Destiny 2: Forsaken - Review

Destiny 2: Forsaken - Review: Excellence Undermined

Spoiler Alert

While Destiny 2 had been improving at a snail's pace since the launch of the tedious and insipid Curse of Osiris expansion, there was still long way to go in order to rejuvenate it completely. Forsaken has been publicized as the cure-all medication for a dying game and represents the last straw for a community that has been largely disappointed with the overall quality of the endgame economy, the post-launch content and the community management.

Therefore, it is significant to directly and immediately say that Forsaken is good. Better than good, Forsaken is a necessary and terrific expansion that finally fixes the majority of systemic problems that were plaguing Destiny 2. It addresses and improves upon nearly every system while injecting a healthy dose new and invigorating content. Unfortunately, along with a variety of aggravating minor issues that are irksome but manageable, Bungie somehow managed to squander their accumulated good will on the last piece of their game that remained genuinely excellent throughout all of Destiny's highs and lows: the raid. So, while I will continue to recommend Forsaken to anyone and everyone thanks to the high-quality gameplay and expansive endgame, Bungie has permanently tainted their perfect reputation when it comes to the raid.

Justice or Revenge

The story of Forsaken revolves around the much publicized murder of Cayde-6, Destiny's only empathetic character aside from Shaxx, who's passion for the Crucible is truly awe-inspiring. The subsequent pursuit of the villains responsible makes up the lion's share of the campaign. At the center of this tale is the loathsome Uldren Sov, brother to the fallen queen of the Reef, Mara Sov. Since the first cutscene in Destiny where he was introduced, Uldren has been utterly repulsive with his snide mannerisms and his aggressive, if not downright creepy, devotion to his sister. While it initially appears that little has changed, as the story unfolds and new developments come to light, it's easy to see darker forces at work here and that's where the true meat of the story lies, culminating in a shocking final encounter. All told, Forsaken presents an intriguing enough yarn to follow until the end. 

While on your hunt for the prince of the Reef, you will make your way through Uldren Sov's lieutenants in crime: the barons. Each baron gets their own moment to shine in a series of enjoyable adventures where you travel to their particular lair and eliminate them. With unique mechanics present in each battle ranging from joyriding around on a modified heavy pike to traveling to and battling within a miniature throne-world, they all offer an engaging duel punctuated by a flavorful adversary who is more than just another name on a list.

However, the best part of this expansion's campaign experience is that it doesn't run into a brick wall after the final mission but rather expands further into the mythos and universe of Destiny. While the major purpose of the campaign is satisfied, all questions are not answered at the conclusion and instead the ending acts as a jumping off point into another chapter. Gaining access to the Dreaming City, the endgame public area, is presented as another quest entirely. Exploring the city continuously has you asking questions and filling in blanks about the nature of the narrative, questions that are fully realized within the game world. From the massive raid to the way that the city changes week after week, it's the best collaboration of story, gameplay mechanics, and environmental design that Bungie has ever created for Destiny.

The Shore, the City, and the Scorn

Forsaken introduces two new locations, both of which are vast improvements over the bland yet bountiful Mars from Warmind and the beautiful but embarrassingly vapid Mercury from Curse of Osiris. The first area that you encounter is the Tangled Shore, an amalgamation of roughly stitched together asteroids and rusted debris from fallen space ships. Purple sun rays pierce through the gaps in anchor lines that harness together various platforms and environments. Rusted metal twists into makeshift encampments proudly displaying the sigil of the Fallen house that resides within. The massive carapace of a downed Hive tomb ship rests in pieces along an arid stretch of rock, waiting to be explored. With shades of both Mad Max and Fallout, the Tangled Shore stands as a completely unique environment in the Destiny universe and offers a thematically appropriate location to delve into the bleak campaign that Forsaken offers.

When the player finally satiates their revenge, they're taken to a vastly different location, the vibrant and mysterious Dreaming City, where science fiction melds with fantasy in all the best ways. Porcelain white spires tower over you as you ascend rocky cliffs surrounded by swirling, ethereal mists. Lush gardens with marble courtyards and stone gazebos appear peaceful and inviting but they hide dark secrets and a miasma of darkness infests even the most picturesque locales. Climbing staircases that have been cut directly into massive geodes and exploring enigmatic ritual chambers illuminated by floating lanterns are just another part of the experience in the Dreaming City. Another aspect of the city is the the Blind Well, the high end public event location, a terrific, wave-based game mode that is challenging, exciting and rewarding. It's a fantastically realized environment that just begs the player to be discovered and, with the knowledge that it will be changing over the coming weeks, every hidden item and locked door is an invitation to explore in the future.

