‘The First Descendant’ Uses Barely Modified ‘Destiny 2’ Icons

While The First Descendant is built largely from Warframe DNA, players have noticed that a number of in-game icons look an awful lot like those from Destiny 2. One of those might be a coincidence, perhaps, but there are a lot, and this is without checking more than a small percentage of all the icons in the game.

In this case, you can see that in almost every case there are minor tweaks made, a sort of “copy my homework without making it look like you copied it” situation, but it’s pretty clear that if these aren’t taken straight from Destiny, they’re copied almost exactly with those minor additions or subtractions.

While I’m not sure if there’s anything else 1:1 like this in the game, players have noticed a weapon that looks very similar to a Destiny 2 design. The weapon in question is the Different Dream, which you can see above. And the idea is that it takes its design aesthetic from the IKELOS series of weapons in Destiny 2, namely the IKELOS Sniper:

And even more so the Sleeper Simulant.

The question is whether it is taken or a tribute. I don’t know. It certainly resembles the aesthetic, but it is certainly not a exactly copy. That barrel and Sleeper’s clearly look very similar. Although the fact that the gun is called “Different Dream” makes me think it might be an homage rather than a rip-off. I’m… almost willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. The icon thing is worse, if you ask me, and if they did it there…

There are a few other things, so far. There’s a shielded enemy with a weak spot in the middle that reacts essentially identically to a Cabal Phalanx when hit. There’s of course one of the game’s major pieces of art that was compared to Destiny before release, though that’s a small freeze orb, not a ghost.

Overall, The First Descendant feels like an amalgam of a bunch of games with relatively few original concepts. Again, it’s at least 85% Warframe DNA in almost every way, with more intrusive and expensive microtransactions (though even those are largely Warframe-specific).

I think a lot of this can be overlooked, even if the “inspiration” is clear, if you can call it that. But the icons are problematic and I wonder if Bungie will try to do something about it. I don’t know if other icons are from other games that I don’t play. I’ll keep looking for more points of comparison and send me any you have on Twitter.

I’ve reached out to Nexon and Bungie for comment and will update once I have more information.

Update: More will be added as they come in:

follow me on Twitter, YouTube, And Instagram.

Pick up my science fiction novels Herokiller series And The Earthborn Trilogy.