Random’s Thoughts on Destiny 2
I love this game! Let’s just get that out of the way now in case there’s any of you out there who have other things to do and don’t have the time to read the rest of this blog post. That’s all you need to know. Go about the rest of your day, but don’t forget to pick up your own copy of Destiny 2 so that we can both love it together. You’re welcome.
For the rest of you, however, who actually want to know my thoughts on Destiny 2, and not just my feelings, well then first things first: get the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song in your head. Got it? Good.
Now, this is a story all about how,
the Tower got flipped, turned upside down!
I’d like to take a minute, so if it’s alright
I’ll tell you how I became a guardian of the light!
In the Cosmodrome. I was resurrected and raised
In the crucible is where I spent most of my days
Light level maxed and relaxin’ all cool
Just sniping’ some heads and tea baggin’ fools
Until a fleet of Cabal who was up to no good
started making trouble in my neighborhood!
They took all our light, we all got scared!
then Zavala says “I need my Fireteam, it’s time to prepare!”
Okay, that’s enough of that. Hahaha good times, good times. Speaking of good times…
Destiny Fulfilled:
-what I’ve done so far:
So far I’ve completed the game for all three of my characters. I’ve participated in two Faction Rally’s. I kicked quite a few butts in two Iron Banner event, even if I do say so myself. 😉 I’ve completed the Mida Multitool Exotic Quest, as well as a various other end game missions and daily/weekly challenges and milestones. I’ve also finished the new DLC, Curse of Osiris. The only things I haven’t done are the raid and the nightfall.
-my thoughts on what I’ve done:
The story mode is interesting enough, providing the needed motivation to go from point A to point B and shoot all the things. To sum up, A military arm of the Cabal calling itself The Red Legion destroys the tower, abducts the speaker, and throws the Traveler in chains. Their leader, Ghaul, was an outcast runt who rose to power and is intent on taking the light for himself. While attempting to do so, he also takes the light from all the guardians. That’s what kickstarts things in D2, and provides the reason for why your guardian is going from planet to planet, fighting to gain their Light back and defeat Ghaul. It’s a good story, a vast improvement from its predecessor, but it’s not great. There are a lot of great cut scenes, and the witty banter has been sprinkled on liberally. There are allusions to events that happened in D1, such as throw away references to The Stranger, but those narratives are never fully explored. It’s still a good story though, nothing to make a movie out of, but then again Hollywood has made full blown video game movies from less. I’m looking at you Mario! But I digress. For the most part, I enjoyed almost every moment of the campaign mode. I say “almost” because there is a part in the beginning of the game where you don’t have your Light or any powers whatsoever, and you just limp along for about 5 minutes while you listen to exposition. Ugh! Hands down its the worst part of the whole game, but it’s a very brief dose of a necessary evil, so it’s fine. And since those 5 minutes happen so early on, it’s easy to just get through it and get to shooting!
Faction Rally’s are new to Destiny 2, and add a welcome little addition to the grind. Instead of being able to join and leave a faction as you wished and at any time, like in D1, Faction Rallies are a week long event in which you pledge your loyalty to a single faction and then you win tokens for that particular faction by playing the game. Completing patrols, playing crucible, doing strikes, and public events will all get you tokens. I appreciate Faction Rallies because it adds to the end game experience and sparks a little competition since the winning faction gets bragging rights throughout the Tower by having their banner displayed. Plus, the fact that Rallies are held every few weeks or so, gives me the perfect downtime to get down on my other games without feeling like I’m missing out on too much of the action.
Now its time to talk about my favorite event, Iron Banner. I love Iron Banner. How much? So much so that I have plans on getting a tattoo of the Iron Banner in the near future! I can still remember back in Destiny 1 when the first Iron Banner was announced. The armor sets looked so amazing. The guns were some of the best you could get. Hearing Lord Saladin cheering you on. I loved everything about Iron Banner. One of my absolute favorite parts about Iron Banner, however, was the fact that your light level mattered. The gear you brought in mattered. If you were a lower light level then your opponent, you could feel it. And vice versa. It was magnificent. … But… for some reason they took that out this time around. I don’t really know why, although I do have my guesses. A strong guess being that Bungie wanted to make the Iron Banner more accessible to everybody, and that makes sense. I’m not hating on it, I just miss it, that’s all. I still love Destiny 2’s iteration of Iron Banner. The Light level advantages might be disabled, but the armor sets are still some of the best in the game!