Forsaken also brings a brand new enemy faction to the game in the form of the hideous and hyper-aggressive Scorn. Wielding flaming lanterns and brutal maces, the minions of the Scorn rush you relentlessly while their chieftains and snipers scamper around in the distance, assaulting you from afar. The chieftains in particular change up the pace of the game with their totems: spiked pillars they can generate anywhere on the battlefield that either protect enemy soldiers, spin with shooting flames, or tether you to them and prevent you from moving. They can be easily destroyed but they add an interesting element to the formulaic shooting in Destiny which is usually just chain head shot into head shot. As a completely new enemy race, they play like a hybrid of the Hive and the Fallen while being more aggressive than either. It feels good to have something new to shoot at and to be forced to change up the tried and true tactics that guardians have been using since the launch of Destiny.

Performance Problems

One topic that I rarely delve into because it usually doesn't detract from a game in a wholly significant way is frame rate and performance. However, on PS4, several people including myself have been dealing with incredible frame drops whenever a new item pops out of an enemy. Plummeting from 30 FPS to sub 10 FPS is jarring and commonly causes a bit of disorientation on the battlefield. More than once, I've been attempting to shoot a Scorn in the face when suddenly an engram drops and it looks like a I'm watching a slide show for about two seconds. And with the increased drop rates for engrams, this happens multiple times in every mission that I embark on. 

Additionally, whenever I'm playing with other people, I will sometimes get randomly booted at the beginning or end of an activity. This becomes more than irritating when your queued up to go back into a strike or Crucible match and I find myself unable to join my fireteam because the game has already found a replacement for me. I've also experienced two hard crashes when playing an intense activity such as the Blind Well which prevented me from getting the rewards for my efforts. Overall, its fair to say that Forsaken has dealt a significant blow to the overall performance of Destiny 2 and I'm hoping that Bungie is working on some hot fixes to solve these issues. 

Healing a Broken System

Arguably the best thing that Forsaken does for Destiny 2 is usher in a variety of quality of life changes, in some cases reverting to the way things were in the first Destiny and in others changing things up in a completely new way. The most impacting alteration that has occurred is the weapon changes and the way ammo distribution works. Shotguns, snipers, fusion rifles and single-shot grenade launchers have been taken out of the heavy slot and can now be equipped in either the primary or energy slot depending on whether they deal elemental damage. Put simply, this just feels better, giving you vastly more choice over what type of weapons you can bring to an engagement. Its a smart system that should have been the initial evolution from the first entry in the franchise.

Additionally, Forsaken heralds the triumphant return of random rolls on both weapons and armor. Weapons that you've received a thousand times (looking at you Edge Transit) still have an air of mystery to them with random perks that can turn an average firearm into a monster. Even more diversity is possible with the revamping of the mod system. Weapon and armor mods are much more purposeful, allowing you to alter your arsenal in significant ways. Want your super to recharge faster? Mod for that. Want your hand cannon to fire more accurately from the hip? Mod for that. However, mods are exceedingly rare and more casual players will have a steep challenge acquiring them at more than a snail's pace. While this is good in the sense that it should be a meaningful choice when you place a mod on your gear, the system does not cater to those who would like to experiment with new builds. Regardless, it is still another addition that adds a layer of choice to a game that sorely needed it. 

Masterwork weapons and armor are back but they have become a sincere investment as they cost a whopping 17 masterwork cores to fully max out. Furthermore, infusion now costs even more cores which makes them dwindle from your inventory rapidly, especially since they have become harder to come by. It's a stringent system that demands that you're absolutely certain about a piece of gear before upgrading it. So, while you can make a few items extra special by masterworking them, you won't have the flexibility to have a full arsenal of them. To store all of your new gear, the vault has been expanded and you can now delete five shaders at a time, which are both welcome if expected additions.

