by During the first mission of Bungie’s newest game Destiny 2 expansion, sunlight, after hijacking an enemy spaceship and causing it to self-destruct, I stumbled upon a familiar-looking hangar on my way out. With its two-level layout, with a cluster of room-filling purple ships and wall-length energy shields leading into space, it looked nothing like the Covenant hangars the Master Chief raided in one of Bungie’s earliest games: Halo: Combat Evolution.
Intentional or not, this visual double shot reminds me of that Destiny 2 is a conversation game with a long history. Aside from earlier Bungie games, sunlight it reached the end of a 20-year span Halo initiated. One sec Destiny 2 today it may be mostly unrecognizable in its polished and mechanical complexity compared to Bungie’s megahit of 2001, if you know where to look, it’s easy to see; in the level design, monsters and weapons (whose tributes went to Destiny 230th Anniversary Update), you can see layers and layers of history.
In many ways, Destiny 2 is intended for those of us who can spot the evidence of this story, who might even devote two paragraphs to it sunlight a review talking about a completely separate Bungie title. After all, it has always been a game in which one foot is stuck in the past. Deep in its menu are pages dedicated to “Moments of Triumph” and “Seals”, commemorating everything you’ve achieved in the six years since the game’s original release. Destiny 2 it constantly celebrates its history, even as it erases it elsewhere.
Majority Destiny 2moments are no longer available. Old campaigns expire as new ones appear. The experience of the game is the experience of the eternal present: a present made up of the narrative and mechanical raw matter of the recent past. sunlight is an example of this recursive trend.
The plot of the add-on dates back to the first moments of the original Destinyas we all gazed in awe at that giant white orb called the Traveler, hovering like the Damocles over the Last City of Mankind. sunlight begins to answer the question “What is The Traveler all about?” At the beginning of the campaign, he jumps into action dramatically – as far as a moon-sized orb can be – launching himself into Earth’s orbit and challenging his old enemy, the Witness. What was once an impenetrable, passive entity has now become an active participant in the course of events. While it’s still mostly a mystery, we’ve now seen the Traveler change things and transform itself.
The mechanical act of playing sunlight similarly it seems to be a combination of old and new. In addition to an arsenal of new weapons with a wide range of extras (as is the norm with every Bungie expansion), the campaign also grants players a new super ability called Strand. With Strand, players can grab in the air and, among other things, hook enemies and hit them with a satisfying explosion. In Strand’s extreme mobility and re-use of Destiny’s familiar ball-catching and dipping action, you can see the shapes and behaviors of the previous mechanic. Strand doesn’t so much reinvent as it reconfigures the way the game worked before. It also helpfully makes old content feel refreshing again, especially for players who have gone through it all before getting bored. New life has been breathed into old Strike and Gambit sessions, which can now be approached from a new aerial perspective unencumbered by gravity or, judging from how easy it is to jump off the edge, common sense.
sunlightwhere the biggest departure from Destiny’s past occurs. You can start the campaign in the heat of battle in Earth orbit, but almost immediately you’ll be transported through the solar system to planet Neptune, a brand new addition to Destiny’s locale. His city, Neomuna, which serves as sunlightThe main location is a neat future landscape decorated with colorful, cartoonish neon lights, with a synthesizer soundtrack and funny drum riffs. Its Frankenstein cyberpunk aesthetic and funky sci-fi patina inspired by comic books like Silver Surfer and Guardians of the Galaxy are a welcome addition to the Destiny 2is already a wide visual mosaic. Your main point of contact is memorably goofy: Nimbus, an 8-foot-tall non-binary humanoid dressed in a Hajime Sorayama-style chrome outfit complete with a damn code.
While Neomuna is new, the villain who threatens her, the former Cabal Emperor Calus, is quite old. Hosted version of Calusa Destiny 2first raid. I still remember struggling through those nightly sessions, trying to beat him with my original now-defunct clan: banging our heads on the seemingly impossible puzzles of the raid, Calus’ growling reptilian laughter echoing in our sleep-deprived skulls. That Calus is humiliated sunlight, and turned into a pawn of the Witness, he got rich partly because we once saw him in his prime.
But what about new players who have only passing knowledge of the game? Destiny 2extensive knowledge and history Getting into the game is relatively simple. After playing the tutorial missions introduced in the New Light update, you can go directly to the game sunlight campaign. And the movie that introduces sunlighthistory s does an admirable job of catching up with us in the right bits of history leading up to the current moment. The gameplay itself remains exciting, the clashes mostly very well designed, though unfortunately not as tense and exhilarating as some of what we saw in the previous expansion, The Witch Queen. On a purely functional and multiplayer level, that should be enough, right?
I’m not sure. At the end of the day, Destiny 2 lives and dies by its sense of history, by the dedication of its loyal player base to recognizing and recognizing that history. The power of playing recycled and reconfigured pieces from previous campaigns comes from remembering how it used to be and being able to celebrate how things have changed since then.
Considering that sunlightthe story ends with many open questions and is only the beginning of a year of narrative and gameplay material that requires an investment of time that many new players may object to, it’s hard to tell if the gameplay and graphics – as polished as they are – are enough to attract the uninitiated. After the campaign is over, are they ready to start grinding, dedicate themselves to a world that mostly ignores them, choosing instead to commemorate their “Veterans” (a title given to players who started playing six years ago)? There’s definitely something impressive about a game like this Destiny 2, which has its own history, but also one that goes back to previous franchises. However, it remains to wonder if there is any place at all for those who have no connection to the story – who approach the game as guests, witnessing only a sliver of what must be a lifetime of memories.
