Ok, so here’s the thing. I’m Gfinity’s resident “Destiny guy”, but I have a secret – between Shadowkeep and Beyond Light, I just wasn’t playing much.
Part of that was due to other huge releases. Call of Duty Modern Warfare, DOOM Eternal, TLOU 2, Final Fantasy 7 Remake and plenty more besides.
Another part was that I simply burned myself out. I reviewed Shadowkeep at launch, and with its campaign feeling like a stopgap of sorts, I chose not to engage with the intricacies of its post-game.
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Destiny 2 Would Be Great If Bungie Didn’t Keep Trying To Push Me Away
With Beyond Light, though, I wanted to jump back into the franchise that had given me some of my favourite gaming memories of the last console generation. Bolstered by my colleague returning after a two-year hiatus, I ripped through Beyond Light, reviewed it, and began the familiar cycle of Crucible and Gambit matches, as well as Strikes.
Only, as any Destiny fan will tell you, that grind just got a lot more repetitious. The Destiny Content Vault swallowed up multiple planets, re-adding the majority of a Destiny 1 planet, a new snowy location (Europa), and of course, the raid.
With the latter being off-limits without a fireteam of six, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve played The Glassway strike. It’s… fine. It’s not good, it’s not bad, but I’d have rather have had it added to the Strike rotation rather than swapping a cluster of better Strikes for it (yes, I’d even rather run Savathun’s Song again).
That’s not all, though, as Bungie whittled down the locations available for PvP matches, too. All of this makes sense narratively because those locations have been consumed by The Darkness, but yet we can still access Titan in a Gambit match?
Unfortunately, it sounds as though things are only going to get worse before they get better. Season 13 will see Bungie add in six new weapons to chase, as well as a trio of repurposed Destiny 1 legendaries.
On the other hand, it’ll also “Sunset” 21 legendaries, and those numbers simply don’t line up. The likes of Perfect Paradox, a weapon that had some interesting story implications, is being sunset. It’s arguably not even really in the meta (in truth, few of these weapons are), so it just feels like Bungie is determined to create an arbitrary grind to replace guns that don’t really need to be replaced, but isn’t even replacing them anytime soon, as far as it seems.
Sure, it’s annoying with armour, but in many instances, we can reacquire it (see my lengthy post about getting the SAME Iron Banner armour again) with more perks and higher Power Rating. Destiny is a shooter, and at the current rate, will be shorn of anything to, y’know, shoot with.
As Forbes' Paul Tassi points out, the combination of Beyond Light and the current Season of the Hunt bought with them 26 new weapons (and Adept variants), while cutting a wealth of offensive options with Sunsetting. It’s bizarre and is actively pushing me further from Destiny despite my intent to cover it (and the fact that it’s essentially my job to do so).
Add to that that players can continue completing activities in older locations and be rewarded with gear that simply won’t be useful, and it’s clear that Bungie needs to start turning this ship around.