Destiny 2: Forsaken DLC Review

Destiny 2: Forsaken DLC

A REVIEW BY PALMER GAMBLE

DLC has always been a big problem with games, because they either make or break the Title or the Studio itself. While many developers insist on DLC being THE ONLY WAY of delivering more content to the players, (I’m looking at you EA) many players find the idea of adding content to a final product for the sake of making money entirely a cop out. Remember the days when the entire game came downloaded into the disc? Yea me too… buuuut those day’s are gone. Now I’m not entirely against the idea of DLC as a whole, there are a couple games where this premise works. Destiny being one of them. While this DLC comes with a hefty price tag at $39.99 the amount of time I’ve gotten playing this expansion is worth that and then some. In fact “expansion” is the perfect word for Forsaken. It expands the game into something that hardcore players have been begging Bungie to do for a while.

A SERIOUS STORY

Bungie had struggled with the main campaign of the story in both Destiny 1&2. The first installation just had a lack of focused storytelling, while the latter didn’t feel compelling enough for a sequel to begin with. However Forsaken seems to forget the shortcomings of its predecessors, bringing a darker, more compelling tone into the world of Destiny. One that should have been there in the first place. With the death of Cayde-6 in the beginning chapter, your quest for revenge is apparent. This is something the story in this series of games has always needed, a clear goal with an emotional attachment that has you hooked from the very beginning. Forsaken runs with these ideas and turns them into what feels like an epic quest in the name of a fallen friend.  

CLASS SYSTEM CHANGES

The classes flow much better than they have in the past. Now the elemental guns can include shotguns and snipers, which were restricted into the power category previously, and now the power slot includes just rocket launchers, grenade launchers, and swords. However this change isn’t something brand new, if you’ve played the original Destiny, this was the design of the original class system. This makes it so much more convenient to equip your favorite weapons that took so much time to earn and upgrade with the elusive masterwork cores.

EVERVERSE

There isn’t that aggravating, seemingly endless quest for bright dust anymore. Now that Tess gives you bits of dust for completing daily bounties, the items in the cosmetic shop aren’t as elusive and frustrating to acquire. You shouldn’t have to grind hours and hours for the bright dust to unlock ONE EMOTE. So I’m sure players are happy that Tess came to her fucking senses and gave us more opportunities for bright dust and the ornaments we love to equip and show off to our friends or strangers running around the tower.

GAMBIT

The single greatest addition to this game has to be Gambit. Two identical maps are loaded in, as you stare at the other team in the lobby. Then both teams are shot in to each other’s respective map and the match begins. Killing enemies is the main activity you’re worried about. The enemies drop motes of light, which are used to create blockers, which you send to the enemy team’s map to stall them from adding motes for their blockers. The game ends when the team kills their “Primevil” basically the boss which determines the winner. The mixture of PvP and PvE is so fluid and unique to any game before it.  Then the enemy invades, always for 30 seconds or less, with the opportunity to kill only the enemy players on the map they’re invading. The one problem with invading is Sleeper Simulant. An extremely quick charging linear fusion rifle with too much aim assist and too much damage, which has invaded the playing field more than any one player could. It’s seriously everywhere, in every game, almost every player who’s played the Warmind DLC has it because the gun isn't that difficult to obtain. That is what makes invading the part of Gambit that’s understandably frustrating. Overall the game mode is such a great addition to the franchise it only makes sense to keep it for the foreseeable future.

THE BAAAAAD STUFF

All that time you spent grinding for your year one loot, has now been rendered useless because there aren’t any new extra random rolls from this year on them. This makes all those items pointless to use because they don’t have all the new abilities and don’t come with any new gameplay mechanics.

As for the economy system. While playing this DLC with my best friend for hours upon hours it seems, there was never a point where either of us felt like we had enough planetary materials or masterwork cores to infuse our favorite lower level items with stronger items we weren’t going to use. The biggest problem is the inclusion of masterwork cores into simple infusion. When masterwork items were introduced, the cores were used to add kill counters to the weapons so players can keep track of how many PvP or PvE kills they’ve acquired while using that weapon. Makes sense, use the masterwork cores for the act of turning your weapon into a “Masterwork Weapon”, however now they’re in the way of upgrading your weapon, when they really shouldn’t be there in the first place.

Blind Well. A public event in the Dreaming City, which you can travel to after you’ve completed the Forsaken campaign and after the quest for the trinket to get inside the city is complete. The Blind Well would be an amazing event due to its relative difficulty around tier 3 and of course the Heroic version. However there really is only one point to this event, and that’s to acquire the Offering for the Oracle, which gives you one piece of the Dreaming City loot pool exclusive to that destination. If there was a loot pool for the Blind Well itself… then there would be much more incentive to playing and grinding the event. That really is what has hindered Destiny from capturing the more casual players. The harsh grind is simply too much for players new to the game, to the point where those players might not even know what to do to acquire the offering or even where to take it to turn it in for your loot.

SCORE:

As a more of an Expansion of the game rather than a couple of quests like previous DLC, plus the fact the game seems to take storytelling extremely seriously to the point of making it personal for the player to seek revenge on Cayde-6’s killer,  Destiny 2’s Forsaken gets a solid 8.1/10.

(Thank you Corn for your input you saved my ass HAHA)

Quick side note. Thank you to everyone who reads even a single paragraph of this stuff I’m making. I know it’s nerdy, but that’s where my heart’s been ever since I was a little kid playing Spyro the Dragon and Need For Speed in my living room. There will be more! Please share this with anyone who you think will be willing to read it.

- Palmer