Destiny 2 - Review

Destiny 2 - Review: Atonement

Destiny 2 knows it has a lot to atone for. Atonement may seem like a strong sentiment but, at the release of Destiny, the game that the public was promised and the game that was delivered were vastly different animals. If it weren't for the crisp, exciting gameplay and a quality raid, the first Destiny would have become merely a footnote in the history of the gaming industry. But the game limped on and after three years of patches, upgrades and downloadable content, the final iteration of Destiny turned out to be far superior than the original product. With that being said, the scars from the initial game's fragmented story, disjointed campaign, and downright frustrating leveling system still linger, stinging anyone who tried the first game and doesn't want to be fooled a second time. Fortunately, for all of Bungie's faults, they do learn from their mistakes and Destiny 2 is an entertaining, rewarding and infinitely replayable dive into science fantasy. Its got its flaws, its definitely not perfect, but it's leaps and bounds above its predecessor, finally putting to rest those ghosts of launch that haunted Destiny as a franchise.

Is The Story Actually Good This Time?

Destiny 2's primary campaign eclipses its predecessor's sad excuse for a plot line in every conceivable way. Within the first twenty minutes of the story, you'll see multiple characters, who were little more than glorified item kiosks from the first game, in action, battling the invading Cabal alongside your guardian. Major characters are now fully realized individuals with their own motivations and desires and, by giving these characters fleshed out personalities, it allows you to become invested in their fates. This, in turn, motivates you to keep shooting aliens in order to find out how their stories and yours ends within the larger narrative. Even the villain, who at first glance appears to be a generic, military tyrant has an unexpected level of nuance to his character. The missions themselves do a good job of mixing up the action by throwing in exciting curveballs such as a surprise vehicle section or listening to hilarious banter between Cayde-6, Ghost, and the brand new AI character, Failsafe. Furthermore, veterans of Bungie's earlier Halo series will recognize a few familiar beats in mission design, particularly during a grandiose race-against-time sequence aboard an enormous starship.

However, while many superb changes were implemented to the campaign, there are still a few road bumps along the way. For example, in a baffling design choice, you're stripped of your sparrow for the entire story which, while fairly innocuous in the early stages, becomes more and more apparent in the later worlds, dragging out travel times to uncomfortable lengths. Another gripe that's fairly minor but undeniably noticeable is that several major characters simply vanish from the story unless they're directly interacting with you, including the big villain Ghaul, who, for all of his character nuance, really doesn't do anything except in the opening and closing missions. Regardless of these relatively minor gripes (relatively minor when compared to the original game's heinous failures), Destiny 2's campaign doesn't just blow the original out of the water but it also stands firmly on its own two feet, with dynamic encounters that are story driven, characters that inject humor and personality into the missions, and a central conflict that you actually want to to fight for.

The Masters of Gunplay Strike Back

To expect anything less than excellence from Bungie when it comes to tight controls and satisfying gameplay would be a grave mistake. Again, Bungie proves that they know how to craft a minute-to-minute game experience that both new players and seasoned veterans can enjoy. The simple act of shooting an alien in the face continues to be satisfying and energizing. Enemies react to each type of ammunition differently and significantly, giving the weapons weight in the world. If you are peppering an enemy with a submachine gun, they'll stutter slightly with each hit. On the other hand, blast the same enemy with a shotgun and watch them fly backwards or at least stagger back, stunned. Each moment spent engaging with enemies is dynamic and fun and, honestly, is one of the only reasons that the original game survived long enough for there to be a sequel. Furthermore, there is a wide variety of enemy types between the five factions (Cabal, Fallen, Hive, Vex, and Taken) that you'll engage with including self-healing snipers, detonating robots, berserk gladiators, scurrying thieves, and the massive, rocket launching colossuses. Commonly, you'll stumble upon two or more of these factions fighting each other which provides an even more diverse battlefield once you jump into the fray. Essentially, the combat continues to impress with the responsive controls, the satisfying weightiness of your weaponry, and the vastly different combinations of foes that you'll encounter.

