برچسب: harder

Destiny 2 was already in a weird spot ahead of The Edge of Fate’s release date. I had several conversations with people who don’t play recently exclaim, “I thought Destiny was over?” That response is understandable, too. 

Last year, a lot of hubbub was made around the release of The Final Shape, which was set to conclude the 10-year story Bungie had been crafting. The messaging was ‘this is the end’ – and to outside observers, it‘s not a surprise that’s a sentiment that prevailed. Bungie has been more focused on Marathon, before that somewhat imploded, and the new expansion was relatively quietly announced a couple of months ahead of launch. 

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The Escapist recaps

• Destiny 2 is entering a new story known as the Fate Saga with The Edge of Fate.
• The Edge of Fate’s story is excellent and charts a compelling course for the story going forward.
• Kepler is a weaker destination in the Destiny world, lacking the iconic visual clarity of other worlds.
• Several big structural changes are well-intentioned, but are very roughly implemented.
• One day, they could be great, as their ideas aren’t bad, but it will take a lot of tweaking by Bungie to fix.

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Charting our fate

Of course, with its persistent audience and the size of the franchise, despite ending the Light and Dark saga, there was always going to be more Destiny. And thus, we have The Edge of Fate – the first entry into Destiny’s second narrative arc, The Fate Saga. However, while it promises a bright future, the expansion’s execution may have a few too many missteps at a time when Bungie really can’t afford them. 

The Edge of Fate’s express purpose is to set up the journey that our Guardians are going to go on for years to come. However, when you’ve just had your playerbase overcome the biggest bad the universe has ever seen, the one who all other enemies ultimately bowed to, where do you go? 

Bungie has smartly pivoted to The Nine. These entities have been within the Destiny lore since the start, but even with several direct encounters over the franchise’s history, their intentions and even their very nature have been unclear. However, The Edge of Fate drags these inter-dimensional beings into the spotlight.

The Guardian, Ikora, Drifter, The Nine’s previous Emissary, Orin, and a mysterious new face Lod,i are all dragged to the strange and unfamiliar planet of Keplar through ‘invitations’ that come in the way of spontaneously appearing 1960s trains. Whatever is happening, the Nine, who exist outside of time, want you and everyone else invited to be on Kepler at that exact point for… something. It’s your job to get to the bottom of what that something is. 

If there are concerns around Destiny 2’s future, none of them stem from this narrative. This is one of Destiny’s best stories and a brilliant first chapter in this new saga. Destiny has had many moments where narrative missteps have not matched the title’s gameplay and loops. This is perhaps the first time that the story campaign is doing the heavy lifting. 

Newcomer Lodi is an absolute joy to be around. He’s an immediate fan-favorite and will be going forward. There are some fascinating new flavors mixed into proceedings, too, with 1960s Chicago being a prominent aspect, and the expansion culminating with some awesome ideas and narrative hooks that will pull us forward in the imminent future. It’s the shining star of the expansion, and the one aspect I don’t feel obliged to mention with caveats. 

The narrative team did a great job at an opening salvo, which is not usually easy to do. If you’ve ever cared about Destiny, it’s worth experiencing this campaign at some point to see if the future of the franchise is for you. 

What Matters(park)

While the story of the campaign is great, that’s not to say playing through it is always a joy. Destiny’s campaigns have been generally pretty reliably fun, but parts of the Edge of Fate can be a slog thanks to some odd choices in its flow. Before release, Bungie touted that ‘puzzles’ would be a big part of the campaign, but what they delivered feels very wonky. 

Most of this interaction is facilitated by the game’s new ‘Matterspark’ ability. Essentially, players transform into a small electric orb, allowing them to find small gaps to traverse to new areas and/or power-up small generators. Firstly, it just looks quite strange. Something about having your Guardian turn into a little ball of energy feels off. It’s a small thing, but it looks odd, and Samus-balling around is a strange vibe for Guardians. 

Secondly, it’s often used in annoying ways, most prominently, to gate boss damage, meaning you have to stop the fight, go find a Dark Matter source to become a spinning Sonic the Hedgehog, find an opening to enter, and go power a generator, before you can get back to killing the boss, all without dying. Oh, and every time you enter into the form, your camera whips around to lock your perspective where Bungie thinks you want to be looking.

I don’t hate Matterspark in the way some vocal members of the community do. It’s mostly fine. A means to an end, and once it becomes castable at will while on Kepler, it’s even a decent navigation tool. However, it also doesn’t add much to proceedings, and it’s hard to get over how ‘un-Guardian’ it looks. It’s okay, but it’s a very odd idea for the developers to latch onto and commit to as fully as they do through the campaign.

Kep on kepping on

Keplar itself is a mixed bag. Destiny’s planets are all very distinct, each with their own personality and layout. Every planet ever introduced is ingrained into my head, committed to memory quickly. Even last year’s Pale Heart, which was a very different space from other destinations, lingers in the mind. Kepler is new, but I still can’t quite map it out from memory, and I think that’s notable.

