Destiny

I still like the Ghost.

I just really hope Forsaken is to D2 what Taken King was to D1.

I don't have a problem with Ghost or Failsafe either, and agree that Forsaken needs to be D2's Taken King. If it's not, I'm probably done with the game.

Failsafe was annoyingly cliche at times, but yeah, she's got nothing on Asher Mir.

Would you believe that I have to work (occasionally, luckily) with a guy who speaks like him and, unbelievably, is an even bigger asshole? I hate both of them.

And while we're at Asher Mir, remember that mission from Curse of Osiris where you have to get into the Pyramidion? Bungle's poor writing led to missing the funniest that could happen: rebuilding the mission-specific map (that is considerably shorter than the strike version anyway) to have a huge radiolarian lake (think, the one from the final sequence of Inverted Spire) at the end, with the appropriate remarks from Ikora and Ghost. Like, "well, shit, the lake's here after all".

That was a big problem with a bunch of the missions. They had little variety aside from "Go from point A to point B, shoot every hostile in your way until you reach the end... which will be resolved by shooting even more enemies. And occasionally back-tracking." And none of those missions ever gave a sense of actual progression beyond your character's gear or levels increasing.

I guess Nathan Fillion became too expensive for bungie

Looks like you might be right... he won't be voicing Cayde in the Forsaken expansion, and will instead be repalced by Nolan North... aka, your Ghost. Not too sure what to think of that right now.

Nah, from what Fillion said it was a scheduling conflict and if anyone else had to do it he's real glad it was North.

They should get Nolan North to play Malcolm in a Firefly game.

And get Nathan Fillon to do the rest of the crew.

I just played Destiny 1 through the entire story for the first time and am now playing Destiny 2.

My reaction can be summarized as, "There wasn't a story until The Taken King. Wait, no, the House of Wolves had a story but I actually kind of feel bad for the Fallen so I didn't care."

I might have cared about House of Wolves, but I didn't play it until after The Taken King was out, and it inexplicably thought I'd already done the first mission, so I missed whatever setup there was.

I dipped back in to beging the Solstice event, looked the tasks to do for the armour, and had a look at bounties... and just couldn't be bothered. I thought I'd actually want to play, but... maybe I don't. Like, ever again. I think I'm just not interested any more. The current state of the game just seems like so much busy work, and I don't have complete faith that Forsaken will make things better.

It might have to do with the gameplay involving nothing but moving from point A to B, shooting aliens, scanning things, and fighting damage sponge enemies with little other variety.

Still... I've been enjoying it so far. Definitely fun when played with friends.

Well I'm enjoying Destiny 2 but it's not exactly great either.

It took me a bit to realize it's another "You can leave the Hinterlands you know." Otherwise, I was wondering what I had to do next in the Dead Zone.

Was considering the Solstice armour. I think the grind has got me. Most of the events seem geared (heh) for the Uber elite players, those people who can platform on spedrun levels of intensity. People like me... well it just feels kind of exclusionary. Yeah we get a big ol expansion, but a lot of the cool content seems locked behind gates that their design doesn't seem to be able to cater for (Even clans / guilds are still reliant on far too much external organisation.)

I'll jump back in in a bit. But replaying Darksiders 2 and SPAZ 2 right now so eeeeh.

For what it's worth, only the Masterwork versions require extreme coordination and a Clan. You can at least get the level 400 versions fairly easily, with the side effect that it'll skew item drops so you can power up your favorite gear to max before Forsaken hits.

Speaking of, that has honestly been one of my major issues with Season 3; between the Faction Rallies and Solstice Armor, I realize I spend very little time sporting my favorite outfits...

As daft as that sounds, I understand :D

I don't mind kinda repetitive gameplay, I think it's just the sheer amount of time it takes to get anything done in this game now. Not that that used to bother me either, but for some reason now, I can no longer be bothered.

I'm guessing Bungie thinks it has the playerbase hooked if they were willing to beat the campaign and main DLC story missions, along with some of the side content. Because prior to that, the game absolutely showers players in loot and continuous upgrades with a sense of rapid progression; even a couple dozen hours after attempting to grind the higher level content such as Nightfall Strikes and eventually gearing up for the Raid, I was still unlocking new things on the side while trying to go for the weekly milestones.