Not content to sit idly on their laurels, Bungie implemented a number of systems that support, enhance and alter the way you take on a firefight. One of the newest additions to the gameplay is the dynamic of shield detonations. In Destiny 2, there are three elemental types: fire, arc, and void. Your energy weapons will have one of these types and some enemies will also be shielded by one of these elements. If you burst a shield with the matching elemental type, the shield will explode damaging nearby enemies and the shield bearer itself. This mechanic adds another layer of subtlety to the gameplay and can make a big difference in the higher level activities. Another change worth discussing is the change from holding a primary, secondary and heavy weapon to a kinetic, energy and heavy weapon. Essentially, all weapons capable of high burst damage including shotguns and snipers have been relegated to the heavy slot whereas all other weapons such as sidearms and auto rifles have been place into either kinetic or energy depending on whether or not they have an elemental damage type. At first, this change seemed disappointing since shotguns and snipers were simply fun to use and putting a limit on it didn't sound like an improvement. However, when battling the forces of the darkness (PVP is a different animal that I will discuss below), much more heavy ammunition spawns allowing you to use your preferred weapons a significant portion of the time. This results in simply more options when playing, allowing you to bring three weapons, all of which will consistently have ammo and further diversifying your combat encounters.

While there is much to laud about the gameplay, there are still a few changes that appear to be confusingly bad decisions. The first thing I'd like to address is the overall decrease in difficulty in the campaign with it rarely becoming challenging in a way that the original did. There were only one or two moments where I felt the tension of whether or not I was going to die and this lack of tension carries over into many of the activities. While I don't want the pain of a nightfall strike in every mission, I would have liked a few more situations where more focus and attention was demanded of me. A good example of this in the original game is when you're first swarmed by the Hive in total darkness and it quickly becomes a frantic fight for survival. Secondly, the amount of ammo that drops, particularly in the raid, is simply not enough. Late game experiences require immense amounts of ammo to defeat the waves upon waves of foes that you're pitted against and it is absolutely silly that primary weapons would run out of ammunition. On its own, this is minor and fairly specific nitpick but, unfortunately, this problem compounds when you take into account that ammo syntheses from the first game (inventory items that could replenish your ammunition) were removed for no apparent reason. On high power level events, when you're going to be blasting through your ammo by the bucket, the removal of a simple item that alleviates that problem is a complete mystery.

How Much Grind Is Too Much Grind?

After the campaign is over, there is a plethora of content to explore, most notably, the strikes. Strikes are an activity that becomes available at the end of the campaign and are individual, highly-choreographed missions that a team of three guardians conquers together. Fortunately, five out of six (on PS4) of these strikes are truly memorable and interesting, climaxing in dangerous, exciting boss fights with unique mechanics and a distinct enemy. Much more than the vanilla Destiny's bullet sponges, these fights range from a towering Vex entity that disintegrates the floor beneath you to a hulking Cabal centurion who summons turrets and taunts you across multiple arenas. There is only one disappointing final encounter with a tanky Fallen Captain who can vanish, teleport, and reappear with little warning, randomly dealing heavy damage with his melee strikes. Despite this, strikes are an exciting and major part of the post-campaign content that Destiny 2 has to offer in the march towards maximum power.

Fortunately, that climb to maximum Power and beyond is much more balanced, allowing you to basically gain levels for just playing the game. Power is a statistic determined by combining your weapon damage and armor rating into one number.  When you finish the campaign, you'll most likely be close to 200 power and by simply performing any activity, you'll be able to reach 265 power. One of the most interesting aspects of the post-campaign content are the four, planet-specific quests, each with their own storyline and unique locations to discover. They are truly a pleasure to experience not only because the content is engaging but also because they come with their own, specialized equipment rewards.  Beyond that, there are weekly challenges that reward 'powerful gear' which will drop several levels above your current Power. This trajectory is clearly laid out and easy to wrap your head around making it infinitely more approachable than vanilla Destiny's progress system.

