GRcade

What is Destiny?

Destiny was Bungie's follow-up to Halo, a grand space opera FPS that would seamlessly meld single and multi-player experiences into one epic sci-fi universe. Toting a story to be held alongside cultural markers like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, Destiny was to be Bungie's lasting legacy, an endless game that would enrapture audiences for years to come. So confident were they in the pitch, Activision shelled out $500 million and created an unheard of 10 year release schedule.

The stage was set for gaming's new billion dollar franchise...



Really?

No.



The game Bungie released turned out to be...not what was promised. The singleplayer campaign, although stacked with their trademark best-in-class gunplay, was little more than a glorified tutorial with a story that was little more than a collection of random missions linked by a threadbare plot. The online side had little to no endgame, one raid essentially, with most activities being repeats of previous content. As it turns out, development on the project was hideous, and many Bungie stalwarts, including Halo lore-chief Joe Staten and musical genius Marty O'Donnell, abandoned the company as the troubled production neared release.

https://kotaku.com/the-messy-true-story ... 1737556731

Today that would mean consignment to history quicker than Anthem or Avengers, but 2014 was a different time and the game was allowed to survive and, eventually, thrive.

But Destiny 2 is good...right?

Well...now it is yeah. Amazingly vanilla D2 launched in pretty much the same state as D1: boring, barely comprehensible campaign, mechanics that were changed just for the hell of it and it removed/rolled back a lot of the changes that had saved D1. And there was almost no endgame again. Similarly though Bungie beat their worst enemies, themselves, and after 3 large expansions the game is probably in the best place it's ever been.

Beyond Light



BL launched on October 10 2020 and is the third full expansion for Destiny 2, following Forsaken and Shadowkeep. Coming in somewhere between those two in terms of size, it introduced a new planet, Europa, an old zone from D1, the Cosmodrome and, most controversially, saw the removal of a whole bunch of D2 vanilla content, and content sold in two mini-expansions Curse of Osiris and Warmind. Whether this was a valid tactic to reduce the game's increasingly humongous install size or a cynical ploy to rob Gamers of their money is up in the air.

How do I get on this train?

Good news: The core Destiny 2 experience is now Free to Play.

https://www.bungie.net/7/en/Destiny/NewLight

The New Light edition contains the base game, which is now a lot smaller given the removal of the original and mini-expansion campaigns, and allows you to jump in, do the starter quest (which is actually really good) and get your first taste of that sweet Destiny gameplay loop.

If you want to play full-fat Destiny you can purchase Beyond Light itself which gives you access to all the brand spanking new content and the upgrade pack of Forsaken and Shadowkeep which contains...I'll be honest I'm not sure. The Forsaken campaign was also removed, but the Shadowkeep one remains in game. But at least you know you'll have everything?!

OR you can just play through Game Pass, where everything, including Beyond Light, is free on Xbox or everything BUT Beyond Light is free on PC.

It's still very confusing.

Who's playing?

Tafdolphin: Tafdolphin (Steam)

[LIST GOES HERE]

twitter.com/Nibellion/status/846415301898067968

Let's hope this one has a story that doesn't force me to go to a website to read up on.

Brerlappin wrote:Give me a PC version and make the game not a slog of replaying the same few missions over and over and over again and I'll be up for it

That's what loot based games are.

That's like telling a platformer not to have jumping.

Brerlappin wrote:

Fade wrote:

Brerlappin wrote:Give me a PC version and make the game not a slog of replaying the same few missions over and over and over again and I'll be up for it

That's what loot based games are.

That's like telling a platformer not to have jumping.

Really because borderlands was a loot based game and it had more than a handful of missions repeated ad nauseum

If you wanted to get better loot aftet level capping, no it didn't.

Which is no different to Destiny.

EDIT: Also, to elaborate, in Borderlands, if you want to get certain legendaries you had to kill the SAME boss upwards of 20 times, over and over and over.

In destiny you could just save up coins by doing end game content, or roll the dice on ANY boss. Much better system.

twitter.com/DestinyTheGame/status/846798919786913794

Full trailer at 6pm on Thursday.

Love the vibe already

twitter.com/theDestinyBlog/status/846803501330108416

I do like the appearance of the Destiny universe; it always looks slick and the "old and new" styling combination is great.

Bring it on, Destiny 2.

I wonder if they'll allow 6 man fireteams in the story missions as we have with the raids?
At least they should allow 6 player teams for whatever versions of the horde mode stuff they have.
I think they should do a horde mode where we can also get turrets to place (maybe you have to pick up an item to activate the turret and can place it where you like) and vehicles to use.

Wouldn't surprise me if it was three-man teams in the first game because of technical limitations of the PS3/360.

If that poster that got leaked is reak I would have thought they would stick with 3.

It would be good though, depending on how many players, the number of enemies scaled with them.

I hope they add matchmaking or a better way of interacting with players to get a raid started. Didn't Diablo 3 have a system that rewarded higher level players for helping lower level people?

+1 for six player mode across everything. I've mentioned it on here before; it'd vastly improve the game for me.

Hime wrote:I hope they add matchmaking or a better way of interacting with players to get a raid started.

Definitely needs this. Raids were basically inaccessible to me and had they been, I would have sunk a lot more time into this. Stupid not having any friends. /

Death's Head wrote:

Hime wrote:I hope they add matchmaking or a better way of interacting with players to get a raid started.

Definitely needs this. Raids were basically inaccessible to me and had they been, I would have sunk a lot more time into this. Stupid not having any friends. /

If you're on PS you're more than welcome to join our nice little group. We have enough for multiple raid runs at the same time if needed and it's a nice and relaxed group.

Peter Crisp wrote:If you're on PS you're more than welcome to join our nice little group. We have enough for multiple raid runs at the same time if needed and it's a nice and relaxed group.

I did try it once but I think there was a problem in that no one could hear me. The other problem is that no one typically plays when I'm around (weekdays typically I only play between 6-8pm and at weekends normally late afternoon/early evening but very rarely late).

I will still buy this as I did get a lot of enjoyment from the main missions and the co-op missions with randoms.

Death's Head wrote:

Peter Crisp wrote:If you're on PS you're more than welcome to join our nice little group. We have enough for multiple raid runs at the same time if needed and it's a nice and relaxed group.

I did try it once but I think there was a problem in that no one could hear me. The other problem is that no one typically plays when I'm around (weekdays typically I only play between 6-8pm and at weekends normally late afternoon/early evening but very rarely late).

I will still buy this as I did get a lot of enjoyment from the main missions and the co-op missions with randoms.

Pretty much the same for me. There isn't any reason for them not to include it, people who think it doesn't work without being able to speak to other players can just ignore it.

Hoping we see a good slab of game play tomorrow to give us a feel of how Destiny 2 is going to play in comparison to 1.