May 11, 2018 Destiny 2 review: Eight months since launch and DLC season is coming to a close, has Bungie done enough for fans who have stuck around?
Release Date: September 6, 2017Platforms: XBO (reviewed), PS4Developer: BungiePublisher: ActivisionGenre: MMOFPS
When the original Destiny dropped in 2014, fans immediately started talking about advertising and story in a way that is very familiar in our post-No Man’s Sky world. The ambitious scope promised in the marketing did not pan out in vanilla Destiny’s handful of locations, and characterization was thin on the ground for both the gun-toting Guardians and the cast of well-known voice actors surrounding them.
Destiny 2’s marketing emphasized humor, fun, and a bit more characterization for the three Vanguard. Whether the game delivered these things might depend on how much you liked to hang out in the world of the first game.
My journey is pretty clear in my reviews on this very website: Destinychanged the way I play games. I’ve gone from someone who staunchly insisted on playing alone (and missing out on some content), to a person who can say the words “my clan” with earnest fondness. Destiny worked for me, and Destiny 2 works a bit better.
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First, let’s talk about the story. The Last City has been destroyed, and the three Guardian leaders scattered throughout the Solar System. Your first job is to get them back. This enables the player to get to know the Vanguard better than ever before. Nathon Fillion’s Cayde-6 is hapless but unstoppably roguish, while Gina Torres is worried and then serene as Ikora Rey. Lance Reddick’s Commander Zavala has less of a character arc as the other two, but serves as a good cornerstone for the idea of Guardians as a whole as walls built up against the Dark. At the very least, players will know who they are. The same could not always be said of the original Destiny. Destiny 2’s villains get some more depth too, with long cutscenes.
Side characters bring a bit more depth. Suraya Hawthorne believes that the Guardians held themselves too far apart from the civilians they supposedly protected. While the discussions about surveillance and supermen isn’t exceptionally deep (the Vanguard apparently erase certain records as a matter of course?), the game does finally give players a sense of actually knowing who the civilians are. They have a role in the story now, as does Hawthorne, and that goes a long way toward making the game function as a story.
One Strike in particular features some poignant character writing and genuinely creepy atmosphere, and the vendors from each newly opened planet also provide some affecting backstory. The planets are also beautiful places to walk or drive around, with varied lighting and architecture jaggedly interrupted by enemy construction keeping the scenery pretty interesting – until you find yourself chasing the same type of Public Event over and over. (These communal loot-grabs usually spawn in the same spots.)
Destiny 2 is still great to play while on the headset with friends talking about something completely different. It’s also great to talk about the lore: What does that mysterious signal mean? What will happen in that Osiris DLC? The game makes me care enough to ask. Even if you aren’t attached to the characters, it’s a good space magic simulator that makes players feel powerful and cool while floating around machinoformed Nessus. At its best, Destiny 2has a great atmosphere and a mixture of human cultures and alien races as distinct as the ones Bungie made for Halo.
In fact, as some of my friends pointed out while playing, Destiny 2 feels more like a Bungie-era Halo game than vanilla ever did. Level design has been stretched out and varied a little, lines of sight carefully controlled so that you feel like you’re loping across a huge field or crawling through infested tunnels.