Review: Destiny 2 – Expansion I: Curse of Osiris

[JH]: Like any good story, it’s going to live or die based off the depth and reliability of your villain. We put a lot of hours into developing Ghaul. At first, yeah, he seems like a guy who just wants to kick us in the balls and move on down the road after taking Earth.

The campaign mission was the "Homecoming" mission from the gameplay reveal. It's the first mission of Destiny 2 and kicks things into action with a giant explosion. The Cabal’s Red Legion has launched a strike on the Last City in an attempt to steal the Traveler. Homecoming is the perfect opening mission for Destiny 2, illustrating just how much is changing between the new game and the old. There are epic moments, like helping Zavalla hold back waves of Cabal infantry, interactions with NPCs and actual set piece moments taking place.

As for the Crucible, it seems to be an uneven blending of old and new, and like any good shooter, will probably need a few matches under its belt to see where it stands. I was grouped with teams that either know shooters or know Destiny the first few matches tackled. My team dominating match after match, while hapless players threw themselves at our Guardian-trained reflexes. It almost didn’t seem fair, probably because the other teams weren’t making use of their powers and treating the Crucible like any other shooter. Jumping in on day two, however, was completely different. Being on the receiving end of the stick was just not fun. My team wandering off to play "team deathmatch" instead of the actual objective. At this point, it’s confusing when other players don’t know mechanics. Most games use the same objective-based gameplay with personal slight variations, but to see my team run to the meat grinder, completely away from the very thing we were supposed to be protecting, was disheartening. I had to quit while I was ahead. Not because the other players were bad, they just didn’t seem to care.

[Matthew Ward]: We had the opportunity to spend time building him up in that he’s not just a bad guy. In his world, he’s the good guy with a purpose. There’s something that’s deeper to him. We wanted to make sure our antagonist wasn’t just a cliché.

With these sorts of compromises becoming commonplace, it’s no wonder that there are many gamers out there who’ve become afraid of the casual audience. More and more often they’re seeing niche series they enjoy getting compromised and simplified for the sake of attracting the casual player. Are they right to vilify the casual audience? No, absolutely not . Like it or not, the casual audience is vital to gaming’s survival and it’s not the their fault that publishers are trying to get their attention. Instead of insulting and ridiculing casual players, hardcore fans should be trying to bring them into the fold. In fact, publishers and developers should be trying to do the same thing. Major departures like Fallout 4 and Dead Space 3 would better serve their creators and IP as side-games rather than mainline series entries. If a given publisher’s goal really is to expand a series’ player base, then use these sorts of games to attract people that can actually be converted into fans rather than simply going for the easy sale. They should be trying to create long-term customers rather than simply attract short-term guests. There is still great value to be found and lots of money to be made in the various genre niches. Their fans are passionate and are willing to support honest effort if it means getting more of what they love. It’s just a matter of respecting them and the series they love when trying to increase their ranks.

There was an interesting moment when we finally run into the Taken again. As new players, the game acted as if The Taken King never happened. With the possibility of a lot of these moments popping up, how have you handled the whole new player vs. returning player conundrum?

On paper, The Infinite Forest sounds like a fascinating concept. Bringing in procedurally-generated dungeons would be an exciting way to invigorate the endgame like with Bloodborne’s Chalice dungeons. Sadly, even this concept is ruined thanks to asinine levels of repetition. All the Infinite Forest is is just a linear set of platforms populated with generic enemies players have been fighting for the past three years. The sad thing is, there’s not much of a challenge here. It’s possible just to skip the enemies and head towards the door. On occasion you do need to kill an enemy to unlock the door, you can accomplish it by just hanging near the last platform and shooting them from afar.

It’s still too early to say Destiny 2 is going to be the dream game we all wanted when it was first announced in 2013, but based on what we played, Bungie is on the right track. We’re finally getting that cinematic, set piece filled campaign that was mysteriously missing. Strikes are going to put players in big environments and have them do more than just shoot bullet sponge enemies. There are new modes to play, worlds to see and characters to interact with. Destiny 2 Machine Gun 2 may just be the game Destiny was always meant to be.