When Destiny’s Season of Undying ended and Bungie soon replaced it with Season of Dawn, I knew I had something to do during the Thanksgiving break. I had a limited amount of time to reach my destiny goals.
Unfortunately, I had a family that traveled over the long vacation. My destiny plans looked bleak. But I found an unlikely ally of fate in my travels: Google Stadia.
Thanksgiving in Sin City
Since I was reluctant to buy my own stadiums (especially given the worrying reviews), I used a friend’s buddy code on Wednesday before my big trip. This would allow me to test the technology without risking the effort. Without hoping it would work the way I needed it, I threw my MacBook, my Xbox One Elite controller and a USB adapter into my backpack.
My first stop was with my parents. On a whim, I sat down on her old couch, plugged in and connected to my father’s unreliable internet.
I loaded Destiny 2 and was amazed. The cross-save of the game worked perfectly. I invited my Guardian into the world and entered a three-hour grind festival in the Vex offensive.
Despite the connection, my gaming experience was mostly smooth. Occasionally I have reached a delay peak that lasted a few seconds, but I was able to recover over and over again. At the end of my game session, I had made considerable progress towards my goal – the title “Immortal” in the game. I logged out, impressed by the technology.
Not every experience was the same. My first attempt to use Google Stadia at the airport was not going well. I was able to launch a Vex offensive run in LAX, but was shut down after a few minutes due to a bad connection.
My hotel in Las Vegas was both the salvation of Stadia and my biggest disappointment. My connection to the hotel network is constantly shaking from “good” to “OK,” which means that every second of gameplay is delayed. Occasionally I lose complete control of my character.
Despite this disruption, I was able to make progress on the path to the immortal in the odd hours of my journey. Normally I would spend this vacation playing something on my switch or phone wishing I were near my powerful slot machines for sanding. Stadiums made me progress seriously.
Perfect for fate, not for anything else
Photo: Chris Plante / Polygon
With my connection problems – even with the smaller ones – I would never perform a fate attack on stadiums or play ranked multiplayer. Anything that takes into account significant abilities or reflexes is impossible if my connection is slightly unstable. But for senseless grinding? I can not imagine a better platform.
Unfortunately, Stadia has a number of other problems with its infrastructure. It really works only with Destiny 2, because Destiny perfectly complements the offer of Cross-Save and Free as part of Stadia Pro. If you need to buy your games again, it’s difficult to use the service for other purposes.
Destiny 2 is perhaps the best use case for Stadia, though it’s a two-year game – especially if you’re a longtime player like me who loves the Grind and has made serious progress on other platforms. With the right game and the right features, Stadia sings (mostly on the keyboard). The thought of ending Assassin’s Creed Odyssey on Stadia sounds great, but not when I think of starting over again – not to mention the cost of a second edition.
Despite the choppy service and poor infrastructure, Google Stadia sold me over my Thanksgiving weekend. It’s just too useful to progress everywhere in my bad space nonsense game to give it up.
But I have no illusions about what Stadia is for me. At the moment it’s just a Destiny machine. a way for me to play public events in bed or on family vacations. Even though Google Stadia does not work well, the kind of freedom it allows can have a big impact. It’s easy to look at my vacation time and see an exciting future for streaming games – even though this may not be Stadia’s future.