Finally, Forsaken introduces the new triumphs and collections tabs, which respectively track overarching accomplishments and allow you to see and retrieve any old weapons and armor. While these are long overdue additions to Destiny 2, it is nonetheless a pleasure to have them at your disposal at the click of a button. Accomplishing triumphs will eventually unlock titles that will display above your gamer tag, providing a tangible reward for simply playing the game. The collections tab allows you to see what weapons and armor are in the game and which ones you're currently missing along with where you can get them from.  These tabs add an immense amount of in-game information that rounds out an experience and will appeal to different players in different ways. With all of these changes and upgrades, there is a lot more to think about in Destiny 2 now and that naturally elongates a game's lifespan in a satisfying and appropriate way.

Caught in a Gambit

Forsaken brings the much-touted Gambit game mode to the table, a tense hybrid of both PvE and PvP gameplay. When you start a match, your team of four are dropped into an arena with a large group of enemies from a single faction and your opponents are dropped into a mirror instance of the same arena. Killing these enemies generates motes which you pick up and deposit at a bank in the center of the map. Dying removes any motes you may have been carrying. If you deposit 75 motes, a massive boss called a Primeval will spawn and whichever team kills the Primeval first wins the match. However, if you deposit enough motes at one time (increments of five, ten or fifteen), you will spawn a powerful enemy that locks the opponents bank until they kill it. Where the real madness comes from is that each team will be granted the ability to invade the opposing team's arena at scattered intervals throughout a match, potentially killing the opposing team and causing them to drop their motes. Furthermore, if you invade when the Primeval has been summoned, killing the opposing team heals their Primeval.

While all of this may seem daunting at first, the gameplay loop is intuitive with a real sense of pressure as you can see your opponents' progress in the upper left hand corner slowly filling. One of the best parts about Gambit is the skill ceiling. You can jump in as a first-time player and still have a ton of fun but after a few matches, you begin to learn how to optimize your play pattern. For example, invading the opposing team when you can see that they are carrying a lot of motes is the best way to set them back. Or waiting until the opponent's first invasion to begin damaging your Primeval allows you to not lose damage on the final boss. Additionally, the game has several methods to allow your team to catch up with enemies dropping more motes and having more consistent invasions if they summoned their primeval before you. This allows you to never feel like you're completely out of a match. Frantic, fast-paced, and unrelenting, Gambit somehow always feels competitive and thrilling, even after your fiftieth match. With all of that being said, there are still significant problems that can blemish the experience.

While Gambit is consistently fun, especially if you're playing with a team that you're communicating with, several problems arise within the game mode. First and foremost, there is only one heavy weapon that is worth bringing to the game if you intend on winning: the Sleeper Simulant. Having unlimited range, pinpoint accuracy and being able to one-shot any guardian even if they are in their super makes this weapon a necessity. It dampens the experience knowing that, with a bad spawn or a particularly vigilant guardian, a laser beam of death could come out of nowhere from across the map and end your invasion or wipe your entire team. It's a strange complaint to have and one that's not easy to fix outside of banning a certain weapon but Sleeper Simulant absolutely detracts from Gambit as a whole by limiting your heavy weapon choices and warping each match around its particular play style. Furthermore, there absolutely must be a penalty for leaving a match early as it is next to impossible to be competitive when down one or two people. Finally, for some bizarre reason, when you invade, enemies that are attacking your opponents will mess with your aim assist, occasionally dragging you off of your intended target. This hefty aim assist is just enough to occasionally miss with your Sleeper Simulant before you vaporize an unsuspecting guardian.  Aside from these three, relatively minor grievances, Gambit is a blast and the best new game mode that Destiny has added since the original Trials of Osiris.

Striking it Rich

Forsaken brings three new strikes to each platform with a fourth strike found exclusively on PS4. While one of these strikes follows the pathetically lazy pattern of repackaging story missions as strikes, the remainder of them are genuinely unique and utterly compelling, offering some of the best strike content Destiny has ever produced. The Hollowed Lair is the weakest of the bunch, taking you down the same path as a campaign mission with a boss from the story as the final encounter. It's not exceptionally memorable in any particular way but it serves its function and isn't embarrassingly bad. Next up, we have the PS4 strike, Broodhold. Featuring the fairly standard Hive mission structure of descending into some slimy breeding chamber, most of the strike is unremarkable. However, the final boss has some engaging mechanics that have never been done in Destiny before, splitting into two separate monsters, each with their own attack patterns and weaknesses. It's a fun final encounter that elevates the entire strike. 