Lots of areas bleed together, and the sense of direction feels very different from most planets in Destiny’s universe. Not helping the planet’s case is that, unlike every other destination, it lacks a visual identity. Destiny has always knocked its locations out of the park, making each feel dense and instantly recognisable. From landmark features to distinctive color languages, if you showed me a screenshot of any other planet, it wouldn’t take long to identify which one it was. 

Kepler, on the other hand, lacks that visual distinctiveness. It feels like the result of smashing vaulted locations Io and The Tangled Shore together, so much so, it can be hard to untangle Kepler from those visual identities. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the space. 

It’s still perfectly fine to navigate, even with Matterspark being necessary to travel. It’s just that Bungie has always knocked locations out of the park, and this feels like a muddled step back for what has always been an incredible aspect of the game. 

A portal to where?

By far, the most complicated part of The Edge of Fate’s launch is its complete systems overhaul. To Bungie’s credit, it has put significant work into overthrowing much of how the game’s grind and moment-to-moment work. A lot has changed. The Portal is a new system that is designed to get players into what will improve their Power Level, and also allows players to modularly adjust difficulty. 

Armor 3.0 has completely changed how buildcrafting works in the game, with further incentives to use what’s new with set bonuses. The new Tier system on both armor and weapons is about creating a reason for you to continue to chase gear far into the future, mimicking the likes of Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2, with your ultimate chase being to perfect your build with higher-tier gear. 

Hell, even the expansion itself is a new structure. Instead of one big expansion and three or four seasons a year, there will now be two expansions a year, bringing more campaigns and destinations, but with less frequent updates. The point is that a lot has changed in The Edge of Fate.

There’s good reason, too. The viability of the grind, the chase for random rolls on weapons, fatigue from the season structure, and it being hard to know what to do at any given moment – these are all long-discussed problems by the community, and these overhauls are Bungie’s answer. In a vacuum, these are well-intentioned shifts for the franchise. In practice, it’s been a mess, though.  

Unclear answers

To say there are bugs in these systems would be an understatement. Destiny 2 currently feels much harder, as power deltas have been added, making your climb for power tough. The grind to get Tier 4 and 5 gear feels excessive, and also makes it so any good rolls you get that are of lesser tiers are temporary, thus disposable. The armor changes have also made ability regeneration slower, with builds feeling weak out of the gate.

The Portal is a particular issue, too. While a decent idea to get players into the action and signpost what they should do next, its current offerings are too restrictive. It’s a good way of recycling content that isn’t currently launchable in the game, but currently, the best way to get higher power is to just run the same seasonal mission over and over again.

It also lacks some of Destiny’s best content, with Raids and Dungeons not being relevant to the power grind currently. That’s coming, and The Portal can be a great way to resurface old content that players would be happy to see back. 

The problem is that all of this just feels like a lot all at once, and almost none of it is in a state that feels great. Long-term, I believe all of these can be good for the game, but each system needs a lot of work, and it feels exceedingly messy.

If these structural changes were a steak, they’d currently be blue. There’s nothing wrong with the steak itself; it probably should have just used a little more time in the pan. One day, these might all sing, but right now, it’s hard to full-heartedly recommend jumping in.

Which fate will it be?

Destiny 2 finds itself in a weird place heading into its newest saga. In a lot of ways, even for a decade-old franchise, it’s entering uncharted waters. We’ve never had a new saga launch, and it’s clear, through both the story and system changes introduced in The Edge of Fate, that things are going to be different. On the narrative side, the franchise has never felt better.

The direction is clear, and Destiny, for one of the first times, feels like it has a well-thought-out path, fascinating elements, and surprises ahead. The narrative team carries the Edge of Fate, which is quite a difference compared to where the franchise started in 2014.

However, it’s everything else that is currently struggling. Bungie has taken a bold step of trying to completely revamp the game’s core systems, and right now, they are not in an excellent state. The changes appear well intentioned, and there might be a future where they create an excellent harmony – but right now, there’s a lot of distance between here and there.

As it always has, Bungie will likely sand those edges down and make something of these systems, but for anyone but the most dedicated, time is probably on your side in waiting for these things to be sorted out.

It’s a shame those issues overshadow the good of this expansion and the first step into the Fate saga. This story deserves to be told at the scale Destiny 2 has always existed on. Destiny’s narrative clarity hasn’t always shone, but it’s always been backed up by the moment-to-moment gameplay. Bizarrely, the game currently finds itself flipped on its head.

There is a future where these gameplay systems are refined and the intelligent driving force of this narrative find harmony. If so, there is a timeline where Destiny’s best days are ahead of it. However, with troubled waters both in and out of the game, the path to that destination is murkier than ever.

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