Destiny 2 Should Be More Like Destiny 1.5: The Pros & Cons

Des­tiny 2 has some great changes going for it and its sto­ry was­n’t an entire let down, but was it real­ly enough to war­rant that sequel num­ber? Tak­ing a look at some of the basic changes made to Des­tiny only make it seem like a slight upgrade.

Pros

1. Fast Trav­el

The fast trav­el sys­tem is a much need addi­tion in Des­tiny 2, as get­ting around can be a real pain. This should have been in the orig­i­nal Des­tiny, since it is a qual­i­ty of life improve­ment. Although, this is not a large enough of an adjust­ment to bol­ster a com­plete title change.

The rea­son for this not being includ­ed into the orig­i­nal Des­tiny is a) the maps were actu­al­ly small­er than that of Des­tiny 2 and would not ben­e­fit from a fast trav­el sys­tem b) since they were still appeal­ing to play­ers on the PS3 at the time, maybe Bungie could not imple­ment the sys­tem to the lat­er con­sole, leav­ing that con­sole behind, which they would­n’t do.

2. Grab­bing Onto Ledges

Anoth­er qual­i­ty of life addi­tion that should have been added to Des­tiny, but some­how had to wait until the sequel. A major­i­ty of peo­ple would agree that being able to grab the ledge when you are hug­ging it, is an amaz­ing (yet small) action that has prob­a­bly saved your life. Some­times you just mis­jump, or the boun­cy-house physics that is Des­tiny just sweeps you away. Grab­bing a ledge can real­ly help, but it’s such a small addi­tion it should­n’t be con­sid­ered a huge step forward.

3. Pub­lic Events are Actu­al­ly Worth Your Time

Yet again, anoth­er qual­i­ty of life improve­ment they could have made to Des­tiny, but chose to bring to its sequel. Events made hero­ic could have eas­i­ly been added the orig­i­nal game, mak­ing it far more playable, espe­cial­ly in its late stages. Although doing these Events is still some­what tedious, play­ers are way more like­ly to com­plete them if they know there is a chance at bet­ter rewards.

The new fast trav­el sys­tem also fall into place with the Pub­lic Events, as it makes it a lot eas­i­er to get to a upcom­ing Event with­out hav­ing to dri­ve your Spar­row to Hell and back. I’ve even tak­en the time to go the obscure Events, that don’t have a direct fast trav­el, and noticed that peo­ple just don’t show up to those.

4. You Get a Crazy Amount of Tokens 

Tokens is one of main dri­ving forces in this game. Farm­ing them is just as impor­tant as farm­ing Glim­mer. After spend­ing enough time farm­ing Tokens on Titan, (it’s the small­est area and you can just run between the two Pub­lic Events while doing Patrols and grab­bing chests) you could eas­i­ly rack up well over 100+ in the mat­ter of a few hours.

If you need the gear for a sec­ond (or third) char­ac­ter, these tokens are great for the start of that. If you want the Leg­endary Shards and Weapon Parts from dis­man­tling all the Armor and Weapons you get, even bet­ter. For the hard­core play­ers who have com­plet­ed all oth­er activ­i­ties, col­lect­ing shards and parts is real­ly all you have left.

5. Char­ac­ters Make the Game

Per­son­al­ly, I felt the sto­ry lacked a ton of any detail. Just vague ram­blings of Domi­nus Gahul and his feel­ings towards the Trav­el­er. What I did real­ly appre­ci­ate was the emo­tion you could feel from the char­ac­ters them­selves. Iko­ra, Zavala, and Cayde were extreme­ly pow­er­ful in their roles this time around. Hawthorne was anoth­er good char­ac­ter addi­tion, though they did­n’t make her too over­bear­ing, which was a good choice.

6. Pow­er­ful Engrams are a My Best Friend

Every week­ly reset Pow­er­ful Engrams pop up for play­ers to com­plete. One for the Leviathan Raid, The Night­fall Strike, Clan XP, Flash­point, and com­plet­ing a num­ber of Cru­cible match­es. Five in total. It is easy enough to fin­ish 4 out of the 5 as you don’t even need a full team to do the Night­fall. You can def­i­nite­ly, least com­plete the Clan XP, Flash­point, and Cru­cible matches.

With those three done, you will have a chance to acquire gear that is guar­an­teed to be above you cur­rent high­est Light lev­el (it also cal­cu­lates with gear that you are not cur­rent­ly wear­ing). Anoth­er life qual­i­ty change that did­n’t war­rant an entire new game.