Now lets talk end game and all the things there are to do after you beat the story, because there’s a lot. It’s repetitive, since this game is mostly running and gunning, but it’s running and gunning done extremely well. There are patrols a plenty on every planet, and every week there are brand new milestone challenges that give great rewards. These rewards are the perfect way to keep raising your light level, especially if you don’t have time to do the raids or the nightfall missions, like I do. The milestones usually consist of participating in a certain number of public events on certain planets, or completing certain missions, or strike/crucible challenges. Speaking of the Crucible, matches are now 4v4, as opposed to the 6v6, and they are fast and frantic! It’s the perfect place to test your metal against other guardians, and the rewards drops are plentiful! The same goes with Strike Missions! It’s a guaranteed legendary engram/item every time!
Now, on to the “negative” parts of the game, because although I do love Destiny 2, it’s not without fault. There are a lot of gamer forums out there and it’s easy to see what folks are complaining about: the shaders, the XP leveling, the gun rolls, the paid content, yada, yada, yada, so forth, so on and such and such. I’ll get in to it more in a minute, but to be honest, those things that other gamers are whining about don’t really bother me at all. My main issue with the game, and admittedly it’s minor (yet at the same time not), is that my guardian no longer has a voice.
For some reason the developers at Bungie made the creative decision to turn my guardian into a silent protagonist. Why they decided this I will never know, all I know is that I don’t like it at all. My guardian had a voice in the first Destiny. One of my favorite, and certainly one of the more memorable, scenes from D1 is the first time we get to talk to The a Stranger and she calls my ghost “little light”, and then I call my ghost “little light” as well, and Dinklebot says “don’t do that.” It was great! But now, since Bungie chose to silence my guardian, that exchange can’t be recreated in D2. Instead, my ghost does ALL the talking for me. Its really off putting for me to see everybody else speak, to see every other character have a voice and communicate with each other; and then here I am, pantomiming, as the voice of Nolan North does his vocal best to try to keep me interested. It’s just,… weird. This is probably just me though, seeing as I haven’t seen much said about it in any of the forums.
What I do see quite often in the forums, however, is the Eververse trading system. A lot of people are complaining online about the in game purchases that are in Destiny 2, whining how it’s unfair and that the best stuff is locked behind a pay wall. To that, I say this: “S.T.F.U.” Tess Everis and the Eververse Trading Company only sell SUPERFICIAL items. PERIOD. There’s nothing in Tess’s inventory that can suddenly make one guardian better than another, o there’s no concern about some other player with more money purchasing something and then having an OP advantage over another player. That’s not how it works. More importantly, guardians can grind and earn lootboxes and potentially win everything that Tess sells anyway, so there’s that. So why the complaints? In my opinion, it’s probably because gamers feel entitled and spoiled nowadays; they don’t understand that there are people behind the scenes who are constantly working on and improving these games, and that these people need to get paid. Before all this “always online” craze that seems to be the future of gaming, studios and game developers would get together, think of a game, make a game, release that game to the public, and that was it. The studio would cross it’s fingers and hope the game did well, and the game developers would start the process all over again for the next game. If there were any problems with the game that they released, you had to wait for a sequel to see any improvements. Nowadays, thanks to the internet and vocal gaming communities, once a game is released there is a development team who stays on to continue working on the game and constantly make improvements for the benefit of the player. That type of service isn’t free. So if the developers want to include an additional revenue stream in the game which grants players purchasable items, so be it. If they want to charge for expansions and additional downloadable content, I totally understand. Personally speaking, so far I’ve spent only 40 bucks, and everything else I have I’ve acquired through grinding and leveling. It’s the nature of the beast and just part of the game. Period.
All in all, I love Destiny. A lot of good games came out last year, but in my opinion, this was my favorite game of 2017. The responsive controls, the stylish looks, the sound of my favorite gun, and the compelling musical score are just some of the reasons why Destiny 2 takes my top spot. This game might not be perfect, but I still love it! 