Since its inception, the development of the Destiny franchise has been a paragon of insanity. The tumultuous timeline has been a perfect, and unfortunate, collage of reboots, half measured steps towards no destination, and the deafening sound of indifference.
As of right now, Destiny 2 is in a place where player reception is at an all time low and overall quality lost in the void. The sci-fi/fantasy FPS mashup has lost millions in active players since launch, and still, thousands feverishly voice their concerns and wishes on sites like Reddit, in hopes of a better, far less abusive game.
But we’ve been here before and, sad as it may be, we’ll be here again as the next peak and golden era of Destiny collapses in on itself.
Last Friday, Bungie finally broke their silence regarding the war torn state of Destiny 2, and laid bare what we can expect from the team over the coming year.
It’s obvious that they want to appease the playerbase and instill hope through concrete plans of action, but Bungie has a history of inflationary talk, and it’s going to take a bit more than written word to win back many at this point.
Nefarious Excitation
The overall message deployed by Destiny 2’s Game Director, Christopher Barrett, is that of increased depth and expansion of existing game systems. In a word, much of it sounds the exact type of additions we need for the game.
Coming in the next few months, we have things such as an increased tier of armor (Masterworks), strike scoring and leaderboard type functionality, a total reworking of mods, and a Crucible overhaul including a ranking system.
The only problem is that, while much of this is exciting, it’s only a fleeting type of excitement for most, including myself.
Since the launch of Destiny 1, the community has faced a litany of content droughts and crushing lows, and at a certain point, talk of future revitalization only ever results in a glaze of disappointment.
In addition, a lot of the content pipeline is targeted for a Fall 2018 release, a milestone that is nearly a year away.
The depressing reality of the growth of Destiny 2 is that Bungie has little incentive to conceive meaningful content before their next large content drop, which coincidentally, will also be Fall of next year if their previous DLC release schedule is anything to go by.
I would love for Bungie to bring vigor and depth to Destiny 2 throughout the next year, I really would. But if I’m being honest with myself, I feel as though the next year will be a void acting as a bridge towards The Taken King equivalent for Destiny 2.
Sure, some of these additions may come to fruition between now and then, but is it really enough?
Does it really address the core issues surrounding the lack of satisfaction found in Destiny 2?
I had an amazing 50 or so hours in Destiny 2 with friends, but it’s frustrating to think that it will take a complete overhaul a year from now to reach even a whiff of its potential.
Lover of games, tech, nature, and strange electronic music. Shaped by Sega, PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox – platform agnostic ever since. Currently overwhelmed by choice on my Xbox Series X thanks to Game Pass.