Destiny 2: Curse of Osiris - Review (Updated)

Destiny 2: Curse of Osiris - Review:

The "Most Rewarding" DLC Ever

When Deej, the Community Director for Bungie Studios, announced that the Curse of Osiris DLC had the "most rewarding public event ever" live during the reveal stream, the community widely ridiculed him when he opened the reward chests and a measly two reputation tokens and a single blue (rare) engram popped out. These were such laughably small returns that everyone, myself included, had just assumed that the correct rewards had not been tabulated correctly yet. So, now that I've played through the Curse of Osiris and completed a Heroic version of the Public event, do you know what the actual reward is for completing it? Two tokens and blue engram. Are you kidding me, Bungie? This sort of pathetic reward is emblematic of the Curse of Osiris expansion as a whole, demeaning to the player's investment of time and bringing no meaningful change to a tired formula. The physical lack of value in this product is frankly astonishing as the mediocre story only lasts two to three hours, the world space of Mercury is home to a single Lost Sector, a single public event, and three short adventures, the new strikes are carbon copied from story missions, and the over-hyped Infinite Forest features absolutely zero ingenuity. For ten dollars, this product might have cut it but for twenty dollars, it's a complete rip-off. Players looking for a meaningful change to the Destiny 2 formula or a substantial amount of rewarding content will be sorely disappointed in the Curse of Osiris. Let's all pray that the Raid Lair is fantastic or this will go down as the most disappointing DLC ever released by Bungie. (Update: Checked out the Raid Lair. It's beautiful and challenging but it doesn't change the inherent game problems with Destiny 2)

Short and Sweet

After one of her spies finds the damaged Ghost of the legendary warlock Osiris on Mercury, Ikora asks you to seek out her former master and discover what's happened to him. The story kicks off after travelling to this sun-scorched landscape where you discover a much deeper threat, you reawaken Osiris' ghost, Sagira, and you fight to prevent the enigmatic Vex from ending the universe. It is a fairly typical story that you've undoubtedly seen before but it is elevated by having you face Destiny's most mysterious villains: the Vex. Offering no explanation and no remorse, they ceaseless reshape entire worlds to fit their ideal vision. Learning more about the Vex's methods, history and process, especially on Mercury, is fascinating. Furthermore, finally meeting Osiris is mildly cool and interacting with his charismatic ghost, Sagira, is surprisingly engaging. On the other hand, the overall mission structure is hit or miss with some missions perfectly mixing up the action, dazzling you with grand vistas or having you pilot a heavy pike, while others feel like little more than filler, mindlessly shooting enemies from point A to point B. Regardless, the story is over too quickly with about seven missions that will take you between two and three hours to complete. While this is not the longest campaign, the general quality of the experience was solid and it leads to a few, genuinely exciting moments, particularly the introductions of the past and future versions of Mercury.

Pleasing to the Eye and to the Ear

Leading off of the best parts of the story, the visual aesthetics, music quality, and sound design are simply stunning. Bungie excels at bringing to life science-fiction locations and the Curse of Osiris is perhaps their greatest example of this yet. The four new locations that you visit, the Infinite Forest and Mercury of the past, present and future are breathtaking to behold, offering you those awe-inspiring moments where you simply put your gun down and soak in the beauty of it. Musically, the game continues to excel with triumphant orchestral selections punctuating climatic moments alongside contemplative electronic music that would feel right at home in Blade Runner. Additionally, the sound design is spectacular with each crackle of the Vex, each gunshot sounding appropriate and fulfilling. Finally, the new voice actors do a commendable job for each of their characters with both Osiris and, in particular, his ghost, Sagira making a positive impact and carrying you through the main story.

A New Low

Unfortunately, that's where the positive aspects of the Curse of Osiris end. The rest of the experience becomes an ordeal of frustration and disbelief when attempting to acquire some of admittedly excellent looking gear. There are several new weapons and armor sets to seek out including a host of 'new' exotics. The new armor set is locked behind the same token system that the other destinations utilize which, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. However, obtaining new tokens is a ludicrously long and boring slog that Bungie should be ashamed of implementing. You can get ONE token by completing Patrols or opening chests or TWO tokens for completing the single Lost Sector or the single public event available on Mercury, either the heroic version or the regular. Additionally, there are other scattered activities that can reward another token such as defeating a difficult enemy or jumping through a bunch of teleporters and killing the enemies at each stop. And this system just gets better and better. The total number of tokens it takes in order to receive a new package starts at 20 and then grows with each package that you receive. Currently, it takes 30 tokens to open a new package for me after three packages. Furthermore, since Destiny 2 lacks any ability to actually select the new armor when you turn in your tokens, you have to bank on a random number generator to give you the pieces you want when you turn in your tokens. This chance is even more negatively affected since there is an absurdly large number of alternate weapons and armor that you can receive from the pool. After, farming for about four hours, I turned in tokens for three packages and I received two of the same helmet and a weapon I already had. 

