I am Your Density, I mean, Your Destiny: Our review of Bungie's 'Destiny 2'
The original Destiny released in 2014 to mixed reviews. While Bungie promised a revolutionary persistent-world massively multiplayer shooter/RPG hybrid, critics complained that it under-delivered. The critics noted that Destiny lacked a fully-developed story and that gameplay consisted of a repetitive grind for better and better gear. They also praised the game's polished shoot mechanics, weapon variety, and lush environments. Over the course of the next two years, Bungie added three expansions, addressing the concerns and improving the experience with each release. By the time Bungie officially announced the sequel, Destiny had become an unrecognizable game to players who quit shortly after launch--in a good way!
Destiny 2 represents the final result of Bungie's efforts to improve their newest franchise, as well as provide an opportunity for experienced Guardians and newbies alike to unravel the mysteries of the Traveler and the power of Light.
THE STORY
Returning players are permitted to re-use their Guardian characters from the original Destiny, or they have the option to create new Guardians from scratch (though the character creation options are decidedly limited). However, those who opted to play veteran Guardian characters are thrown for a loop in the very first campaign mission. Ghaul, the primary villain, robs the Guardians of their powers in an attempt to claim the Traveler's Light for himself and his Red Legion.
Beginning with the second mission, every Guardian is reset back to level one, and the story revolves around the player's effort to reclaim the lost powers, their lost Light, and ultimately their lost home.
Without giving too much away, Bungie clearly focused on improving the storyline for Destiny 2. The characters feel more alive and developed. Nearly all of the cast from Destiny returned for the sequel. They have a sense of humor while also conveying a sense of the gravity of their fight for survival. The story itself is focused and cohesive; players are given everything they need to understand their character's motivations and goals for each mission and activity in the story--without the need to look to an external website for lore and background information.
The end-game material kicks off after hitting level 20 and finishing all of the story missions. Players can enjoy returning activities, like the Raids, the Strikes, public events, quests to obtain exotic weapons, and simply patrolling the playable areas on each of the four planets. The sequel also brings new activities, like "Adventures" (which are sidequests that relate to, but don't alter, the main story), "Lost Sectors" which are hidden areas waiting to be explored, and treasure hunting which has players following clues and your new world maps to uncover epic loot.
THE CRUCIBLE
Destiny's competitive player-versus-player mode, called "the Crucible," returns for the sequel. The Crucible has been changed somewhat, with the most glaringly obvious being the size of the games. Bungie has eschewed the 6 vs 6 match size in favor of smaller 4 vs 4 matches. There are now two playlists: Quickplay and Competitive. In Quickplay, the matchmaking service connects Guardians to each other without filtering. In the Competitive playlist, Guardians of similar skill level are matched together, ostensibly to produce more evenly-matched games. Matchmaking can take an inordinately long time, even during peak hours when the servers are well populated. One can only imagine this will improve as Bungie accumulates more data on player activity.
The game modes in PvP are nothing new. There's Clash, which is standard to a team deathmatch mode. Next is Supremacy which is similar to the "Kill Confirmed" game type familiar to Call of Duty fans. Control is a king-of-the-hill type game, where the teams vie for control over three zones and score points based on the kills while controlling more zones than the other team. Survival is a variation of Clash where the teams are limited to eight respawns, and the goal is to kill the other team's players until the respawns are exhausted, then eliminate them from the match. Finally, there's Countdown, which is essentially Counter-Strike: one team tries to plant explosives and the other tries to kill them off before they do.
There are nine maps, which offer a good variety, though certain maps come up far more often in the rotation than others. They are set in various locales around the solar system--one even uses a location from the Leviathan raid.
Overall, the Crucible is an enjoyable diversion when the PvE gets tedious, or when Guardians just want to accumulate new gear quickly.
GENERAL GAMEPLAY
For returning Guardians, or experienced players of first-person shooters, the controls are somewhat standard and intuitive. The major difference that set Destiny 2 apart are the class-specific super abilities, activated by pressing both shoulder buttons simultaneously, and the minor class-specific abilities activated by some variation of the pressing the B/O button.
The weapon system has undergone a dramatic overhaul. Gone is the simple Primary/Secondary/Special classification system for weapons. In it's place we find a more convoluted yet still highly functional system of classifying weapons based on their damage type and attack power. Weapons are now divided into Kinetic, Energy, and Heavy. Weapons fo the same "species" may be either kinetic or energy weapons now (i.e. autorifles can either deal elementlesss kinectic damage or deal damage in a specific element), and highly damaging weapons (e.g. sniper rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, and swords) all deal elemental damage and are considered "Heavy".
For those who complained about the lack of content in the original Destiny, your complaints have been addressed--partially at least. There is a considerable amount of content in Destiny 2, far more than it's predecessor to be sure. The explorable areas are significantly larger, with public events spawning in with an alarming regularity. The gameplay does get repetitive, but it remains an enjoyable experience, primarily because the rewards for completing these activites are generally commensurate with the effort it took to get them.
As with any MMO, Destiny 2 is best enjoyed when played with reliable friends. Realizing this, Bungie added true clan support for the sequel, with tiered rewards given out to larger and more active clans. Though it doesn't fully resolve the lack of matchmaking for certain PvE activities, it's a huge step in the right direction.
At it's core, though, Destiny 2 follows it's predecessor's footsteps in that the single factor motivating Guardians to keep playing after the story ends is the pursuit of new and better loot. Destiny 2 makes it easier to reap impressive spoils without watering down the experience. Each planet has a designated "overseer" character, whose role is to receive the materials collected by the player, and dispense randomized level 20 rewards when the player has turned in a sufficient amount of them.
GENERAL GAMEPLAY
Though it's still very early on in the life of this new massively multiplayer online first-person shooter/RPG, Bungie seems to have learned from the shortcomings of Destiny at launch and gives us a thoroughly enjoyable experience. It's a fact of modern online gaming that MMOs are constantly evolving and whether the Destiny 2 experience remains as fresh a few months from now remains to be seen.
