Destiny is somehow the best and the worst game franchise at the same time. Its highs are so incredibly high and its lows are so deeply unfathomably low. Its a franchise that took me years to finally get invested in. I was very interested in the series since before release, but all I saw was negative reveiws and dissapointment so I stayed away. I tried to break into it when The Taken King expansion released for the first game, after cries of fans all yelling "the game is great now!" but I didn't stick with the game very long.
When Destiny 2 released on PC I gave the series a shot again, I put a good amount of time into it but never stayed interested enough to play any raids or other end game content. My relationship with the game was very on and off until Bungie announced the 30th anniversary pack, which had content from Marathon and Pathways Into Darkness, two previous titles from the company which I adore. I remember I asked my best friend, a huge Destiny player, if he'd be interested in helping me actually get into the game properly so I could play whatever was included in that pack when it released. Ecstatically he agreed. With his help this time it all stuck and I finally managed to fall in love with the series.
One look at my favorite weapon loadout will tell an experienced Destiny 2 player how much I've played. God roll timelost fatebringer with a shader gained by flawlessing the Vault of Glass, a level 58 crafted glaive, and a rare raid exotic weapon people still grind for to this day. I've put my hours in, conqured some difficult content, and it shows.
I've almost exhausted near everything I want to do and acheive in Destiny 2, so last year I repurchased Destiny 1 and all of its expansions. Slowly I've made my way through every expansion's campaign and some side content. I've even completed two raids, the original Vault of Glass and Wrath of the Machine. In this experience I slowly learned that, despite how much I love it, Destiny 2 is riddled with incredible issues.
Destiny 1, its flaws aside, is an incredible experience. Its art direction is immaculate, its gameplay loop addicting, and its world full of mystery and wonder. Playing it on occasion is an absolute joy, and I'm sad I never got to experience it when it was at its peak. But perhaps thats for the best. My enjoyment of Destiny 1 is not rose-tinted and full of nastolgia this way.
As a game, it feels more cohesive and complete than its sequal. I don't have to worry about content being removed or changed, the entire package is available for me to play and enjoy. There are some hangups, such as certain weapons and armor dropping at an incredibly low level and there being zero way to raise them. (My precious Vault of Glass cloak is never going to be wearable) But aside from this the entire game is there to experience at your lesuire and most activities feel fun and rewarding to play. Something that can't be said about the sequal.
For those who don't know, massive chunks of Destiny 2's content were removed from the game, with a nebulous promise to be readded back later someday maybe. What was removed was the entirety of the original campaign, and several of the early expansions. On top of this, quarterly seasonal story content gets removed with every yearly expansion. While, yes, old gear from those seasons is available to earn in some way after the story and activities are stripped from the game, its little consolation to a player who just wants to experience the plot from something other than a youtube video.
This removal of content has made Destiny 2 absolute hell for new or returning players. Imagine reading a book but the first few chapters are gone, and random pages from what remains have been torn out. They were there once, and people have read them, and those people will gladly tell you what happened in those missing pages, but that just isn't the same now is it?
I get WHY this had to be done. Activision ordered Bungie to split Destiny up into a trilogy of games instead of being one big evolving game against their wishes. When 2 was beginning to wrap up, Bungie split from Activision. Putting 2 on lifesupport while they developed what they needed to for a third entry in the series would have bankrupt Bungie. So they removed heaps of content from 2 so they could spent the countless man-hours needed to repair the aging engine and fight god knows how much technical debt.
I get it, I really do. But why is none of the removed content available in a legacy client? Recently they announced some content, select exotic missions, will return in the upcoming season. (As of writting we are in Season of the Deep.) Which is a nice first step, and confirmation that hopefully one day everything will be back and playable. But time will tell.
Destiny 2 also suffers from an artstyle identity crisis. Much of the new armor added is overdesigned and strange. The above image is a shining example. While, yes, there are plenty of well designed and lovely armor sets available in the game, the average player just isn't going to go for that. Frequently you'll see guardians running around the tower wearing glowing, garish, ugly, edgy, and outlandish gear. While Destiny 1 needs a transmog system for players to better express themselves, its selection of only well designed armor keeps the playerbase looking like the slick space warlords that they should be.
