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Destiny 2 is here! Have you noticed? Oh, I have so many memories of the first one: those huge Romantic skyboxes, that tangle of rusted cars, piled high against a patchwork wall, the roar of the shotgun, the endless hunt for Xur and his bargains.It should probably feel strange that I have so many memories of Destiny, because I never actually played it. Still, I lived around it for months and months, glimpsing the UI over people's shoulders in the office as I passed or watching the game idle on a distant TV across the room. Over time, the things I heard about - all that chatter about Engrams - became muddled up with the things I had witnessed without understanding them, and pretty soon the whole thing cohered into what I have now: hundreds of images of what Destiny is, and what it looks like, all working together to create a sense of what you do in Destiny, of what the game values, and what it wants you to value.
The strange thing, then, is that if I had played Destiny, I probably wouldn't have this many memories of it. Or rather, I wouldn't have this many memories floating easily within reach. I'd probably have to dig for them, for the specifics. This is the weird thing I have noticed over the last few years. It's something to do with the way games work in my memory - and maybe, hopefully, in your memory too. As time passes, even the most vivid game is reduced to a single moment, a single feeling, a single incident. Other, more detailed memories are still there waiting, but I have to work my way back to them. And that takes a bit of effort.
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