When I played Destiny 2 for the first time last year, I came to enjoy what it was up front, giving it praise for the face value changes I could see at the time. I came to the conclusion like everyone else that shaders being limited use was pretty backwards and when you beat a campaign that at times felt too easy, there just wasn’t enough to make it feel like an expanded sequel. Many people felt like it was just one big DLC with the more emphasis on the story taking away from more fully developed worlds like the moon, Venus, or even what we got to see of Mars and the Earth at launch. As time went by, I began to feel the same way and I eventually dropped out of the scene, but as the record shows when Destiny dropped The Taken King, it was then that everything got more interesting. After two slightly questionable Destiny 2 season follow-up packs, Destiny 2: Forsaken rolls out swinging looking to be this game’s metaphorical Taken King game-changer.
Destiny 2: Forsaken brings several changes to Destiny 2, first of all being how weapons can now be equipped in your inventory with more flexibility and allowing way more weapon combinations than ever before with each slot. A new devastating bow weapon class has been added that does exactly as you’d expect a long bow to do and its one of the more fun things to come out of any Destiny update for some time. Playing past the intro sequence rewards you with a new bow of your own so if you are worried of having to wait until the end-game to get one, don’t be. Speaking of not having to wait, you need to be Level 30 to even begin the Forsaken story arch but Bungie allows you one free upgrade token to take a character (new or old) to level 30. You can purchase these tokens at a cost if you want to treat more characters in the same fashion.
When looking at the care towards the plot development and care put into the wealth of each cinematic, I have to say at times it feels corny and over-the-top but we are mostly talking about Cayde-6. No spoilers, obviously, but Cayde-6 does actually die, which sets off the events that spiral through the rest of the chapter. Destiny 2: Forsaken works as a good follow-up to House of Wolves, building upon the lore to give us a rich environment we’ve always wanted. Players find themselves in a purple nebula space pirate cove which defines itself by it’s tangled and anchored world of asteroids and marooned space ship wreckage. This is the Reef as you now know it, and the attention to detail and the expansion of it there-in was more than I expected even with the hefty price of entry.
The main villain this time around may not be going after the Traveler directly like the Red Legion but it doesn’t mean our new enemy and his minions are any less personal. Prince Uldren has returned after the chaos and death of Mara Sov with delusions of grandeur, presumably to bring his sister back to life. It appears everything is a go as the story starts with him breaking into his own Prison of Elders, releasing a new enemy-type unseen until now, the scorn. The scorn is a far arch-type of the fallen that has been reborn to serve Uldren as he forsakes all that his sister stood for to complete his quest. With this new faction also comes the chance to deliver us 8 different sub-bosses under Uldren, which in turn each help play a role to end Cayde-6 once and for all.
As far as how the length and story plays out, its interesting for the fact that each Baron sub-boss has it’s own niche and unique traits but could fall lack-luster to some with how Uldren’s story plays out. Don’t get me wrong, its a surprise all the same but nothing definitive or anything that would play into the monumental setup of a main character’s death (but that’s just me). Negatives aside, I really enjoyed each mini-boss battle and to me it felt like mini-strikes having to lure them out and take them on one by one until I could lore Uldren out. In this aspect, having the new Tangled Shore reef environment, unique and expansive boss battles, and even a new end-game location when you finish the main story… really sells the price in the end. That’s not even to mention the new raid that is the biggest created yet, the new strikes set on The Prison Of Elders, and the new level cap just to name the bigger hitters in content with this expansion.
With the new weapon system change, bow additions to the armory, new weapon mods in the style of the original Destiny, an update of new supers with each Guardian class sub-classes, and a new PVP/PVE mode like Halo 5’s Warzone mode… Destiny 2’s multiplayer will be forever changed. For those interesting (and no doubt you are) Gambit is the name of the new PVP/PVE mode that have two teams of four collected “motes” from dead npc’s and returning them to base. The first to collect 75 motes and slay the spawned Primeval will win the match and collect some much envied loot. It sounds easy on paper but its a delicate dance of staying alive long enough against the AI and knocking back any sneak or on-front attacks your rivals might be planning. It’s definitely worth your time and I would be interested to see more variants of this game-mode going forward with future updates.
Unfortunately I can’t vouch for the Raid as I no longer have people that play Destiny 2 long enough (or at all) and I think that has been a side-affect of Bungie straying away of what made the original Destiny so re-playable in the first place. That is kind of a shame but the big upside is this update included a return to the random roll lot system found in Destiny, making it much more incentivized to grind on the daily. With these changes going forward and the wealth of content this update has dropped, I can imagine players who felt burned out will find plenty of reasons to drop 40 plus more hours if they make a return. Coming from someone who stepped away from Destiny 2 even before the first two expansion drops, I feel this third expansion was the salvation this game needed to see and it just proves that Bungie has not forsaken it’s own fan-base after all. Destiny 2: Forsaken a definite recommendation.
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