If Bungie is good at anything it’s grabbing players by the collar and dragging them back to their game. Expansion after expansion I, and many others find ourselves jumping back into Destiny 2 to see what new stuff has dropped, and lately, there has been a big disappointment. The prior DLCs have been lacking in terms of story and honestly, everything. Warmind was a bit better than Curse of Osiris in my opinion, but both were just meh.
Things took an interesting turn when the Whisper of the Worm quest landed, giving players a very cool mission to get a very cool gun. Players jumped back into Destiny to get their hands on the exotic weapon, and it just left them wanting more. Cue the Forsaken expansion and Bungie’s once again dragging you back into the Tower to see what’s new. But bungo seems to have served up something different this time.
Before we dig into Forsaken, I’d like to address what I have done so far. I have completed the main story, have entered and searched around the Dreaming City, and have played some Gambit. All in all, I am probably about twelve hours into the new expansion. Also, this is not a full review, but just a critique of what I have experienced so far.
The Good
The story for Forsaken is actually well put together and is interesting to go through. Taking revenge on Uldren and his barons are pretty enjoyable and each of the baron fights is fun. The story pulls from deep within the lore and leaves you wanting to dig for answers. Albeit quite short, the story does a good job at setting up the overall tone for the expansion.
The new areas for Forsaken are absolutely gorgeous and quite large. The Tangled Shore is a lawless frontier just filled with stuff to do. There is definitely a Mad Max sort of vibe to the whole area, which is a nice change of pace for the game. The armor associated with the area is ragged and thrown together, and the structures look like they were made from parts from a junkyard. It makes you feel like you are really somewhere different and experiencing new things. The Dreaming City is something else entirely. It’s a beautifully crafted place with secrets and hidden areas. I found myself just exploring for a good amount of time, just trying to uncover what the city was hiding from me.
The gameplay is excellent, we don’t have to talk about this. We all know it.
The biggest thing for me going into Destiny 2 was would there be enough to do? And after my time so far in the game, I can say confidently that yes, there is. Just about everyone and their mom hands out bounties for you to complete to get either powerful gear or resources (which you need now to infuse your guns and armor, making resources relevant again). One of the best changes to the game is that there are a ton of ways to get powerful gear to raise that power level. You can do Strikes (new ones are really cool), Gambit, Crucible, Bounties, Nightfall, or just go around and kill stuff. You can get powerful engrams that can boost your power level from just killing random enemies anywhere, which really makes the grind more enjoyable and less like a chore.
Gambit is a new PvP/PvE mode where two teams are pitted against each other to kill enemies, grab motes to charge the thing, then bring out the Primeval. First team to kill the Primeval wins. This new mode is super addicting and just a blast to play. A really cool element of it is that you can invade the other team while they are trying to grab motes and just ruin their day. Matches can get very intense and Gambit just may be my new favorite thing. Go try it, and no, there are no X-Men references that I’ve seen yet.
The Not So Good
The load times for Destiny 2 are still pretty terrible. Going from planet to planet can take minutes. This may be the price we have to pay for all the new stuff, but man, it’s bad. One of the things I have come to despise is bounties/missions that make you wait for a specific Public Event. This can be an absolute waste of time in the end. You grab a bounty to complete a specific Public Event at a specific area, and once you get there you wait. And wait. And wait. For people that have the opportunity to play the game all day and whatnot, this is just a minor hiccup. But for players that maybe have a couple hours to play a night, this could very well take up half if not all of the time. It is such a weird and frustrating choice to me that a bounty would be set up this way.
There are a few UI choices that still need to be updated. You can now delete shaders a little faster by going to Rahool and dismantling five at a time. But the fact that we can’t just delete stuff in bulk still perplexes me. Loading into your main menu can still be a drag. Sometimes when you want to look at your loadout or just poke around in your inventory, the game can time way too long to get you there. This isn’t game breaking but just more of a nuisance.
The Bad
No more corny Cayde jokes.
The Ugly
Every Baron’s face.
Stay tuned for the full review in the coming weeks.
What's your reaction?