Finally, we come to the true standout strikes: Warden of Nothing and The Corrupted. With Warden of Nothing, players take a trip into the past, exploring the old Prison of Elders to take down an old friend. Filled with amusing environmental mechanics and referential throwbacks, partaking in this strike hits the perfect balance of nostalgia and challenge. The Corrupted strike, which only became available after the raid had been beaten, is visually stunning, taking players to entirely new dimensions that have never been conceived of in Destiny before. You'll be dropping down immense depths, hopping between ascendant platforms, and tossing orbs of power between your teammates to take down enemy shields. Simply put, this strike alone raises the bar of what can be accomplished in a short span of game time in terms of scale, diversity and entertainment. Both of these stand alongside Taniks, Aluk Hul, and the Pyramidion within the pantheon of the best strikes in Destiny history. Additionally, it's important to note that each of these strikes will have a unique item that can only be found from their Nightfall variant, increasing their replayability tenfold.

The Quest for 600 Power

After the campaign concludes, players will be around 500 power which represents the accumulated average of all armor pieces and weapons that they have gathered. The maximum power for the Forsaken DLC is 600 and you can complete a variety of activities to acquire new gear that will raise your overall power level. For those uninitiated, power determines how much damage you will do to enemies that are above your power level and will grant access to certain activities throughout Destiny, namely the raid. Fortunately, Forsaken offers a plethora of activities to be completed in order to get new gear that can increase your power level. These range from completing bounties that are available at certain vendors to ranking up in a competitive game mode. Along with these specific activities, everyone will have a Prime Ascendancy buff that allows any activity to drop a Prime Engram with powerful loot in it. Forsaken also brings back daily powerful activities that will provide a small increase in power each day. In Destiny 2, this is the most flexibility that we've ever had in terms of acquiring power and gives the players numerous things to do within the game. Unfortunately, with this flexibility comes some significant downsides. 

Since there are so many activities that can produce powerful gear, only a few of them will actually substantially increase your overall power level with the rest being based almost entirely on luck. During interviews, the directors of Forsaken stated that every powerful drop that players would receive would be at least one power level higher than their current level. However, what they failed to mention is that this would be based on your total average, not on the power level of the gear piece you already have equipped in that slot. This means that if you have one armor piece that has a significantly lower power level than your other gear items, it will make your average power level lower than the individual power of several pieces of equipment that you own. So, while you will technically be receiving gear that's one power level higher than your average, it won't increase that slot's overall power, keeping you stalemated at a certain level. Combining this with the randomness of the drops, you can and will go on streaks where you get nothing but a primary weapon for six drops in a row, wasting an entire day's worth of powerful equipment. Therefore, while I appreciate the fact that there is a wider variety of methods to acquire powerful items, it also becomes an aggravating slog if you get stuck in a rut of getting the same type of gear over and over again.

Toppling a Raid Legacy

Before the release of the Forsaken expansion, Destiny raids were my favorite activity in gaming, bar none. Nothing has ever matched the sheer adrenaline and excitement of successfully figuring out and completing a raid with my friends on day one. Puzzling out obscure mechanics from cryptic clues, battling against legions of challenging enemies, and overcoming absurdly difficult obstacles all came as part of the territory. I loved discovering massive new areas that were spectacular in scope and epic in vision, from the golden halls of Leviathan to the glorious reveal of Oryx at the end of King's Fall. Each and every year, my team and I would gather, take whatever days off we needed and, after weeks of hardcore grinding, we would complete the raid (or at least get to the final boss) on day one, discovering everything for the first time together. It was great.

Unfortunately, this tradition has been spoiled by the launch of the Last Wish raid. After grinding relentlessly for ten days, we were only able to get to around 530-540 power level per person, which is ten below the recommended light for entering the raid. Based on previous experience, we figured that the final boss would have the recommended light level of the raid and that, while we may not defeat them, we would at least have enough power to reach them. But, much to our collective chagrin, the enemies in the very first encounter of the raid had a recommended light level of 560, ten more than even the recommended light level of the raid itself. After giving it about five hours with people on our team getting one-shotted by the weakest enemies, we called it a day and recognized that it was simply miserable. Therefore, all the time that we spent grinding to get there, all the hype that we had based on our previous Destiny raids, all the expectation of not being let down by the most consistent part of the Destiny package, all of it was undone.

