Ever since they mentioned how Pajeeta captured her faction of Vex by giving them free will instead of taking it away, I was excited because I thought they were FINALLY gonna do something new with the Vex besides just having them be The Borg But Gay. But of course Bungie overdelivered and found a way to make them even gayer
It's not like the vidoc presentation really does them any favors because of how canned and corporate it feels, where it just sounds like they're trying way too hard to hype people up, to the extent that it feels fake. "hurr durr they wear clothes and do crimes," just stop, you sound retarded.
That said, it sounds a little more interesting than described, since this is a faction that split off from Maya's Vex precisely because they were given free will. Why they decided to hop straight into a life of crime is beyond me, but there's a (slim) chance it could be written well if they do a decent job of exploring the whole "what happens when members of a hive mind get free will" angle, a la the instances in Star Trek like Seven of Nine or Hugh. Honestly, doing
anything interesting with the Vex would be fine at this point; I hate that they're so underutilized, but they have yet to find some way of using them that isn't just "oh no spooky robots."
As for the rest, I noted there was very much a lack of explorable destinations mentioned. Yeah, the new activities take place across Venus, Mars, and Europa, but they did not explicitly state you could go around and explore these destinations in free roam, which leads me to believe that this will be the first expansion without one (I guess you could argue The Dark Below and House of Wolves didn't either, but that was the Destiny of a decade ago so expectations were different then). As someone who loves to just go around and wander the various worlds from time to time, that's a major bummer. They're obviously leaning really heavily into the Star Wars shit with a Destiny twist, which works better than I expected, but this whole Cabal superweapon (cough cough not-a-Death-Star) feels like a retread of the Almighty.
I just don't know if it's enough, especially when they say they're addressing feedback but doing nothing about how the only gameplay loop is to grind and grind for months until they finally let you get access to the better loot. But on the other hand, they're also making it a little better by letting you upgrade weapons all the way to T5 (presumably for a huge cost) and smoothing out the grind somewhat, as well as reverting nerfs that they'd initially planned, only emphasizing extreme outliers. But still, complete radio silence from Tyson on everything, so he's clearly unwilling to accept that his baby is fundamentally flawed and refuses to take the blame for it.
And the new update is laughably bad. Reclaim just teleports you around to different Plaguelands zones where you do a few objectives before moving on, and if you're matchmaking you get no chance to breathe and explore (guess I'll have to go back later solo; this game sure does incentivize group play!). You don't even get to ride from one zone to the next, it's just teleporting. But hey, at least they explicitly stated there's no SIVA anymore, so now people can stop bitching at them about it! Also a bunch of reskinned weapons and armor, so have fun grinding the same shit again but with a different paint job. Also the power progression is bugged again and there's a bunch of accidental copy-pastes with lore tabs (they gave Graviton Spike the Agape lore and copied the same ship twice). But hey, they still managed to pump out a bunch of Eververse cosmetics again! Enjoy spending twenty bucks for an actual Taken shader and armor set (for one character)! (ETA: I was mistaken, the shader is in a different bundle, so enjoy spending $15 for each armor set and $20 if you want the shader/skimmer/finisher bundle! Christ.)
I've already been playing less and less over the last few weeks, and I don't see that trend changing. Somehow, one release was enough to fuck up the game so badly that I barely want to pick it up anymore.
Also ETA: I know this is a long-running criticism, but it's honestly ridiculous how much time and effort go into making sure Eververse is chock full of things to buy every season, instead of putting even a fraction of that output into stuff that can be earned in-game. They put out armor sets inspired by Greek warriors earlier this season that would have been excellent Crucible armor sets, and then this week they come out with medieval armor sets that would work perfectly for Iron Banner. What do we get instead? Boring and drab armor in the Crucible lazily recolored for the second half of the season, and a recolor of an Iron Banner armor set from season 3. Would it have killed you to have a couple fewer sets to sell, Bungo?
That's one of my biggest issues with the game, especially as it stands currently: there is way too little to actually chase in the game proper. I think back to my time playing WoW, and how there were countless pets, mounts, transmogs (unlocked for free when you got the item!), and toys to hunt down, not to mention old legendary weapons to go back and acquire. If you were done with your progression for the week, there was always something for you to go out and look for. Destiny has practically nothing beyond grinding weapon rolls, which stops being fun pretty quickly. In fact, one of the few cosmetic chases is in fucking Trials, and have fun subjecting yourself to that slogfest in the vain hopes of getting even one item to drop.
Seriously, a halfway competent studio could have done wonders with this series. Destiny seems to have thrived in spite of Bungie, not because of them, and it's never been more apparent than it is now.