New Worlds, New Things to Do

Aside from being aesthetically stunning, the worlds that you encounter throughout the campaign and beyond are rich with meaningful activities to discover, each of which has a satisfying payoff with both equipment drops and increases in the newly implemented reputation system. Each planet and activity now has a NPC character who will accept reputation coins in exchange for planet specific, legendary loot. Since you are rewarded with those reputation coins for completing basically any activity on the designated planet, it is far more compelling to attempt the numerous types of activities on each planet. For starters, public events have been completely revamped with about eight variations spread across four planets, each of which have the ability to be transformed into a 'heroic' version. These heroic version are considerably more difficult but come with better rewards, including a slim change at an elusive Exotic gear drop. Beyond these, there are three other activities waiting to be discovered on each planet: the monotonous but fortunately unnecessary Patrols; the vastly superior, story-driven Adventures; and, my personal favorite, Lost Sectors. Lost Sectors have no map or defined mission but instead are a natural part of the environment, usually taking you somewhere you've never been before such as a forgotten oasis or a Vex wonder where you have to defeat a mini-boss in order to unlock a chest. These little excursions are simple in design but they add a sense cohesiveness and discovery to each planet and are well your time to seek out.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Unfortunately, for all the strides forward with the player versus environment experiences, the PVP has received a significant downgrade. Again, I'm using my experience from the first Destiny to inform my opinion but the current PvP has easily been both the most aggravating and least fun part of Destiny 2. To begin with, you cannot choose what game type you want to play, a feature that has been a staple of Destiny since the beginning. Gone are the days where you can chill out by playing a few rounds of Control before heading into a raid. No, now you only have two selections: Quickplay and Competitive. Both of these don't have any noticeable difference in terms of skill or rewards with the only difference being that they randomly have a separate queue of cycling game modes. Don't like Survival mode? Too bad cause that's what you're going to play. Not a fan of Search and Destroy (called Countdown in Destiny)? Sucks for you cause that's what you're getting. Let's move on to the well-intentioned but poorly implemented decision to have Crucible be only four players versus four other players. While I think that it's good to have a 4v4 game mode, it's completely absurd to ONLY have a 4v4 game mode. Not allowing people to play in 6v6, 3v3, or free-for-all game modes is not only limiting but utterly, mind-numbingly idiotic. Four players coordinating together rewards people who communicate well but neuters all other game styles. If you're trying to lone wolf it in the Crucible, good luck not getting team shot at every opportunity. If you just want to jam a classic free-for-all, where you're rewarded for individual skill or even a 6v6 match, where a large portion of success comes from luck in your encounters and being able to capitalize on your super usage, all of those choices are gone. The 4v4 game style of reliance on team support and the change to the Overwatch model of 'defeating' enemies would have been a great addition to a SINGLE game mode. However, Destiny 2 completely guts all of the other game modes that had previously been  available for this is and it's not just a step backwards but a complete nosedive. While you can probably see the salt from this paragraph leaking through your screen, I will say that if you are in a fireteam with four people who have mics, the Crucible is actually pretty fun, rewarding team coordination and good communication.

One of the major parts of Destiny Year One that kept players coming back was the Trials of Osiris and Iron Banner events. While we haven't had an Iron Banner event occur yet, Trials of Osiris has returned as the ominous Trials of the Nine. Changing from 3v3 to 4v4, Trials of the Nine, like the raid, has no matchmaking, requiring you to have a fireteam of four friends to head into the Crucible with. Communication is an absolute must for this challenging game mode as it will feature the stiffest competition since most teams will be Destiny PvP veterans. Fortunately, despite the fact that changing all of the Crucible to 4v4 is a dreadful mistake, it works well in this game mode, letting well-organized players conquer matches. Undeniably, success in this game mode is quite thrilling. Another good change that has been implemented is the loot system. Instead of only getting gear if you manage to win a certain amount of matches, you'll now receive reputation coins, just like those found for each other activity, for each match win. Then, you can immediately spend these coins to garner Trials specific loot. It's a vastly more rewarding and inviting system. For those who do manage to go flawless (winning seven matches in a row without a loss), there are specific, aesthetic rewards that you'll receive along with quite a surprise at the social space. Combined with the fact that Trials comes with it's own, unique map and a trippy social space that is unlocked after just one victory, Trials of the Nine appears to have capitalized on the popularity of its previous incarnation while also making it more appealing for more players.