To put this in perspective, 37,000 players were able to defeat Oryx on the first day of the King's Fall raid while only 12 people were able to defeat The Last Wish, in its entirety, in the first 24 hours. After bitterly watching other teams attempt the raid, I can safely say that it's not the complexity of the puzzles that stopped people in their tracks, it was the artificial increase in difficulty that Bungie purposefully implemented on the first day of the raid. The more cynical among us have attributed this to Bungie attempting to bolster their Twitch presence on the day of the raid. Others have stated that they raised the power level because of an exploit that a tiny percentage of the player base used to get additional Prime Engrams per day. However, from what I have been able to cobble together and verify, it appears that this incredible initial difficulty was always the plan.

Bungie wanted the raid to be overwhelmingly difficult on day one to force players to spend more time grinding in order to actually be able to tackle the raid. However, this plan has a number of fatal flaws. First of all, all of the usual day one raiders are now pissed that they can't complete something that they have done for years and are even more pissed that they took time off work to be there. Second of all, the idea of grinding has now lost its meaning for future raid releases because what is the point of actually grinding if your not going to be ready either way. Finally, and worst of all, now all of the strategies, all of the guides, all of the information about the raid is public knowledge and the mystery and the challenge of figuring those out as a team are gone and one of the major draws to hammering out a fresh raid is completely eradicated. The management team over at Bungie really don't seem to understand this because as soon as the raid was completed, they put a spoiler-filled cutscene in the actual game. Many people want to experience these things for themselves, without the community or the developer telling them exactly what they're supposed to do and feel. Up until this point, I thought that this was something that Bungie understood. Up until this point, if you put in the work and your team was ready, you could go through a fresh raid blind without any assistance and it was excellent. Now, this has been stolen from us as players and, honestly, it's a damn shame.

Beyond all of the power level shenanigans that soured the The Last Wish for players across the world, the raid itself is terrific. Set in a stunningly beautiful castle, each encounter is formidably challenging and brutally complex, necessitating clear communication between players. With a veritable myriad of new mechanics and fascinating characters who will have a continued presence in the overarching narrative, each new arena escalates in grandeur and style. The fights this time around appear to be particularly team based with a few opportunities for every person in a fireteam to shine. I'm genuinely thrilled to traverse each of these environments myself and take down the villains that hold dominion there.

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

Truly, this expansion hits all the right notes, from expanding the lore of the series to upgrading the most essential systems of gameplay. With a climactic tale of revenge that blossoms into a wider narrative of epic proportions, Forsaken weaves a tangible tale that is not just seen or heard but also felt in the environments and activities. Most of the new strikes are nothing short of a triumph, Gambit is a blast to play, and even the raid looks to be one of the most interesting and challenging of the series. It adds a substantial amount of content that comes with a promise that it will continuously evolve over time. In short, it's everything that Destiny players have been asking for in Destiny 2. 

Unfortunately, there are too many small, individually insignificant problems that compound together and detract from the overall experience to say that Forsaken is the best that Destiny has to offer. From the stuttering frame rate to the innately aggravating power grind mechanics, Forsaken has quite a few issues that distract from the greatness of the content and hold players back from fully enjoying the expansion. But far and away, the worst part of Forsaken is the atrociously handled raid release that squandered all of the good faith that Bungie has built up with their raids over the years. Locking the experience behind absurdly powerful light limitations on the day of release extinguishes much of the excitement that comes with a first-time raid, robbing players of the chance to challenge themselves without outside assistance or information.

Regardless, the rest of Forsaken is enjoyable and expansive pulling Destiny 2 out of the gutter with a ton of quality of life changes, two brand-new areas brimming with content, and a continuously transforming narrative. While it's disappointing that it came at the cost of a blind raid experience, taking a trip back to the universe of Destiny to experience Forsaken is well-worth it.

Final Verdict: 4.0/5.0

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.