After spending a good while experiencing the content available within the beta, I believe I'm prepared to give proper feedback and thoughts on what I experienced. [b]Player vs Environment [/b] I. Story Missions I've found the missions available in the beta to be slightly lacking in terms of their objectives and execution but the tight, well focused game play and worthy AI managed to ward off any possible boredom. From what I've experienced, the missions themselves seem to pretty much revolve around "go here", "go here, scan this", or "go here, scan this, oh look waves of enemies". Now I know this interpretation may seem a overly flippant but while the experience was enjoyable I just didn't get the sense of a properly choreographed encounter as I hopped on my Sparrow, occasionally stopping to deal with a clump of enemies I could have just as easily passed, eventually reaching the immediate area of my objective and then preforming said objective with little variance or fanfare unless a Public Event occurred. It almost felt like the first person, sci-fi equivalent of going into the forest to kill five boars. It just felt so...simple. I believe the fact that the story missions are set within the open world as opposed to uniquely designed levels is the reason for the lack of creativity in their execution, the missions and how they unfold must bend to fit within the predefined play space of the open world rather than have a play space built around their concepts and scenarios for maximum effect. With whats been presented I wouldn't call this an ideal scenario but later environments might allow for more creative lee way and thus more elaborate missions. II. Strike While one Strike isn't much to go on I feel the Devil's Lair at least is also hampered by being set in the open world rather being it own separate space other than the area beyond the Devil Walker. It feels unduly simplistic for what amounts to an assassination as you work your way into the refinery, "go here, scan this, oh look waves of enemies", face the Devil Walker, then make it to Sepiks Prime, a supposed machine god with TWO attacks and a lot of health, effectively a Servitor on steroids. While Strikes are designed to be more succinct than raids I have to hope that further strikes, much like missions, offer a less straight forward experience and the bosses involved are also more distinct in both design and action. III. Exploration Exploration seemed like kind of a mixed bag to me. Coming to terms with this new environment, looking off into the skyboxes, exploring for chests and ghosts or simply new areas, and bumping into powerful enemies signaling you will one day return and not forsake the area forever like many other games, it's all just great but it's the missions that are a sticking point. They just don't offer enough Vanguard reputation to make them really worth concentrating on beyond the "high value target" missions that provide both Glimmer and a large sum of materials that can be eventually traded in for reputation with the Vanguard or Crucible as well as experience and Glimmer. Really, you might as well get by on the bounties since you can effectively multitask and gain Vanguard reputation while in other modes of play. With this in mind though, the design of missions that actually have you explore cave systems and become acquainted with your movement ability through platforming are ingenious. IV. Public Event I enjoyed the much touted Public Events the few times they occurred with a Warsat event involving both high level Fallen and Hive being particularly memorable. I can think of nothing truly negative about temporary events that serve as a focal point for all in the area to engage in large confrontation for unique currency and teh phat meaningful lootz beyond the number of people in the world, and thus participants in said events, can be a tad iffy which was brought to the forefront of my experience why I successfully soloed a Devil Walker. In fact, I don't know what's up with my instances during Exploration but the world seems to be pretty empty most of the time. While the Player vs Environment content is a tad samey the sheer polish found within the combat and RPG elements overshadows the flaws to the point where you don't really mind. It's still fun to shoot things and get useful items even if the activity isn't as fleshed out as it could be. [b]Competitive Multiplayer[/b] I am nowhere near MLGEEEE L33T enough to properly discuss the finer points of multiplayer but I do know enough to say vehicles, particularly the Interceptor, are a little ridiculous right now with my best scores of the entire beta coming from riding in that [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Legend/PGCR/2/4611686018428786358/2305843009215026785/8588665?_t]chariot of fire[/url].