Destiny 2: Forsaken review: Hallelujah, the back of Destiny

When destiny was released at the end of 2014, expectations were high. The "looter shooter" genre has proven to be a strength after the success of Gearbox Software Borderlands and Borderlands 2, and developer Bungie – whose unparalleled pedigree of shooting game and inventive construction of the world – had signed a ten-year contract with publisher Activision to create a deep universe for the franchise. The first FPS / ARPG "shared world" mashup was about to become a real "thing".

We all know what happened. While destiny It was praised for its clean gameplay and cool setting, it quickly became a content-free game shell, strung on the skeleton of a puzzling and half-muffled story. The first two DLC of the game fall, The dark below and wolf house, did little to convince anyone who was not already a fan (even in those dark days, there were fans).

The king caught the expansion, released a year later, has changed everything. Suddenly, the game had a coherent and well-produced story. Whole game systems were redesigned and rebalanced, and there was now a lot of content to go through. At the time of the last expansion of the game, Iron climb, released at the end of 2016, destiny was generally considered by fans as a fulfillment of this 2014 promise.

So when the output of Destiny 2 By the end of 2017, it was not unreasonable to expect Bungie to have learned some lessons along the way and that Destiny 2 build on the solid foundation of the final game. The sequel has made a good first impression – critics (including us) praised the game for its improved storyline, improved content and quality features. life (like a map). But as the committed players reached the loot of the final game, a series of utterly disconcerting design decisions proved to be disruptive factors for long-term play.

Bungie, it seems, thought that "sequel" meant "reliving the entire life cycle of the first game" – launching a ultimately disappointing game followed by two expansions largely Destiny 2, Curse of Osiris and Warm), then save the whole debacle with a big expansion a year. The remaining question: would Abandoned, Destiny 2great expansion of the second year, either Games King catch?

Your tenth best devils

The change is good, of course. But the changes Bungie made to his winning formula Destiny 2 It does not make sense. It was not a question of veterans opposed to change who dreamed of the good old days; Destiny 2 had undeniably lost what magic kept destiny fans around for hundreds, even thousands of hours. This magic, it turns out, can be attributed to a list of destiny features that have been removed from the suite for apparently no good reason. Among the main changes made to the guns of the game.

Instead of the primary / secondary / heavy weapon slots seen in the first part, Destiny 2 gave a much more restrictive configuration, which meant that you had two main locations and one location for everything else, greatly limiting the variety of usable weapon loads. Do you like sniping or shotgunning but do you want to carry a rocket launcher to burn bosses like you did in the first game? No, sorry, not in Destiny 2.

With Abandoned (or, more specifically, a free update available for all Destiny 2 players a week before AbandonedThe launch), Bungie decided to repair the weapon slot system by making it even more flexible than the first destinySystem Not only can you swing a wider variety of different loads again, but as weapon types are no longer locked to specific locations, you can do crazy things like running three snipers if you like it . It's amazing how this seemingly simple solution has improved my enjoyment of the game.

But maybe even stranger than the changes in weapon slots was the decision to make Destiny 2The guns fall with static rollers. Whenever a Better Devils hand gun fell into vanilla Destiny 2it was exactly the same weapon. This meant that each duplicate loot token that you got was not only boring and disappointing, but it was practically useless. The legendary weapons hunt for the "god roll" jackpot – a fundamental draw of the first destiny (and basically, all other existing loot-based games) had disappeared. It was a problem that the director of the game, Luke Smith, had recognized even before the game's release.

"How can my second, third and tenth hand of Better Devils be interesting?" He asked, "it's a question we should ask and answer as quickly as possible." year, "and the solution was to" remove this stupid idea and return to the Destiny 1 system ". The rolls of random benefits came back, and unlike vanilla Destiny 2Ridiculous limit of a main advantage by firearm, Abandoned Firearms have two main advantages. Again, this opens the door to interesting and changing combinations (Kill Clip / Outlaw, I'll meet you soon).

The end of the game is back and the reaction of the destiny faithful – a reaction that I share wholeheartedly – is "thank God"There is nothing wrong with a good game based on a story, but no one destiny knock for the 300th time because they want to re-examine the narrative beats. We replay perverse games ad nauseam because they are slot machines that generate exciting toys for us to experiment and play. Booty Destiny 2 at liberation was boring. It's exciting again.

"Masterworking", a system by which you can improve your equipment by investing resources, has changed since its initial appearance to provide better benefits at the cost of increased investment. The mods of arms and armors have been completely reworked to provide more interesting effects. The shield rollers are back. What all this means is that you can now have honest "builds" with God Destiny 2, something I would not have said before Abandoned & # 39;s release. This does not even mean that each subclass has got a new Super skill and skill tree (making it three per class) and that all that I've tried so far has been awesome. (If you have a hunter, do yourself a favor and take the path of a thousand cuts first.)

The grind (again, a good thing) extends to the rise of power level at the end of the game. There are now more ways to gain "powerful" improvements, introduced by two weekly resets (a normal weekly reset and a "daily" reset that happens every four days – it's … complicated) . But the race to the high power level of the expansion of 600 will take time to materialize. So, you always make progress, but you will not get the maximum level in a week.

Bold Gambit

I am not really a player against a player, but I am familiar with the Crucible players' complaints. Destiny 2PvP modes at the output. The general feeling was that the Crucible had lost its quick and nervous spark in favor of an idling slog, balanced at fault. The size of the teams was increased and the long kill time that led to a meta "teamshot" was dropped to bring head-to-head duels. Combined with generally faster movement and ability regeneration, PvPers seem satisfied with the changes.

More interesting for players bored by standard PvP modes, however, is AbandonedThe new Gambit activity "competitive co-op". Gambit is a competitive mode where two teams of four players compete to kill the NPC's enemies on two separate cards. Defeated foes drop patterns of light that players try to collect and store on a central console. Bank 75 motes to call a giant and sturdy boss on your card; kill the boss to win.

It sounds simple, but the brilliance of the mode is in the details, which opens up a multitude of strategic decisions to teams to juggle. When an individual player banks a number of moves, a "blocking" enemy will be sent to the other team's card, effectively closing his or her game console until the monster is defeated. The more you accumulate at a time, the bigger the blocker. If you die, you lose all your motives.

When a team accumulates enough motes (25 and 50), a portal opens and a player can jump on the card of the other team to wreak havoc. Timing is essential here: as you can see the number of players cashed and not banked, both teams need to go through the portal while their team has a lot to lose. When a team invokes the boss, the portal opens frequently, giving the opposing team a chance to block the win, as players killed during the boss phase heal the boss.

Gambit is easy to take into account, but rich in tactical considerations, and it is not uncommon to see a team make a comeback after a difficult start. Of course, coordinated firearms have a definite advantage over teams of soloists, so a stand-alone queue would work wonders. Overall, Gambit is inventive, fun and a great addition to the game.