Once More Unto The Breach, Dear Friends, Once More

Finally, we come to the Leviathan raid. Widely considered the best activity that Destiny has to offer, this raid had a monumental amount of pressure riding on it. Fortunately, the folks at Bungie certainly understood this and crafted an experience unlike anything else in the gaming industry. Entering the world space for the first time physically takes your breath away. The sheer scale and beauty of the behemoth construction is truly daunting, with enormous marble pillars gilded in gold and purple. But Leviathan is more than just beautiful trimming. For the first time in a Destiny raid, the architectural design feels completely logical. It feels like it could actually exist with each hall and foyer and dome occupying an accurate amount of space. This feeling is only reinforced by the extensive network of grimy, dank tunnels that worm their way behind the main challenge rooms reminiscent of the Rat Man's hideouts in the Portal series test chambers. These dirty warrens not only provide a stark contrast to the opulence on display in the main raid but also house many of the location's most elusive secrets. For the action itself, each challenge presents itself as more of a puzzle begging to be solved rather than an endurance test against hordes of enemies. It cannot be understated that facing the raid blind together with friends and attempting to solve these mysteries is the best part of Destiny 2, without exception. To say more than this would be detrimental to the experience, so with that, I'll simply say that you owe it yourself to find a way to do the raid.

Player Choice Was So Last Year

When taking a step back from all of the pieces of Destiny 2, there's a lot to appreciate. The story got a major upgrade and is now not only entertaining but also cohesive. The strikes are diverse and bombastic, requiring more engagement and skill than ever before. The raid is a stunningly well realized achievement both as the ultimate challenge but also as an architectural feat. Despite its many problems, the crucible is still fun with friends at the very least. However, there's one glaring issue that hangs over the entire proceeding and it's subtle enough that you wouldn't be blamed if you didn't notice at all. But where did all of the player choice go? Why can't I select which strike I want to participate in? Why can't I go back and play the story missions that I previously played? Why can't I select what game mode I want to play in Crucible? Why can't I play a private match in Crucible? It seems that on Bungie's march towards allowing everything in the game become team oriented that they forgot to let people just play the game on their own, when they want, how they want. The addition of the Clan system is well integrated into both the story and environment but I can't help but wonder if the reason that so many features that were previously available were removed from Destiny 2 in order to accommodate optimal team play. More than anything, its a disappointment to see that so many choices that we, as players, took for granted in vanilla Destiny have been removed in order to appease the agenda of prioritizing team play. For its many strides forward, the most glaring flaw of Destiny 2 is the lack of player choice in choosing specific content to enjoy.

Atonement At Last

Destiny 2 is a great game, on release day, with no necessary downloadable content. As a year one Destiny player, it feels good to say that. Yes, there are problems and issues and gripes and nitpicks but the product as a whole is worth the money and can sustain itself for the foreseeable future. The combat is as rock-solid and enjoyable as ever, the story is cohesive and entertaining featuring unique, personable characters, and the post-campaign content is overflowing with well-crafted, exciting experiences like strikes and, most importantly, the magnificent raid. Unfortunately, there are still a number of issues holding it back from truly being excellent, the foremost being the widespread lack of player choice that the pervades the game. While the problems in PvP and the seemingly random quality-of-life mistakes found throughout the experience deter the overall product from being top-tier, Destiny 2 is nonetheless a fantastic journey, a mesmerizing rabbit hole of gunplay, science-fiction, and teamwork that will continue to be a gaming staple moving forward. So, eyes up guardian, it's time for Destiny again.

Final Verdict: 8.75/10.0

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