Cons

1. Sto­ry

Regard­ing Gahul, he was a very gener­ic char­ac­ter. His goal, in its sim­plest form, was also very gener­ic. We have seen oth­er ene­my fac­tions come to take the Trav­els Light, Gahul just devel­oped a machine that could get that job done. Hav­ing to reach and defeat Gahul is an unnec­es­sar­i­ly, long, ardu­ous jour­ney, that ends with an anti­cli­mac­tic scene between Gahul and the Traveler.

In fact, some of the sto­ry mis­sions could have been cut out all togeth­er, as they’re com­plete­ly unnec­es­sary and are there just to pro­long the “sto­ry”. Also, these mis­sions were not much dif­fer­ent from orig­i­nal Des­tiny. Our loca­tions have changed, but it’s always go here, shoot this, go here. It’s nev­er any­thing remote­ly dif­fer­ent. We got to punch some Hive egg sacs… so much fun.

All of the mis­sions that required the use of a vehi­cle were WAY too long. There was no need to wan­der through a cabal min­ing tun­nels to point where I had passed by 6 or more launch­pads for respawn­ing new tanks. Most of the sto­ry mis­sions were not memorable.

2. Slow Growth on the First Character

The process to get to any sort of sig­nif­i­cant Light lev­el on your first char­ac­ter, is a real pain in ass. You have to reach base lev­el of 20, then go hand in your Tokens. Lev­el up some of your Armor and Weapons with the items you got with those Tokens. Rinse and repeat. Then grind your ass away on Pub­lic Events, Cru­cible, Strikes (if you are not too far advanced), any­thing you can to get that Light lev­el higher.

You do have the option to do Pow­er­ful Engrams, but that’s only once a week and you could end up get­ting some­thing stu­pid like a 300 Grenade Launch­er that reloads your ammo when you crouch.

3. Cru­cible Tokens are Super Annoy­ing to Get

Get­ting oth­er Tokens in Des­tiny 2 is pret­ty sim­ple. Go com­plete a pub­lic event, you get a Token. You open a chest, you get a Token. The Cru­cible is not like that. It only takes a few min­utes to com­plete most of the Pub­lic Events. A Quick­play match of Cru­cible can last 10 min­utes, where you get a sin­gu­lar Token for fin­ish­ing. If you play in a Com­pet­i­tive match, they can last 15–20 min­utes, where you still only get one Token for finishing.

4. Team Shoot­ing is Not Always a Good Idea 

With the new Cru­cible set up, you see some play­ers are run­ning in pairs. Oth­ers are just run­ning in with the full squad of four at all times. The buffer of two extra play­ers isn’t there any­more, so this can be a very haz­ardous sit­u­a­tion to get into, because of the heavy spawns.

Heavy did­n’t spawn as fre­quent­ly in Des­tiny, only about every 3 min­utes. In Des­tiny 2, Heavy ammo spawns around every minute and a half. That’s a lot of rock­et launch­ers. When peo­ple bunch up, because they have to team shoot, of course rock­et launch­ers are going to be the “go to” for every Cru­cible play­er out there. It’s just log­i­cal. Hey Bungie! Maybe low­er the damn spawn rate and pro­hib­it the use of rock­et launch­ers in Com­pet­i­tive altogether.

Supers are also a huge prob­lem, as the Titan and Hunter have, yet again, come away with some of the most over­pow­ered supers in the Cru­cible. I can’t take Des­tiny 2’s “Com­pet­i­tive” seri­ous­ly when the word “bal­ance” does­n’t exist in the mind of any­one work­ing over at Bungie.

5. Shaders 

Shaders are prob­a­bly one of the most annoy­ing items in this game. You can’t equip Leg­endary ones to your gear unless you spend some absurd amount of Glim­mer, espe­cial­ly for Ships. You can’t real­ly get any good Leg­endary shaders unless you pur­chase them from Tess with Sil­ver­dust (which is anoth­er form of her cur­ren­cy) or by get­ting them from a Bright Engram. The whole shad­er busi­ness is con­vo­lut­ed and Bungie is just try­ing real­ly hard to keep you on and play Des­tiny 2.

6. There Isn’t Much to Do At the End 

Once you reach a decent Light lev­el and can run the Raid and Night­fall reg­u­lar­ly, you don’t real­ly have a whole lot to do. It comes down to get­ting on to grab­bing your Pow­er­ful Engrams for the week, pur­chas­ing any­thing you might want from Xur, and if the Fac­tions are back, maybe doing some Pub­lic Events or those.

