Destiny 2: Forsaken
Bungie/Activision
Gamers are a pretty picky bunch these days, and for the most part that’s understandable. Many developers out there release games that are unfinished, unpolished, or both in order to meet sometimes unrealistic deadlines. When they do that they risk releasing half-cooked games that are either panned outright, or make a bit of a splash and then fizzle away.
When Destiny 2 debuted a little over a year ago it created quite a stir. On one hand you had people who cried foul and complained that it felt incomplete—game mechanics-wise—and also had weak storytelling. On the other, you had many gamers who had fully embraced this burgeoning new franchise and understood that starting a brand new series can take some time. The latter group were willing to wait for additional content that they hoped would fill out the Destiny universe (literally) more.
Since Destiny 2’s debut, Bungie has indeed released a couple of pretty decent and included Curse of Osiris in December 2017 and Warmind in May 2018. Forsaken is their newest addition to Destiny 2—but does it offer enough to pull miffed players back into the fold as well as attract new ones?
Many folks in the gaming community were of the opinion that the original Destiny game’s storyline and writing was rather lackluster. Destiny 2 sought to rectify that by making both their new universe’s lore and narrative much more accessible as well as easier to follow. Forsaken takes this positive trend even further by revealing more about the various warring factions, alien species, main protagonists and antagonists, and mythos.
What this means is that whereas before I had to go and read up on Destiny’s fandom Wiki in order to learn more about it, now things are revealed through some pretty decent writing as well as well put-together cutscenes.
For instance when you first begin your journey into Forsaken your initial mission consists of travelling to the Prison of Elders in order to help quell a riot. Through dialogue and cinematic cutscenes you’ll eventually learn (spoiler alert) that it’s actually a prison break instead of a riot. You’ll also discover that that one of the major characters, Uldren Sov, is behind all of the shenanigans.
As far as the expansion’s content goes, Forsaken offers a few new sorts of enemies as well as a plethora of fun, exotic weapons to play with. The entire expansion can be completed in twenty or so hours, so there’s a wealth of new content on hand to wade into. I prefer taking my time and uncovering what’s underneath every nook and cranny so for me it took well over thirty hours. Okay, I’ll admit that I got killed countless times by some of Forsaken’s badass bosses so that did consume a little of my play time as well.
As with any of these types of games, there is always some sort of grinding present. However, this has now been greatly mitigated in Forsaken by a introducing a new NPC character called The Spider. If you or any of your crew are lacking in certain types of resources you can simply consult The Spider and he’ll hook you up with all kinds of goodies—for a price.
For those not in the know, Destiny 2 is both a PvE and PvP game. Thankfully, its PvE mode is very robust and features some really nice RPG elements. It can also be played via co-op with friends, and I’d argue that co-op mode is the only way to really experience the game to its potential.
Meanwhile, fans of Destiny 2’s PvP mode will be happy to find that The Crucible is still present. However, the new Gambit mode seems to be what’s drawing most the most attention. In Gambit, two teams have to compete in various arenas. A team can choose to play in their own even but can also send some of their players to battle in others. This can turn out to be a gamble (get it—Gambit?) since your team never knows how it will fare if they run into a larger team.
Raids and Strikes have also been tweaked and by the time you read this article, the Last Wish raid will have concluded and new events are now available. I’m really looking forward to all of the new events that are destined (pun intended) to arrive in the future.
Destiny 2: Forsaken’s new reworking of the game’s core gameplay is pretty subtle, but does enough to reinvigorate the game as well as make it much more accessible to newcomers. Try it out for yourself.
SCORE: 85%
Destiny 2: Forsaken features great graphics that make its first-person shooter gameplay truly shine. However, you want to have a pretty beefy gaming PC or gaming laptop in order to play it at a decent framerate. So, you may just want to invest in a decent gaming rig:
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