Bungie was really pushing this game to be something innovative, something new and flashy that hasn't been seen before, but in all aspects, we have.
What was being advertised was an expansive, open-world, almost MMO like FPS, but instead what I got was nothing more than a re-skinned borderlands. You kill bullet sponge enemies, collect loot, move onto the next area by travelling, rinse & repeat. There's nothing special or noteworthy here, well, nothing people haven't seen before. I think most people were banking on it being something over the top and huge, to break the boundaries of gaming as we know it, but it's really just a disappointment.
The game in itself is just a complete let down to what was actually advertised and marketed, it's repetitive, tedious and boring in later game, fun for a few hours but it really does get tiring after a while. The gunplay however, is pretty good and well fleshed out, sidequests are also an upside, the skill tree is somewhat impressive as well, but that's about it for the positive gameplay aspects.
Story wise it's still too early in the game for me to really say, but so far the initial tone I'm getting is the same old "go to X, kill/collect Y, return". As stated before, the sidequests aren't bad when in comparison to other games, but the storyline quests aren't anything special. Another thing is customisation, one has to wonder why bungie even bothered adding extra races to play as, when they are literally just humans with a different skin colour. I know many of the people who worked on Halo went over to 343 industries, but surely Bungie would have some creative and imaginative talent left, right?
All in all, a complete disappointment, boring, tedious and almost grinding in spots, it isn't what I expected and most likely isn't what a lot of people expected either. It brings nothing new to the table and it really shows, this is one of those times where playing safe ended up being more detrimental than risking it. Buy it if you want to play a game with the old, familiar setting and feel of so many others, just don't expect great things from it.