Destiny 2 - Thoughts

I barely spent any time with Destiny 2 when it was first released. I mean, I played enough to finish the main campaign, but what does that mean for a massively-multiplayer video game? I had no idea what reputation was used for, attached no mods, finished no exotic quests, and was nowhere near being raid-ready. I bounced off of it as quickly as I had for the first Destiny, finding the story pointlessly convoluted and the gameplay good... but not addicting. The only conclusion I could surmise is that the series just wasn't for me—and that was fine. There were plenty of other MMO/GaaS games in the sea.

... But when Destiny 2: New Light was released on Steam (for free), I jumped back in and got hooked. I put in a whopping 100 hours, purchasing both Forsaken and Shadowkeep. I finally got around to exploring all the missing bits of content I missed: Crucible, Gambit, Nightfall, Menagerie, dungeons (but not raids yet—it's been tough trying to organize them with friends). My vault is packed with exotics, my weapons and armor pieces kitted with mods, and I experienced the pain of grinding for Pinnacle Engrams firsthand. Yet despite knowing more about the game than I ever thought I would, the true nature of Destiny 2 continued to allude me.

What the hell was this game that I had sunk so much time into?

I mean, I get it—but I don't. And it's not a hard sentiment to understand if you've spent any time with Destiny 2. When you jump into New Light you're allowed to go wherever you want and play any mission you like, which makes the game more confusing than freeing. Like what should you do? What do you even want to do? The quality of your gear determines your level, so it's probably best to search for higher level equipment... but you can find it almost anywhere. Plus why are you trying to get better gear in the first place? Campaigns, adventures, and strikes are level-independent activities, and most PvP modes ignore level advantage altogether. The most obvious thing you'd need it for is the newest raid, but that requires five other players to group up without a matchmaking function, meaning it's probably not a priority for the amateur player. True, the raid is an objective, but so is killing Onyxia in World of Warcraft—and that game at least guides you towards that destination, whereas Destiny shows you a pamphlet on swimming and then flings you into the deep end.

This cavalier aimlessness is the central reason why Destiny had so much trouble getting its claws in me—and the lack of a strong narrative only made it worse. There are clever plot threads and diverse races interwoven throughout Destiny 2's tapestry, but Bungie purposely keeps its fabric vague and insubstantial. You're told you're a Guardian that owes its life to the Traveler thanks to the Light bequeathed to you, but none of those terms are well defined. There's some robots trying to rewrite reality and the remnants of an inter-dimensional king's army faffing about, but you never get a firm grasp on their motivation beyond "let's rule the universe." Ironically the plot in Destiny 2 is relayed in a much more considerate way than the first game (I honestly still have no idea what that one was about), but it's a far cry from the epic space fantasy the series wants to be. Characters will bark orders at you with resolve and urgency, but you won't really comprehend anything beyond "dark is bad."

So Destiny 2 is a hard game to get into. But it's also, without a doubt, the most aesthetically pleasing FPS I've ever played. From the satisfying "thunk" of a grenade launcher to the gorgeous skyboxes full of interstellar anomalies, Destiny 2 is covered in fine, sensuous details. Even the UI—as clunky as it may be—looks and feels unique, the sounds of swapping mods and popping engrams embedding themselves into the pleasure zone of your brain. The armor design is considerably varied so that you can look like anything from a pirate king to a long-forgotten astronaut, and I really like the shader system too, allowing your grossly mismatched gear to blend together effortlessly. 

Speaking of, the colors—the colors! Destiny 2's visuals are cohesive despite every planet wielding its own vibrant palette, like the oppressive orange sandstorms of Mars, the crushing green tidal waves of Titan, and the resplendent gold of the mighty Leviathan. The architecture is just as memorable, utilizing a lot of simple geometric shapes for Vex shrines and rigid, mucus-y metal for the Hive dens. The Earth and Cabal stuff are good too, but they're extremely mundane compared to zones like The Dreaming City and its ghostly capital. The aesthetics of Destiny 2 are so captivating that my main motivator for playing was to witness more of its world. That's not to say the gameplay is bad either—shooting stays captivating for hours on end—it's just that there's not really any FPS that captures the scope and grandeur of an alien world quite like Destiny.

