The most significant aspect of Destiny 2’s campaign is that it has an actual campaign. After Destiny and Rise of Iron’s cookie-cutter missions, it’s nice to have something with more variety and substance than “bad guy over there, go kill it.” That’s not saying Destiny 2’s campaign is anything deep. Characters jump in and out of the campaign quickly as the story moves you from world-to-world. While the quick pacing keeps things moving, it never slows down enough to create any connections between the player and the world. Worst yet is the player’s Guardian who, in Destiny 2, is relegated to a silent protagonist. Ghost ends up speaking the entire time for the player and comes off as annoying. The current set up with the Ghost quickly becomes grating, and even more annoying when other characters point out your silence. This was purposefully done so that players can become invested in their Guardian, but in execution comes off as cartoonish.
[JH]: Like any good story, it’s going to live or die based off the depth and reliability of your villain. We put a lot of hours into developing Ghaul. At first, yeah, he seems like a guy who just wants to kick us in the balls and move on down the road after taking Earth.
[MW]: Well, let’s look at the Fallen. In our Age of Triumph Grimoire Cards, we’ve taken the time to advance their story and key into the current state of the faction. The Fallen have a peek at this web-site completely lose their house structure. The idea of the Kells and the different houses are gone now, and they’re just a broken people. Some of them have gathered together in the EDZ, and others are roaming the solar system. We’re able to really progress their story following the events of the previous games and expansions. Then we have the contextualized dialogue system to hint back to what you’ve done to them in the past.
For all that can be said about Curse of Osiris’ disappointing content, it can’t be denied that Mercury is a beautiful place to visit. The Vex architecture that litters the landscape is as fascinating to take in as ever, and the brief glimpses at Mercury before its transformation are astounding. If only we had more space and time to play around in these fascinating playgrounds.
Shaders, ships and sparrows, which could all be obtained as rewards in the Destiny 1 era, are tied to Destiny 2’s microtransaction system. Sure, common and rare shaders can be found be exploring the different worlds, but the most desirable shaders are all locked behind microtransactions and are now single use. It’s cool that shaders can now be individually placed on each piece of armor or weapon, but turning them into one-time consumables tied to microtransactions is terrible. Swapping shaders in and out in Destiny 1 was a fun piece of customization, but Destiny 2 strips that away.
Curse of Osiris’ plot can be beaten in two hours and is filled with so much repetition and so little exposition. Osiris, who is the character this DLC is about, only shows up in the flesh for a minute at the very end. The main villain is just an ominous robot who shows up and then is defeated through a quick-time event. To understand how lazy this story is, look no further than the ‘Deep Storage’ mission, which is just a re-purposed ‘Pyramidion’ strike. The campaign does hold one bright spot; Sagira, Osiris’ ghost. Voiced by Morena Baccarn (Firefly, Gotham), Sagira briefly becomes your companion during a large portion of the campaign and is a real delight. Charming and well-written, it’s disappointing when she does finally leave. Nolan North’s performance as Ghost has declined in quality over the years, and it would have been great if players got the option to choose who they wanted as their companion.
Dead Space 3’s compromises were a bit more subtle , but they still resulted in a not-so-minor departure for the series. Where the first two games were horror games first and shooters second, Dead Space 3 was the opposite. It traded careful resource management and situational weapons for resource crafting and all-purpose creations. Rather than a tense experience that required its players to think on the fly, players got an occasionally startling but overall leisurely romp through an undead ice planet. Once players acquired enough resources to craft a gun with both long and short range firing modes, any semblance of genuine scares and vulnerability went right out the airlock. Supposedly, Isaac isn’t even alone for most of the game thanks to his partner, Carver, appearing out of the ether during every other cutscene. Just like with Fallout 4 and Destiny 2, Dead Space 3 represented a shift in genre for the sake of more mainstream appeal. The semblance of the game its fans loved was still there, but that’s all it was: a semblance. The traits that made it unique, that attracted a fanbase in the first place, those were either severely watered down or cut out entirely in the name of attracting more casual players.