Destiny 2

The short version of any Destiny 2 review is this: If you liked Destiny, you’ll like Destiny 2. If not, you probably won’t. Most of the changes are quality of life improvements, leaving the whole thing feeling much more like an expansion than a sequel.

 The one area that’s seen a lot of attention - both from the devs and from press coverage - is the addition of a story, and it’s the story I want to talk about here.

 Destiny set a low bar for game narrative, thanks to most of it famously being hacked out 9 months before launch. To be honest, I’m not sure Destiny 2 has better writing, as much as there’s just a lot more of it; there’s still a lot of cliche and a dearth of subtext (everyone either says exactly what they mean or makes a joke), but the thing that bugged me most about it was the lack of cost.

 Spoilers follow.

Destiny 2’s campaign pretends that it’s a game about loss. The Guardians lose their connection to the Traveller, their powers along with it, and humanity loses the Last City, and the game tells you that this is A Terrible Thing. It never really rings true, though; we never saw more of the City than the Guardians’ ivory Tower - we never walked its streets, met its people, or had any connection with it beyond a skybox.

The loss of powers never has much of a sting, either, not least because about 80% of being a Guardian involves just being able to shoot, and the game gives you a gun 20 minutes after taking everything away; but you get your powers back, too, after a mission and a half, in an overly-triumphant (and overly-populated) encounter with the Fallen and a rapidly-charging Super.

From there on out, it’s just Destiny again; Fallen, Hive, Cabal, Vex - even Taken - line up for their turn in your gun sights, with little to no variation from last time around. You collect the Vanguard from their moping spots for an eventual assault to reclaim the City, which the game takes great pains to remind you is a desperate, last-ditch, borderline-suicidal throw of the dice to liberate the Traveller and defeat the Red Legion - and because this is Destiny, where failure is anathema, you succeed.

 At everything.

 And there is no cost.


 None of the Vanguard are lost; even new, non-superhero ally Hawthorne makes it through. The city is reclaimed; nobody dies. In fact, player, you are so supremely victorious that the Traveller itself wakes up to strike the final blow against main villain Ghaul itself.

Then the game ends, and everything is better - better, even than it was before this whole thing started. You get a fancy new Tower; all the same old NPCs are back, even engram-bastard Rahool; and Zavala tells us that Humanity is entering a new Golden Age.

 But nothing has been lost. There has been no cost to the victory, no sacrifice. And in a game that’s supposed to be about loss, that just left the victory feeling hollow, somehow, unearned.

 Still, though, gotta get that loot.