The First Descendant may have copied a lot of Warframe’s systems, but now the community is accusing the developer of lifting barely-altered Destiny 2 icons, too

From the moment of its reveal, many players’ feelings on The First Descendant were that it’s a hodgepodge of mechanics, ideas, systems, structures and designs found in other popular live service loot shooters.

It wasn’t until everyone actually started playing that those feelings were pretty much confirmed. We called out its lack of originality when Connor and I played it over a year ago, but now that it’s in the hands of millions of players, many more cracks are starting to show.

While it’s fair to call The First Descendant… inspired by Warframe, the ever-changing Digital Extremes shooter wasn’t the only game Nexon took inspiration from. We even compared the microtransaction prices in The First Descendant to Warframe's to see if they’re as egregious as everyone has been saying.

The longer players spend in The First Descendant, however, the more they identify elements from other games that might go beyond simple inspiration. The latest controversy surrounds a number of in-game icons that look fairly close to their Destiny 2 counterparts.

As spotted by Forbes, the game has half-a-dozen or so icons that are created in a way that reminded players of Bungie’s seminal shooter. The problem isn’t what the icons are supposed to represent, it’s more the way they’re drawn. They look like early versions of themselves, or perhaps a more embellished takes.

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There are a few other bits here and there, too, such as the Different Dream weapon in The First Descendant looking quite similar to Destiny 2’s Sleeper Simulant, while also sharing some resemblance to the IKELOS sniper rifle.

One piece of the game’s promotional art featured what looks like a Ghost from Destiny. The First Descendant doesn’t have companions in that sense, so that just turned out to be part of the skillset of one of the game’s characters - but once again, the resemblance is hard to ignore.

How much of what’s discovered will have an impact on the game remains to be seen, of course. It’s common for games to offer their own interpretations of ideas found in other games - that’s how genres are born.

The design language of in-game icons being similar, however, is not something that could be as easily explained away. It’s likely also not a big enough issues to warrant legal headaches for either Bungie or Nexon. We’ll have to wait and see what transpires.

That said, now that the information is out in the wild, you can count on players intentionally looking for examples to add to the pile.