There is a huge step back­wards in end-game activ­i­ties when being com­pared to Des­tiny. In Des­tiny, at least you had high­er lev­el Strikes you could run, dai­ly boun­ties to do, you could go back to sto­ry mis­sions a do them on hard­er dif­fi­cul­ty. There was actu­al­ly some­thing to do.

7. No Choice in the Crucible

In the orig­i­nal Des­tiny you could make the choice on what kind of game modes you want­ed to play. Des­tiny 2 does not allow such an option. You always get thrown into a mashup of every game mode they have avail­able. This goes for Quick­play and Com­pet­i­tive. You could end up play­ing 3 rounds of Suprema­cy in a row, fol­lowed by 3 rounds of Con­trol in Quickplay.

Garbage plates are not for every­one, as some play­ers are just not strong in one type of mode ver­sus anoth­er. Some­one might be bet­ter at Con­trol, but not so good at Suprema­cy because pick­ing up tags is not some­thing they think about.

8. Can’t Pur­chase Emblems/Bonds/Marks/Cloaks

Hon­est­ly, this prob­a­bly irri­tates me the most. My hunter has been stuck with the same ugly Cloak since she got her first Leg­endary Cloak. I have wast­ed so many farm­ing hours to get tokens in attempt to acquire anoth­er one… and nothing.

It would be eas­i­er if like in Des­tiny our Van­guards sold items that were under lev­el and slight­ly expen­sive. I would pur­chase a Cloak in a heart­beat. Fac­tions used to sell Cloaks, Bonds, and Marks, but now Fac­tions might only be a month­ly event and you can’t pur­chase items from them. I would also pur­chase a Titan Mark, because my Titan looks like she’s wear­ing ass­less chaps. I would glad­ly infuse these pieces and have to spend extra time on their game, but I can’t.

The same goes for Emblems. I miss the days of the old Tow­er where I could take a stroll down to Eva Lev­ante and maybe catch an Emblem that was unique, or did­n’t show up often. [spoil­er] It’s also too bad we no longer have the Speaker…or so it looks like.[/spoiler]

9. Glim­mer Farm­ing is Real

Whether you farm for it in the wilds of the four des­ti­na­tions of Des­tiny 2 or in the Cru­cible, you will even­tu­al­ly have to farm for Glim­mer. This is espe­cial­ly true if you are tack­ling all three char­ac­ters at once. Mods, infu­sion, and shaders are among some of the more com­mon items you will spend Glim­mer on. You can see an entire list of items you can spend Glim­mer on, here.

All of that can add up quite quick­ly and is extreme­ly cost­ly. Yet again, it’s just Bungie’s way of keep­ing you play­ing their game longer. They know it’s the only way to progress and they prob­a­bly won’t adjust it.

10. The Clan Sys­tem is Rigged 

If you are not a huge clan you won’t have the capa­bil­i­ty to reach the max­i­mum lim­it every week, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to rank up and earn extra rewards. Clans with with larg­er num­bers can reach that lim­it and do rank up faster, earn­ing their rewards easier.

Not say­ing that’s a bad thing, but small­er clans should­n’t have to jeop­ar­dize them­selves because they feel the need to add new mem­bers. Some­times peo­ple act a cer­tain way to gain entrance to a group and then make that group look real­ly bad, just because they can. There has to be a way that small­er clans can gain a small­er amount of XP each week, but not enough that it does­n’t makes the larg­er clans feel like they got ripped off.

11. Tess is Real Evil

Tess Everis is the rea­son I hate this game. Her “stock” con­sist of items that you can’t get any­where else, like Leg­endary Shaders, Armor, Leg­endary and Exot­ic Spar­rows (and Ships). It’s real­ly a shame micro­trans­ac­tions have root­ed their way deep into this game.

Not only can her micro­trans­ac­tions actu­al­ly affect how well I do in Des­tiny 2, but the lines for her voiceover are excru­ci­at­ing to lis­ten to. I dread hav­ing a Bright Engram, because I might have to hear about her attempt­ing to fight the Red Legion.

In the end, it’s real­ly up to the play­ers how you feel about it. From where I’m stand­ing, Bungie took a few too many steps back­wards then for­wards and I was hop­ing Des­tiny 2 would have been a bet­ter game than it is. See­ing how this game does­n’t need to appeal to the old­er con­sole, the expec­ta­tions were high. See­ing it at E3 also blew my mind, mak­ing mat­ters worse as I fig­ured this was going to be the game to end all games for the year. Des­tiny 2 has prob­lems, but if Bungie lis­tens to right play­ers and makes mean­ing­ful changes, it could bring me back.