As for the Crucible, it seems to be an uneven blending of old and new, and like any good shooter, will probably need a few matches under its belt to see where it stands. I was grouped with teams that either know shooters or know Destiny the first few matches tackled. My team dominating match after match, while hapless players threw themselves at our Guardian-trained reflexes. It almost didn’t seem fair, probably because the other teams weren’t making use of their powers and treating the Crucible like any other shooter. Jumping in on day two, however, was completely different. Being on the receiving end of the stick was just not fun. My team wandering off to play “team deathmatch” instead of the actual objective. At this point, it’s confusing when other players don’t know mechanics. Most games use the same objective-based gameplay with personal slight variations, but to see my team run to the meat grinder, completely away from the very thing we were supposed to be protecting, was disheartening. I had to quit while I was ahead. Not because the other players were bad, they just didn’t seem to care.
The mission takes you through a bunch of rooms and corridors of the Tower you’ve never seen before, teams you up with Cayde, Savala, and Ikora for small objectives of the mission, and has a few mini bosses that you’ll fight your way through before taking on a sort of final boss. There’s also a point where Amanda Holiday takes you up to a Red Legion ship to take it down. I won’t go into too much more detail, but what I can say is that it was much more fleshed out than most of the original Destiny story missions. It’s more reminiscent of a Call of Duty campaign mission in that it had other friendly characters doing things and talking to you as you go through the waves of enemies and various other objectives. Destiny just had the ghost talking you through more simplistic story missions that were repetitive and this is different and exciting because you don’t know what’s going to happen next.
[JH]: There’s two key things going on with Ghaul. One is giving him a goal and objective that he desperately wants that we as players can relate to. What do you care about? It’s your light, your progress, your powers. You care about that which the Traveler has given you. Ghaul wants that, and it’s the thing that you’re both going to fight for. The second is, when you start digging into the story, you see that he has a drive and obsession with being worthy. He doesn’t want to just take it, he wants to earn it.
Curse of Osiris does include two new strikes, but both are pulled directly from the campaign with no changes. Crucible doesn’t fare much better with only two new maps on Xbox One and PC, and three on PS4. Unfortunately, as of publication, Crucible is wholly broken thanks to the Prometheus Lens, a new trace rifle that is completely unbalanced. Bungie says they’re working on a fix, but a solution has yet to materialize nearly a week after launch.
That same week the raid dropped, I was able to pull a fireteam together for the weekend, landing epically on Leviathan’s Golden walkway towards the gates of opulence we made our way in. Having watched and read up on what to do because we didn’t feel like messing around with figuring out mechanics, the Bath House was up first. We did not succeed on getting it that first night and spent a number of hours just trying to get coordination down, eventually calling it and deciding to try again the next day. Meeting up the next night we aced it no problem, coordination was up, fatigue was gone and we were on point. Next was the all too known (by now) Pleasure Gardens. Stealth isn’t Destiny 2 Armor 3.0’s strong point and that’s all that will be said on the matter. What did cause us grief was attempting this freaking room for the next four hours while the dog (bosses) continually got more glitchy. They would cut in and out, reset their paths, see one of us even though they were facing another direction and it lead to general frustration among the whole group. We had figured out what to do but the game mechanics weren’t helping, especially when they constantly kept breaking. At this point we had already spent nine hours banging our heads against just two rooms. The fireteam called it quits for the second night and a third night seemed less hopeful.
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.