most keenly anticipated games of the decade, Destiny is big news.

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