Destiny 2: An In Depth Look

Life as a graduate is fraught with little annoyances. Job hunting, money worries, and finding ways to keep busy have, ironically, kept me away from the latest game releases. Hence, this review of Destiny 2 is about a month late. And also a day late. But my aim with this review, and all my reviews, is to go a bit more in depth with the game, and look at how the overall design has improved.

The design has improved, but, in some aspects, the corporate rot is setting in.

Let’s start with the big stuff – Destiny 2 finally gives us what this universe has been crying out for – a story. A coherent one too. It’s not locked away in Grimoire cards on Bungie’s website. It’s not just a string of loosely connected boss battles vaguely linked to a giant magical beach ball from outer space. It’s a story about rebuilding and redeeming the Vanguard after they fail to protect humanity from Ghaul, the leader of the Cabal Empire’s Red Legion. After some soul searching, the three Vanguard leaders and the player pull together and bring humanity back from the brink.

Is it a story that’s been told over and over again? Yes, but it demonstrates that Bungie can still write a competent and engaging story. It does fail a little bit with the Warlock Vanguard Ikora Rey, whose guilt driven trip to Io feels a little tacked on, but there is characterisation for everyone now, not just Cayde and the Ghost making jokes all day long.

Of course the jokes are still there, but they feel less irritating. In Destiny it felt jarring because the game took itself, and what little story it had, so seriously. Destiny 2 seems to have finally realised that it’s universe filled with space magic, God-like beach balls, and aliens that inexplicably speak perfect English, is absurd, and that people can and do find it amusing. And that’s not a bad thing. If anything, it helps new or returning players (like me) relax and get comfortable with the world.

The rest of the supporting cast are great too. In each of the four destinations players can explore and shoot aliens in, there are NPC’s who give out quests and rewards, instead of trudging back and forth from the Tower like in the original. By far my favourite of the supporting characters has to be Failsafe, the AI of a crashed colony ship that has gone a bit wonky after spending hundreds of years alone. Her interactions with the player’s Ghost and Cayde are great moments in the game and make exploring her destination, Nessus, all the more fun.

On top of these helpful characters, Ghaul is a pretty good villain. He is an imposing presence from the moment he kicks you off of his ship, to the cutscene’s in between missions, to his final moments. His motivations are actually fairly complicated; he wants the Traveller’s Light for himself but wants to actually earn it like the Guardian’s did, not take it by force.

I’d also like to make a shout out to the Fallen, who are brilliant as the secondary antagonists. I love that Bungie has turned them into space faring Jack Sparrow’s in Destiny 2, as they seem to take everything humanity hasn’t nailed down most of the way through the campaign, to the chagrin of every NPC, only for the player to take it back time and time again.

Destiny 2 introduces us to four new locations in the solar system, each with a unique feel. The European Dead Zone is the spooky, lush and verdant remains of central Europe; Titan’s decaying and Hive infested aquatic cities and methane rigs are open to explore, with the Dreadnought from The Taken King sometimes being visible in the skybox; Nessus is a strange planetoid that is on the verge of becoming the latest Vex machine world; and finally Io, which is the weirdest of the four, with dinosaur and ammonite fossils littering the ground.

Unlike the previous game, Destiny 2 gives the player more varied activities to do in these locations. There are Lost Sectors, small, quick dungeons which are a fast way of earning rare loot. Patrol missions have changed too, now giving the player a bit more of the story in return for exploring the world, but these are few and far between. Side quests, dubbed Adventures, are more abundant and offer lore and loot as rewards.

Public events too have become more varied and more frequent, with the location map (how did we cope without a map in the first game?) showing which events are happening at any given time. The old patrol beacons are still dotted around, but they are now easier to ignore – the other four types of grind quests are far more engaging.

Strikes, Nightfall Strikes, and the Raid make their appearance too, and are brilliant when played with friends and strangers alike. I am yet to try the guided games feature – a system whereby more experienced players can help lower levelled players through the Raid and Nightfall Strikes – as I waited in the queue for a guided Nightfall for five minutes without a match. Disappointing, as I got bored of Destiny before I could try any of the higher levelled activities.

Multiplayer too feels a bit tacked on and perfunctory. The 4 vs 4 set up is great for, say, E-Sports, but not for keeping me as a casual player engaged. Though maybe I’ve just been spoiled by Battlefield’s 64 player madness for too long.

My major gripe with Destiny 2, along with basically everyone, is the expansion of micro-transactions to the detriment of character customisation. Destiny had these items called shaders that you bought for in game currency and they changed the entire colour of your character, and you could swap between them whenever you wanted.

Someone somewhere made the truly cynical decision to carve these shaders up, so now you need five of the same shader to change your character’s whole appearance. And most of the time when you earn shaders in game, you on get them in blocks of two or three. Oh, and for good measure they are one use items. But at least you can use them on weapons and vehicles now. Yaaaaaaay…

You can’t even buy them from the Eververse store, not with glimmer anyway. You need to dismantle your legendary or exotic gear to earn “bright dust”, or fork out real money to get “bright engrams”, also known as loot boxes, and "silver", the virtual currency.

So whilst the loot box economy has claimed another victim, I actually would recommend Destiny 2. It has shaken off a lot of the flaws of the original whilst retaining and improving on the better aspects.