Make no mistake, I don't mean to shame the brilliant art team at Bungie. Its more that the art direction has slowly shifted to the demands of its playerbase, a playerbase that clearly doesn't know what it wants. One look at what ideas many users in the Destiny subreddit cook up tells me that few people in the playerbase know whats good for the game. (But maybe thats just because they're all redditors. Hard to tell.) But hey, at least they keep wrongly screaming that glaives are bad weapons, which means Bungie will keep buffing them. So they're good for something at least.
God I love glaives.
Not as bad as the removal of content, but still awful, is the monetization. Paying 100 dollars a year to get the yearly expansion + season pass bundle is not all the bad, reasonable even. What irks me is the item shop. Yes I know most online games these days have a cosmetic item shop, but that doesn't mean its okay.
In Destiny 1, taking a look at a player tells a story. Their armor, their weapons, their ship, their ghost shell, their shader. With some exceptions, almost every peice of gear worn tells the story of where it came from and how they player got it. If I look at a long time player in the first title I can tell what raids and activities they have done, and I know that given the nature of the game that all that gear has a story to tell.
This is still partly true in Destiny 2, but the item shop is full of so many amazing looking armor sets and spaceships, why would most players bother to display what they've earned, when they can spend some dollars and grab that shiny armor set in the item shop. I know that I've been guilty of this, and judging by what I see in the tower, and how hard Bungie pushes the item shop, most of the rest of the playerbase is too.
Whats more frustrating is that ships and shaders and armor sets available in the item shop could easily have been rewards for challenges or thrown into raid loot tables. My first and only run of Vault of Glass in Destiny 1 gave me a lucky drop of a rare spaceship only earnable from that raid. To this day that's still on my character and is likely to never be unequipped. That ship has a memory attatched to it, seeing it in loading screens makes me smile, its just a good feeling. A random ship I spent 10 dollars or got from a lootbox on just won't do that for me, or for anybody.
So why do I still play this game then? I mean most of this is just me bitching about it. Well despite everything negative said here, I love Destiny to death. Even when it stumbles its plot and lore consistently leave me entranced and hungry for more. The moment-to-moment gameplay is so good and tightly tuned it keeps me hooked. The simple act of just shooting at an enemy feels so well made and fabulous that it feels as exciting as the first time. And thats to say nothing of all the wild abilities and fun buildcrafting.
I main the hunter class, and every single thing that class can do is incredible. Trapping enemies in stasis crystals, blinking over an enemy player's head with arc, exploding a massive group of enemies with solar, going invisible and playing fun "pranks" on alien combatants with void, or zipping around the world with magic grappling hooks with strand. All of it just feels so damn good. So good it keeps me coming back every week for more.
The clan I'm with, and the friends I play with keep things fun too. Without them I would have given up on Destiny ages ago. Destiny 2 solo is kind of a terrible time once you've beaten all of the story content in the game. So having a really great group of folks to play with weekly has been a godsend.
Perhaps one of the greatest experiences I have ever had in an FPS are the raids in Destiny 2. I'm blessed to be in a clan that doesn't want to use cheese strats and really knows what they're doing, while also are patient and friendly. (Shoutout to Facepunch clan.) Completeing the raid Last Wish without resorting to the boring cheese strat with a fireteam thats experienced and has great communcation skills is perhaps one of the most fun things I've ever done in a video game, and I'm sad the majority of the Destiny community won't get to experience such a thing.
Having such a great team to raid with has really been a highlight of my gaming career. The balancing of combat, puzzle solving, coordination, and communication that needs to be done in a Destiny raid is utterly wild compared to other co-op fps games out there. Its such a thrill! I've beaten every raid available in the game 10-15 times or more. Rookie numbers to some (Versten you need to chill lmao) but quite a lot for myself. My favorite raids are Vault of Glass and Last Wish. VoG for its gear, aethsthetics and lore, and LW for just how well designed and super fun all of its encounters are.
While I complain about how bad things can be with Destiny 2, mostly due to its disgusting live service model, I do this out of love. Its such an incredible game that deserves so much better. I'm so deeply curious to know where the game will be a bit over a year from now. By then the 10 year long plan they've had for the franchise will conclude with the now upcoming expansion, and the 10 year anniversary event they teased will have happened. Its going to be really make or break for the game at that point. I have a lot of hope for the future of this game, and with any luck that hope will pay off.