Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate, Review

Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate has been touted by Bungie as the beginning of the next big saga for Destiny. I have given 10 years to Destiny, and after what felt like its natural conclusion in The Final Shape, I have dipped back in to this new expansion to see how my beloved Destiny is shaping up for the future.

Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate is not only a new story arch for Destiny, with a new planet destination, “Kepler”. But also, the chance for Bungie to refresh many games and loot systems, which have long been in need of some love. Weapons get a new 1-5 Tier system, with harder content rewarding better tier loot. Importantly the types and tiers are now advertised and guaranteed before even starting an activity in the new “Portal” interface. Something that was long overdue for players sick of the infamous Destiny RNG madness. 

Armour systems have had some love too. New stats have arrived and they offer a direct effect on combat and build crafting. The new armour systems also grant “set-bonuses”, so 2 or 4 pieces of a set give great stat buffs or supplementary abilities. Crazy this has taken 10 years to get too, considering every RPG and MMO have had this as a stock inclusion for forever.

These systems have come in conjunction with a power level reset, bringing a new power grind via the “Portal” launch screen. The grind however is posing to be bit of an issue. As to get this new high tier armour and weapons, players need to hit higher power levels. Getting to 200 at the end of the campaign is no issue. But the grind to get to 400+ and access to the hardest content and best gear, is presenting a brutal mountain to climb.

Basically, players can’t have a real life job or anything else to get in the way of Destiny. As they need A LOT of time to get to the top of the power level mountain before the seasonal reset. Yep the power level resets back to 200 and the grind has to start again! With this, players also need to have the mental fortitude to run the same 3 minute lost sector metah, over and over and over for hours to get the most efficent power levelled gear drops.

But parking the power grind issue and looking more at the invested, yet casual, experiance of this refreshed Destiny. The main thing that struck me on finishing the core 8hr “campaign” and exploring more of Keplers weekly missions, to grind for some mid-level gear. Was how far Bungie have drifted away from their game design philosophy that was their key to their success over the years! 

We seem to have lost our way on the Great Journey…

This philosophy goes back to their Halo days, however has been a long-standing touchstone and talking point for all their games, including Destiny. It’s “30 seconds of fun that happened over and over and over again”… First talked about by Bungies, Jaime Griesemer, about Halos design.

The crucial problem with Destiny now, is its core design around the frequency of fun is gone. Edge of Fate campaign and the grind for gear through the new “Portal” are perfect examples of this. It’s all seems to lack the fun it once had.

The destination of Kepler feels like it was built on compromise and limited resources. Considering the lays off Bungie has had, maybe thats not a surprise? It is honestly just a series of caves, hallways and caverns that branch off the scanterly decorated main landing in zone. The much PR touted “Metroidvania abilities” are hardwired into the campaign. Be it turning into an arch ball to sneak through pipes, or using a teleporting cannon to skip hazards or using the mattermorph skill to rearrange platforms in levels.

Now, I write this and feel a desperate need to explain in more detail. As on reading the preceding sentence you would heard these abilities and said… “wow, that sounds great!”  But these abilities though are flashy, but shit. They look great in a trailer….. but in game amount to nothing of subtsance.

Bungie said in various ViDocs leading into the expansion, they wanted to create puzzles as part of Kepler, to give players something to solve, ala-Metroidvania styles. But the puzzles and how the abilities solve them are soooo simple, the actual puzzle is just finding where Bungie hid the bloody activation point for each skill. Usually hidden behind a rock, corner, or wall. So, what these abilities do…. is just create an infuriating roadblock mid-mission.They bring no 30 seconds of fun. Then when rerunning these areas for other missions or quests, the same “puzzles” have to be solved again..over and over and over.

Metroidvania anybody?

I can honestly say, I came “this close” (holds thumb and forefinger a mm apart) five times, to turning Destiny off when I came to the various ability sections of a mission. 

The story of the expansion was fine. We get new characters Lodi and Orin, who have various levels of connections to The Nine. (no spoilers) The Nine are being set up as the new ethereal threat for the next saga it would seem. The campaign has a great ending, the final boss fight was excellent, as too was some of the final story beats giving insight into the history of established main characters. But it was a fleeting high, in what was generally a nonsensical romp. But hey, we are here to shoot aliens in the face, not war and peace.

I haven’t played through the Raid yet, but watched clan-mates do it and the general consensus is that it is excellent. The environments look great and the new approach to how encounters can be attacked in any order seems like a great refresh to the well-trodden previous Raid design strategy. There were passing comments from clan-mates that the Dungeon/Raid Team in Bungie need to take the reigns for all Destiny going forward, as for the last few years, they are the only team who have been consistant in delivering the special Bungie sauce…that “30 seconds of fun that happened over and over and over again”.

It appears gone are the days of Bungie greatness. When Destiny players got content like Forsaken and locations like The Dreaming City, when Destiny was firing on all cylinders! Holding the label of being the best-in-the-biz, seems well behind Bungie. But with all the studio cutbacks and splitting teams up to save Marathon, maybe that’s not surprising. I loved the last 10 years of Destiny, but my beloved game is in very rough seas and Bungie Management will need to do something drastic to turn this ship around.