Welcome to Destiny 2, a game made by the developers of the Halo franchise; Bungie. At the start of Destiny 1, Bungie worked with activision for the entirety of Destiny 1’s lifecycle. After Destiny 2 was revealed, it was also leaked that Destiny 2 would be a game made solely by Bungie, with no commitment to Activision. This is big due to Activision’s infamy for monetizing as much as they can in a video game. This can be seen in a majority of the Call Of Duty franchise. This gave fans large expectations for Bungie to follow through with their newest release, Destiny 2.
At release, the community was excited. This excitement was quickly quelled by two disappointing discoveries. Special weapons were no longer existent; there only existed heavy and primary weapons. And the game felt slow, physically slow. The running speed was far far slower in comparison to Destiny 1. This gave PvP (player vs. player) players issues, immediately causing matches to always end by extinguishing the time limit, and causing matches to be slow scoring, and quite frankly, boring. This was fixed in the first expansion, Curse of Osiris, on December 5, 2017. Player speed in both PvP and PvE (player vs. environment). This expansion also fixed the special weapon issue, and allowed special weapons to exist in both activities. For a short while, there were no complaints, there was a lot to grind for, a compelling story, and a lot of PvE activities. The DLC after this, Warmind, wasn’t so well received. It was small, bland, there weren’t any noteworthy activities introduced, and the ones that were introduced were small, tedious to grind for, and just not fun.
Over these two DLC’s and the release of Destiny 2, three raids had been released. These three raids were Leviathan, Eater of worlds, and Spire of Stars. Raids are a six player activity that consists of puzzles, difficult boss fights, and lots of teamwork. These raids had been a majority of a players’ play time. Little did the playerbase know, the entire game was about to change for the best.
Introduce Forsaken; the third DLC to release for Destiny 2. This expansion was something remarkable to players. Two new destinations, countless new weapons and gear, an enthralling story, a new endgame activity called a dungeon, and a raid that was recognized as the franchises best raid yet, Last Wish. Last wish was a monster of a raid that took the player base of over two million people two days to fully solve it. Not only was this raid difficult, thought intensive, and fun for everyone involved, there was a secret award given to people randomly. With only a 5% drop chance, the 1000 voices was an exotic fusion rifle of proportions never before seen. It was a living creature that fired a laser beam when charged that would explode after a short period. Even the weapons description says, “Charging this weapon unleashes a giant continuous beam of death.” This was highly sought after by everyone, causing people to play the game way more than they used to. This expansion gave players so much to do that they were never bored; there was nothing to complain about.
About three months after the release of Forsaken was Season of the Forge, a mini DLC that gave players extra rewards and new activities. With this season came another raid called Scourge of the Past. During this season, people once again had no complaints. The raid was fun, and there were tons of seasonal activities to partake in that were fun but just challenging enough to be enjoyable. This cycle continued for a little while until the expansion called “Shadowkeep.” This expansion brought us to the moon, and there we were able to experience the typical comings of a new DLC.
Then Coronavirus hit starting December 2019. This slowed production of everything, not just content in Destiny 2, and the entire world was put at a standstill. During the early stages of Corona, we were all put into quarantine where we had nothing to do, but play video games. This put a lot of pressure on the development team at Bungie to keep giving the playerbaser content that would keep us satisfied through quarantine.
At the start of the year was the tail end of Season of the Dawn. This season kept us entertained enough through its return of some of our favorite characters, and a story that tied into previous expansions. This was okay, next after that was the season of the worthy. This didn’t go over as well with the community. For about four months, the community was tasked with the same tedious things, for months on end. No real new content, and no interactions with the developers. This really, really peeved the playerbase. For the loyal players who stuck with Bungie until the end of the season finally lost it when Bungie couldn’t come out with anti-cheat to combat the horrible hacking problem that was plaguing the PvP scene in Destiny 2 at the time. Players were barely hanging onto a last hope that maybe, just maybe, could save the entire franchise. Destiny 2: Beyond Light.
Beyond Light was an expansion set to come September 19, 2020 and was to be an expansion that would give us a new raid, new content, an entire new planet, and had the potential to be an expansion even greater than Forsaken. Players hung on tight to the thought of our glorious pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, only for their hopes to be shot down. Beyond Light was to be delayed by two months. This tore the community in a way. Some people were thinking that Bungie was just trying to get people to play the current seasonal activities more, while some people were happy they were doing what they were doing. The man who created the Mario games, Shigeru Miyamoto, once said, “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.” Our patience was wearing thin with Bungie, for the last 14 months, we haven’t been given a new raid, planet, anything, and we were hungry for that classic Bungie comeback that drove Destiny 1 to the top of players’ hearts.
The day came: November 10, 2020. The day that players had been waiting for, the release of Destiny 2: Beyond Light. The start to the expansion was shaky. Players weren’t able to get into the game because of the massive influx of people trying to get on for the release of the new content. This massive amount of people trying to sign on to the game caused servers to slow down, and lock people out of the game for a little over an hour. These problems were shortly taken care of and everyone who bought the DLC would be able to play the game after the hotfix came, just a few hours after release. Kudos to Bungie for being able to listen to the community, and act fast.
I also hopped on right away and was lucky enough to get into the game. I started the new campaign alongside a buddy of mind I met online around 6 o’clock on the tenth. We played the campaign until about two in the morning and were still only about halfway done. This is a very good sign that not only was Bungie able to create a campaign that was long and filled with content, but they were able to make it enthralling. It was very entertaining to play to the point where me and my buddy accidentally spent 12 hours total playing it together before finishing it.
This campaign is repeatable for three characters and gives you a lot of content to go through to make sure you don’t miss any plot points or secrets that might give you more loot. The new planet was also a buzz, players were exploring every nook and cranny to do what they could to uncover new series lore, and potential quests that might give the community new gear. This initial excitement carried over into the next week as the entire community was grinding to get ready for the raid that was to be released just 11 days later on November 21, The Deep Stone Crypt.
The Deep Stone Crypt was the first raid we were getting in fourteen months, which was the longest the community has ever gone without a new raid since the release of Destiny 1. With every raid comes a competition on a grand scale, the raid race. This is a competition between all the players of Destiny 2 to see who can finish the new raid first. In order to be a competitor in this, you must be at an adequate level and must have a team of six that is both experienced in PvE activities and can coordinate with each other confidently and efficiently. Raid races are long, hard, and a real test of one’s patience and willingness to cooperate in stressful situations.
My team… didn’t do so well. We were slightly underleveled so we weren’t able to do much against the enemies that swarmed each raid encounter. We puzzled together the mechanics that composed the first encounter, and upon reaching the second encounter, we figured out the mechanics, and my team fizzled out. They were exhausted. We had miraculously figured out the encounter that would cause the top teams in the world the most trouble, and had we kept pushing through to finish the raid, we would have been of the top 100 teams in the world. We didn’t know this though, and decided to quit.
Later, my team ran through the raid with a guide to keep us on the right track and it was a blast. We had so much fun with the new enemies, encounters, and boss. This is most of my team’s new favorite raid, while I still prefer one of the older raids. This raid was tied into the campaign enough to keep us entertained, not only with the raid itself, but with the story. This raid is easily one of the greatest raids of Destiny 2.
This Expansion exceeded all of the community’s expectations and still to this day, has us busy with so many things that we can’t keep up. There are so many activities to play, weapons to grind for, quests to do, that we don’t know what to do with ourselves. Not only did this expansion revive the playerbase of Destiny 2, but it keeps us looking forward to the future, where next year, September 2021, another new expansion comes out called Destiny 2: The Witch Queen.