It actually takes awhile before the tediousness starts to set in (although as I've said earlier, the Infinite Forest got repetitive REALLY fast). And when it does, it's arguably due to the influx of higher level gear turning into a crawl - at that point, you'll probably have to start grinding nothing but Heroic missions and Raids if you want anything new.

And the missions are all very basic variations. As a brainless pickup and play game it's fine (Heck most multiplayer PVP shooters RUN on that very repetition)

But because there's story tacked on it gets a bit dull. Plus the missions become a case of surviving waves of enemies. No real puzzle solving, no real challenge beyond being able to jink and shoot.

And I can't quite pinpoint why the Strikes aren't as fun this time round.

Also I miss the moon. I liked the moon.

Odd, I liked the Strikes more this time around, they have more character and feel less like another re-hash of previously traveled areas, along with having more scripted events to mix things up. Some of the better examples being the Nessus Strike and the Pyramidion Strike on Io.

As long as they put actual work into the Forsaken strikes and don't make them out of story missions again.

Yeah, that sucked about Warmind DLC. Both Strikes were literally re-hashed singleplayer missions, and the Worm God went down like a punk. Seriously, a SINGLE GUARDIAN can take them out?! I thought those monstrosities were supposed to be nigh-unstoppable unless you had an army with you!

Ya know I really like the lore & general art design of the game. It’s all stellar really, especially the guns & armor.

Shame the gameplay can’t use it to its full potential.

True that. If there's one thing that Bungie is amazing at, it's realizing their concept art into the game. The scenery created for each planet in D2 looks amazing, with Io taking the cake for it's surreal ancient-space-fantasy world look.

They're in a bit of a rock and a hard place with the foes in the lore. Bit like Bioware and the Reapers - they let their writers go nuts with sci-fi and eldritch horror...

And then along came one of the designers who basically went "Yeah... Imma gonna shoot it."

They should really link the game world and the background lore back. Some sort of direct reference to these things being Akhamara (if they ARE) - which were hunted down by guardians.

Or resist the urge to have your villains / characters taken up to 9000 in your writing as otherwise it WILL feel underwhelming or weird. I love the strange Sword Logic type lore building (It tied in well to how you have to kill Oryx) but it needs to be a bit consistent and visible.

I also liked Strikes more this time around... in the base game (except for how they're only available as a random playlist unlocked halfway through the campaign when at least some of them take place after the Red War). Osiris and Warmind Strikes were deeply lazy, as has been mentioned with just being reheated story missions.

I think I might actually really finally be done with Destiny.

Oh, and +1 (again, I'm sure it's been mentioned before, and recently) about the lore being incredible but almost never reflected in gameplay.

Edited by artfulscruff on Aug 6th 2018 at 10:31:24 AM

I think one issue for me is, while I like Destiny 2's story and tone way more than the first, there's also the issue that D1 feels like it blew through the most compelling antagonists right away.

Ghaul feels more like a Starter Villain, in that he's relatively a Badass Normal who's victory against a Heroes Unlimited of godslayers feels outright bizarre given what you took on in the first game (Zavala even lampshades it in one dialogue variation of The Inverted Spire). Forsaken also seems to have a relatively "low-tier" antagonist, while the big players in the backstory are relegated to short DLC chapters.

Still, it's honestly one of my favorite PC titles right now since I like the gunplay, and the Pv P has a low enough skill entry level that I can usually get some kills in without feeling like I'm dragging the whole team down. Lack of anyone really using the chat functions is also a plus there.

Saw a breakdown on Kotaku of all the things you need to do to get the armour.

Holy. Hell. That is a LOT of challenges. To basically get bragging rights armour that will get outclassed as soon as Forsaken drops.

Yeah it's to encourage players to reinvest time etc, but it's REAL grind. Article points out the weirdness - how this is for the players who log in EVERY DAY. So it's good long time fans are rewarded. Hopefully Forsaken isn't just challenges for twitch-fans and grind obsessives.

I'd like some more story folded in... cos that lore is SWEET.

And Ghaul I really liked. Nice to give the enemies a voice, a motivation. Rather than just mobile hitboxes that roar.