Even if you enjoy being a tourist in Destiny 2's gorgeous universe, eventually you're going to want a goal to strive towards. The game is loaded with repeatable bounties and adventures, but the most structure is derived from trying to complete its various Exotic (ie rare weapon) quests. But here is where you'll run into one of the most novel-yet-frustrating aspects about Destiny: it's esotericism. Questlines are plentiful, disorganized, and stupidly vague, often just pointing you in a random direction with a single riddle to guide your way. Some of the bigger, more impressive quests (like the Whisper of the Worm) you'll have to research how to access, and quests with unique level designs are unfortunately few and far between. Plus due to the fact that you'll be playing several seasons of content simultaneously, you're bound to get a stack of quests that'll be impossible to parse the value of—do you even want the gun that's at the end of this quest line? Do you know what to do to get its catalyst (ie final upgrade)? Do you know what the objective on the catalyst is?

Like a lot of MMOs, you'll spend a chunk of time outside of the game researching things: build guides, how power level specifically affects you, and the frequent "how the hell do I get this quest/item/heroic event?" Eventually the annoyance will fade and you'll come to accept that this is simply what Destiny 2 is. Don't get me wrong—it can still feel vexing—but having to dig in order to uncover the game's cooler aspects can be... kind of neat? At least for me it was; the unorthodox design extends all the way into its level structure, going as far as to incorporate confounding oddities like a secret NES-style password system in one of the raids. The PvP Crucible is probably the best mode since it's the most straightforward one (plus it's actually endlessly replayable), but uncovering the game's weird secrets is personally the most rewarding activity available. Even Destiny's strange reliance on platforming and shortcuts in some of their quests (like Outbreak Perfected) has tickled my curiosity more than most games have in years.

No matter what you're playing the game for, the core loop of Destiny 2 distills down into three things: gathering Exotic (and sometimes Legendary) weapons, gradually raising your power level, and hoping to find better stats on your favorite gear drops. The game is still wildly aimless—how you accomplish each of these is largely up to you—but you'll come to define all your actions in one of these three ways. And it's... weird, personally, to play a game where the ultimate objective is to keep you on a treadmill running forward, hoping you're hungry enough to savor every crumb of progression that's doled out. I realize most games utilize this kind of incremental-power engine, but here it's so naked and disappointing that I can't look past it. I mean, am I really going to play this for 100 more hours in the hopes of finding something as meaningless as boots with high Discipline and Recovery? Because it feels like that's my only choice.

Destiny 2 operates on a seasonal model where new content and story developments are rotated in every ten weeks, which should give you new reasons to play. But even if you pay for the ridiculous seasonal pass ($10 for access to a temporary event and bounties?!), it doesn't provide you with better endgame material—it just makes the treadmill run a tiny bit easier. The juicy PvE content I thirst for (Master Ordeals, new dungeons) come out at a grossly infrequent rate and lack matchmaking, turning them into a greater challenge than I bargained for. And since the game doesn't accommodate for solo or duo teams, I end up having to wait until I can blast through them at vastly higher light levels (like the Pit of Heresy). What's crazy to me too is that Destiny 2 includes a item modifier the player can use to adjust the difficulty level and special conditions of PvE events, but it only works for Nightfalls! Why Bungie? Why must you do this to me?

Whenever I think about Destiny 2, a thousand thoughts zoom through my mind and collide like a turbulent asteroid belt: It's cool! Annnd it's weird! And some of the design choices are really baffling! But it's so beautiful! Wait, do I really have to keep playing the same content over and over? At least the enemies are diverse. A shame that the bosses are just bigger regular enemies though. How the hell do I get this "Recluse" everyone talks about? Woah, the Darkness is coming in these dope pyramids! Or the pyramids... are the Darkness? Hold up, what is the Darkness? Et cetera, et cetera.

This colliding jumble of impressions and questions keeps me from reaching a consensus on Destiny 2... but they also urge me to return every now and then. I'm not sure that's a good thing—I inevitably find myself left speechless at how confusing and uncommunicative its content is—but the best thing I can say about Destiny is that it is wholly unique. Despite coming from a big, well-loved studio, there's not really another game you can compare it to. Nowhere will you find a more peculiar blend of majestic artistry, convoluted storytelling, excellent gunplay, divisive platforming, and repetitive content than in Destiny 2. Again, I'm not sure this is a good thing, but Bungie will always have my attention when it comes to this franchise—for better or worse.