Grain Mills Aren't This Grindy

All of this is compounded by an utterly asinine system for acquiring the special weapons from Mercury, one of the biggest reasons to even play this DLC. In order to activate the forge and make a new gun, you must first complete the story, all of the adventures, and a heroic adventure, which is basically an adventure with a Polarity modifier that makes all but one type of element useless (Have fun camping until your super spawns during the correct polarity). Then, once you receive your first blueprint, you must collect ten uncommon ingredients that only occasionally drop from the single public event on Mercury or get lucky and have the public event drop a rare ingredient. For reference on drop rates, I completed the public event six times, three times on normal and three times on heroic, and I received three uncommon ingredients and one rare item. Afterwards, I was able to construct my new gun, which is sweet by the way, and I thought, "Well, that sucked, but at least I probably don't have to do it again." So, I went up to Brother Vance, got my next blueprint and it requires three of those rare ingredients. It was at this moment I decided my time would be better spent in Warframe. I believe there are twelve new weapons that you can get that will require an incalculable amount of grinding to acquire and I couldn't convince myself of a good reason to do so.

So Much To Do, So Much to S... Oh Wait, Nevermind

These progression problems wouldn't feel so egregious if there wasn't such a tremendous lack of new things to do in the Curse of Osiris. The new world area of Mercury isn't even half the size of the other locations in Destiny 2, basically comprising a big circle in front of the Infinite Forest gate with the space to hold a single, large public event that, while interesting the first couple of times, grows real old, real quick. Additionally, as far as I can tell, there is only one, short new Lost Sector that has the same large minotaur guarding the final treasure as the ones that spawn regularly in the public space. It took me about half an hour to thoroughly scour the entire environment, including climbing on walls and checking caves for the secrets that I was desperately hoping for. To add further injury to insult, the new strikes are EXACTLY the same as regular story missions with no variation and they don't even drop tokens for Mercury (Author's Note: I only played through one of the new strikes because, despite my attempts to find the other one by entering the heroic strike playlist and quitting out to find it, I was unable to because there is still no way to select a specifically desired strike. Why?) Hilariously, both of the missions that became the 'new' strikes were two of my favorite mission in the actual story so it's not their inherent quality that is bad, it is the blatant reuse of assets to pawn off as new content.

With regard to the new Exotics offered in Curse of Osiris, during my entire time with the content, about seven hours, I managed to receive a single exotic drop from one of the strikes that I completed (you don't get a single weapon, Exotic or otherwise, from the story). I was able to roll it into the Crimson, a three-burst hand cannon similar to Red Death from the original Destiny, and I would be remiss if I didn't say that it feels great to shoot with an actually relevant ability. There are approximately six new exotic weapons and armor pieces that are completely original and about six that are remakes of popular items that are returning from the original. Some of them seem pretty fun and you can get them from any place that would usually drop them. Furthermore, there are at least three new multiplayer maps and while they look great, none of them do absolutely anything to change the stale and boring formula for the Crucible: team shoot with auto rifles. Are these items and maps worth your twenty dollars? Only you can say.

To Infinity and Boredom!

Finally, we come to the Infinite Forest, the much-anticipated environment that will randomly select tilesets to put together for a new experience each time you enter. While it does successfully create a new sequence of encounters each time, the problem is that none of them are actually interesting. Who cares if you're shooting Vex, Cabal, or Fallen if there's no variety in the gunplay? The Infinite Forest just spawns a series of platforms with enemies on them to shoot. Woohoo. And, if you thought that each tileset actually changes from being in the present, past and future, think again because those timeline locations are set destinations after you complete the Infinite Forest. Oh, and were you hoping to just hop into the Infinite Forest and free roam, maybe finding new secrets or areas? Nope, they are only accessible if you're completing one of the three, repetitive adventures or replaying a random story mission that Brother Vance offers similar to Ikora. More than anything, the Infinite Forest feels like another missed opportunity in a DLC filled with them. Had Bungie actually showed some initiative on creating the tilesets by perhaps creating some jumping puzzles or added some mechanics to them such as orb drops or stealth sections, these could have been infinitely more interesting. As they are, they're individually unmemorable.

