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Blog entry by Freddy Selph

Review: Destiny 2: Forsaken

Review: Destiny 2: Forsaken

Destiny campaigns have always been mind-numbing thanks to heavy-handed writing and mission design that overly relies on mundane busywork. The stories nearly always end up being vague, open-ended and unsatisfying. Forsaken changed that by making the story more personal and finding new and engaging ways to push that narrative forward. Shadowkeep, on the other hand, is content with regressing all that hard work. Aside from strong opening and closing missions, Shadowkeep barely delivers any meaningful revelations or character development. You, Eris Morn and the remainder of the Vanguard remain blank slates with surface-level characterizations. With the most emotive member of the cast, Cayde-6, dead, Destiny desperately needs NPCs with some personality. Unfortunately, that isn't found anywhere in Shadowkeep.

While players don’t yet have a clear picture of how deep Halo Infinite is going to go down the Destiny road, it’s obvious that they will need to introduce activities that keep players engaged outside of just PvP and re-runs of the story missions. 343 Industries should absolutely be looking to satisfy their PvE-focused audience with challenging, repeatable, and rewarding endgame activities that respect the player’s time and provide a meaningful loop for players to engage

Destiny 2 has been on a more or less upward trend since then. The game’s been getting better and players have more ways to enjoy their time in the game now than ever before. This isn’t to say that there haven’t been problems of course. Bungie has put a lot of effort into delivering continuous, seasonal content since the launch of Forsaken, and that content has run the gamut from bad to actually pretty good. Perhaps "bad" is actually too strong of a word to use regarding any of this content. Instead, it’s probably better to say that roguelike activity destiny 22’s seasonal offerings were underwhelming at worst.

In addition to the new dungeon, Bungie also upped the rewards on their punishingly difficult Grandmaster Nightfall Ordeals. Players who get to the end of these mega-challenge missions in Destiny 2 are guaranteed to earn Ascendant Shards, the most coveted currency in the game. Bungie has shown that they want to encourage players to challenge themselves and are finally handing out the loot to justify the eff

Crucible remains mostly intact outside of quality-of-life improvements. Bringing the player count back up to 6v6 was the right move and the lower time-to-kill vastly improves the experience. The significant multiplayer addition in Forsaken lies with Gambit, a new mode that blends PvE and PvP elements. The 4v4 mode tasks players with killing AI-controlled enemies and collecting and banking motes of light. After accumulating 75 motes, a Primeval enemy appears and the first team to defeat their Primeval wins. Of course, it’s not that simple thanks to the PvP elements. Players can spend motes to summon Blockers on the enemy’s map. Collect enough motes and a player can invade the enemy’s map for a short period.

What shines are the two new locations players visit throughout the journey. The Tangled Shore presents as a lawless chunk of rocks held together by anchors. The area presents plenty of variety with Skorn, Fallen and Cabal vying for dominance. As a playground to wander about and complete bounties, the Tangled Shore provides more exciting encounters than the majority of Destiny 2’s worlds. More impressive is the Dreaming City, the ultimate end-game location built for Guardians looking for a real challenge. Filled with powerful enemies, bounties and activities, the Dreaming City aims to prepare players for the upcoming raid, The Last Wish.

Izanagi’s Burden is a bit of a niche pick, but it’s so unique in what it does that it’s hard to recommend anything else that fits the job. What sets Izanagi’s Burden apart from the rest is that it can hold onto an absurd amount of burst damage, that can be unleashed whenever desi

Clocking in at four-to-five hours, Shadowkeep's campaign generally overstays its welcome despite such a short completion time. The campaign doesn't offer anything interesting in the way of revelations or mission design. Instead, it spends most of its length tasking players with mindless busywork. After that, it ends on an interesting yet unsatisfying cliffhanger that likely won't be addressed until the inevitable Destiny 3. The campaign never approaches the awful Dark Below or Curse of Osiris , but it's a severe drop in quality from Forsaken.

Moreover, Sniper Rifles come in a wide range of varieties – from Kinetic variants to more specialized Energy and Power types. Players who want to add a degree of flair to their playing experience can add a Sniper Rifle to their Guardian's arsenal. However, which ones are the b

The following months also weren’t kind to Destiny 2 and its fans. First, fans starved for meaningful content wound up being sorely disappointed with Curse of Osiris thanks to lackluster rewards and the reality of what the "Infinite Forest" actually was: a technologically-impressive loading zone. It sounded cool on paper and was a technological achievement on the part of Bungie, but it unfortunately didn’t amount to much in terms of gameplay.

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