I never got over the fact that Destiny 's most "epic" experience was a "loot cave," which let players essentially press a big, shiny button and make insanely powerful weapons pop out.

It also may never become an exploratory epic full of, say, procedurally generated content or multiplayer space-flight journeys through the dark recesses of a faraway galaxy.

The first Destiny hinted at these kinds of comparison points, but the sequel, even after only 15 hours of pre-release play, pushes such loose threads away.

In order to simulate the experience of hopping onto live, launch-day servers full of other real-life players, dozens of critics connected to each other's D2 sessions in a local network environment.

Once I'd reached a point that Bungie estimated as the "two-thirds" mark (roughly nine hours in), I was told to ignore any further main-plot missions and instead explore all of the other open content on the game's four major planets.