Raid Light

The first Raid Lair for the Leviathan Raid, entitled Eater of Worlds, became playable on Friday, December 8, 2017. Since I could not find enough people that were interested in playing through it or buying this DLC, I was unable to get past the first section of the Raid Lair on my own and I didn't want to head to the forums to find a group. Therefore, my experience with the Raid Lair is comprised of watching another team fight through it and the opening sections that I was able to solo. To begin, all the way through the new raid area, everything looks fantastic. Finally, we are able to see the sheer scale of the monstrous starship that we are aboard, descending through massive reactors and are rocketing through a great debris field of planet pieces that the Leviathan is devouring. Each new area demonstrates the size of this beast of a starship in an organic, invigorating way. Jumping puzzles exist throughout this Lair but they're either short enough or interesting enough to be enhancements on the experience rather than impediments. There are only three major encounters, with two of them located in the same area, so it is a short, two-hour experience that will undoubtedly become shorter as people begin to fully comprehend the mechanics. The encounters themselves appear to be varied and challenging but not quite challenging enough to be on the same level as the regular Raid. Unfortunately, the raid also suffers from a lack of new equipment with only two, new weapons, (a grenade launcher and shotgun) being released with this raid. You can obtain ornaments for your raid armor but, yet again, you have to go the vendor in the Tower to actually obtain them rather than having them drop in the raid.

Even the staunchest haters of Destiny will admit that the best content that Bungie produces is held within their raids and it's no different here. The Eater of Worlds Raid Lair looks, sounds, and feels incredible with a focus on a new enemy faction rather than Cabal, a welcome change from the regular raid. However, The Eater of Worlds is yet another bandaid on the festering axe-wound of the Destiny 2 endgame. The mechanically identical rewards that you receive for completing these high level activities simply aren't worth the time or effort that you put into them especially since the rest of the game is stale and repetitive with no variation in how you tackle challenges. Regardless of Destiny 2's overarching problems, the initial Eater of Worlds experience is visually arresting, satisfyingly challenging, and a great addition to the game even if it doesn't solve any of the more serious problems.

I'm Not Angry. I'm Disappointed.

After Destiny 2 had been hemorrhaging long-time fans for months and facing down a tsunami of backlash by admitting to secretly choking the experience gain, Bungie really needed this DLC to be great, if not completely game-changing. It has utterly failed to do this. The story is decent with some spectacular vistas but is entirely too short to make a lasting impression. The new worldspace is stunted with only a sparse handful of activities and a completely absurd progression system for acquiring new weapons and armor. After getting over the beautiful skybox, the Infinite Forest fails to achieve any sense of wonder or ingenuity in design. The new strikes are directly ripped from the main campaign. The new multiplayer maps and Exotic weapons do nothing to actually mix-up the rinse and repeat formula of the Crucible. At the unreasonably high $20.00 price tag, the Curse of Osiris and its five hours of new gameplay is wildly overpriced, especially in the same day and age where Horizon: Zero Dawn releases The Frozen Wilds for $15.00, The Witcher 3 releases Blood and Wine for $20.00, and Warframe drops The Plains of Eidolon, an entire open-world location with its own economy for FREE. If you got off the Destiny train, the Curse of Osiris is NOT worth the trip back. You'll be just fine to experience it in nine months when they release the actual new expansion that overhauls the games currently repetitive systems. The only thing left to review is the upcoming release of the new 'Raid Lair' which better be absolutely outstanding in order to even partially resuscitate this dying game (Update: I checked out the Raid Lair. It's beautiful and challenging but it's not going to fix this game's problems.). I will update this review with my thoughts. The Curse of Osiris delivers a short, mediocre story with a few cool scenes, some stunning, panoramic views, good music, a few, new exotic weapons, and a whole giant bag of disappointment, grinding, frustration, and repetition with no respect for the player's time or the community desire for larger, more significant changes.

Update: After checking out the Eater of Worlds Raid Lair, I have updated the previous score of 2.0 out of 5.0 to its current form. 

Final Verdict: 2.5/5.0

Review Score Breakdown

1.0/5.0: Essentially unplayable, not enjoyable, or devoid of any gameplay satisfaction or erstwhile value.
2.0/5.0: Has a few, noteworthy features but is otherwise unremarkable or has a seriously detrimental downside.
3.0/5.0: The game has solid if unremarkable minute-to minute gameplay with a few highlights and considerable downsides.
4.0/5.0: The game is consistently fun and stimulating without any major bugs or issues holding it back.
5.0/5.0: This is an exceptional game that is simultaneously engrossing and thought-provoking in both subject matter and gameplay and is as close to perfect as they can make.