I appreciate Bungie trying give Destiny longevity, but at the same time, 20 hours is too long in my opinion...

This is true for every loot type game. The gear is different and the mobs are night and day different.

You know what sucks? Being a level 8 player just trying to get some random cosmodrome missions done an running into a mob spawned for two level 22 players. Multiple wizards, knights, etc. Not even fair. It makes it virtually impossible for me to play.

At twenty hours, I think you could argue for indoctrination by repetition and Skinner's Box.

That's sad.

Yep. Similar to recent Zelda games really. Where you need to go through a cringe worthy "introductory" tutorial where everything is spoon fed to you during the first few hours.

Recent Zelda games? Oh you mean A Link Between Worlds where there was hardly any tutorial? Or Zelda U where Eiji Aonuma stated that he will make sure the tutorial is short? Granted SS and WW had large tutorials but they weren't recent zelda games since WWHD was a remaster and SS came out a while ago

How does someone complete the story and only be level 16? I'm at 19 and I have a couple hours left.

No, at 20 hours the game is nothing but repeating the same missions or multiplayer maps you've played over and over to get new gear so you can play the same missions at a higher level so you can get new gear to play the same missions.

Cherry picking much, eh? Handheld Zelda don't have that problem, granted, since they follow pretty much the way 2D Zelda games have always been. But the console ones, on the other hand, yep, the recent ones have been like that. And it's annoying. SS is pretty recent in my book, since it's the last console Zelda, unless you count WWHD, which, like you said, also has that problem. And then, you have TP which also has that problem. Basically, most console Zelda games since OoT have that problem. Cherry pick all you want (I expected you to react as defensively as you did, to be honest), that's how it's been for the longest time now. Aonuma's claims about an unreleased game do nothing to me. I'll judge it when the game is in my Wii U. Feel free to drink their Kool Aid instead.

And the introductory portion of SS/WW was really fun... they were like the beginning of PlanetES (or a bunch of other anime), being enjoyable and low key and giving context to the rest of the story, so it really hits you when the drama happens.

However, Destiny and Zelda are so incomparable that there is really no reason to be talking about this in this thread....

Lol, poor Bungie really seems to be taking their first critical failure harshly. They've been trying to do damage control for this thing before it even came out!