First off, campaign. I think I said The Edge of Fate’s campaign was the only real high point of its launch, and I’m pleased to say that Renegades delivered a satisfying follow-up, at least in gameplay if not entirely in story. A good mix of characters (was not expecting Drifter’s Ghost to sound like she’s from Boston or New Jersey, but here we are) running through a fairly simple story (one of the Nine is up to shenanigans, and there’s another Cabal superweapon to deal with) that takes a lot of obvious cues from Star Wars. Nothing groundbreaking, though there were a couple little twists along the way to keep things a little more interesting (where this Cabal faction came from, who the new Dredgen is). And after the end of the campaign, there’s an indication of what “binding the Nine” might mean, as well as where the next expansion will probably be set (Old Chicago). I think the campaign could’ve done with a couple fewer runs of what are basically tutorial missions for the expansion activity because they got kind of tiresome, but that’s a minor gripe. (Also, both of the antagonists survive the campaign, so they’ll likely pop up again at some point in the future a la the Conductor.)
When I say it’s the gameplay that carried the campaign, I mean it, especially if you like vehicular combat. This is by far the most vehicle-heavy campaign in the game’s history, where you get to pilot five different kinds of vehicles over the course of the campaign, two of them brand new (the Falcon, a lighter Pike styled after a swoop bike with blasters, and the Behemoth, the AT-ST-like walker). As a fan of the various tank levels in the Halo series, it’s like Bungie finally remembered they have a whole section of their sandbox they’ve been neglecting to use for several years now. And the final mission in particular is making me wonder if there’s a reason Bungie mentioned SRL in that survey, as well as all the new vehicles heralding a potential return of Combined Arms.
The new activity, Lawless Frontier, is pretty good. It’s essentially a Nether redux spread across six maps over three destinations, where you have more health but it doesn’t regen naturally, and you go from location to location completing activities as the enemies get stronger. It’s definitely faster than the Nether, with runs usually taking about fifteen minutes or so, though potentially longer if you go out of your way to look for various secrets. The Renegade abilities are varying amounts of fun, and they get better as you upgrade them, but I initially had a hard time remembering to use them. You have to press a button to swap your normal grenade/melee to the Renegade abilities, and there’s no HUD indicator to let you know they’re charged if you don’t swap to them first (editing later, they indeed added a HUD indicator in the lower right corner so you can not only remember what abilities you have, but also how many charges). Once I realized how good they could be, I started making sure to use them constantly, especially since recharges are common throughout the activity. It’s definitely hilarious to call a drop pod on the enemies’ heads for a change, or summon a walker to lay down a barrage of fuck you. Loot can be decently generous too, with a minimum of three items per run and more that can be found through chests and secrets and random drops, as well as drops from completing contracts for the syndicates at the same time. One issue that I have is that you can’t summon your Sparrow during the activity so you have to hoof it across these pretty sizable maps to get to your next objective. It’s not too bad, though, and it does encourage you to keep an eye out for treasure chests or other items along the way. I’m also bummed that we didn’t get a full destination with this expansion because that work went into the maps for this activity; that said, it’s something of a trade-off because having maps across three destinations does increase visual variety, and they did put a good amount of effort into them. The new social space is actually reworked from the section of the D1 Mars map with the transit station, you can see the old building beneath the Fallen architecture bolted on. Still wish we’d see the return of free-roam Venus and Mars, though.
Some territories can also be invaded, which I have mixed feelings about. I don’t think invasions work really well in a gametype with limited revives, because it means that if the invader is good, he’s just fucking you over and burning your lives, potentially making you waste your time. You do get three free revives if you get invaded, which can help offset this a bit, but you can still lose a lot of lives to a good invader, and revive tokens feel exceptionally rare to begin with. Yeah, he gets loot for his performance, so he is incentivized to play well, but it’s more frustrating than in Gambit because he respawns quickly, and his extra lives mean he can keep being a pain to you even after you kill him. Also, in Gambit you typically got the same loot whether you won or lost, whereas a failed run of Lawless Frontier could have you missing out on large amounts of resources and loot, depending on how much you found while playing. Invasions are thankfully avoidable for the most part, but not always if you’re looking to complete contracts for rep. (Also, I don’t know if it’s a bug or not, but I have had invasions happen to me a couple times where we killed the invader to the point the notification went away, there was an audio cue that he was gone, but he still kept respawning and burning more of our lives. Immensely frustrating.) (Editing later, with smart usage of Renegade abilities, invaders are less of an issue. In short: use the walker. It’s almost impossible to lose.)
I’ll talk about the Star Wars influences in a second, but I wanted to touch on the lightsaber exotic separately. I’ve played with it both during the campaign and a little afterwards, and my initial feeling is that it’s pretty fun, but that fun can be somewhat dampened by higher difficulties making enemies more bullet spongey. Attacking with it feels smooth and responsive; light attacks slash, heavy attacks throw your sword and make it spin, and there’s even a combo attack (three lights and a heavy) for large damage similar to The Lament. Guarding lets you deflect projectiles back at whatever you’re aiming at (hilariously much better than Blight Ranger, and doesn’t even require a super to do it), and it comes with intrinsic anti-barrier too. For a lightsaber fantasy, it’s great, and the ammo economy is such that I generally never worried about running low. But on a couple GM runs of the Lawless Frontier activity, I found that it was less enjoyable because enemies weren’t just dying in one hit anymore. I know that’s how swords have always worked in Destiny, but lightsabers have the expectation of just cutting through anything without issue, so it still feels weird. Upgrading it with more parts did offset this feeling a bit, gradually adding that power fantasy back as I continued using it; adding a core that applied elemental debuffs on hits and an exotic catalyst made it a lot more fun. I haven’t fully acquired all the parts yet, but there are a lot of different ways you can build it that I can see, as well as a large number of saber colors (some of which are, naturally, Eververse-exclusive). Still, it’s a pretty good exotic from the start, and I think it’ll be interesting to see how players use it.
Similarly, the new blasters (or “heat weapons”) are an interesting addition to the sandbox. Instead of traditional reloads, they work similarly to how weapons worked in Mass Effect 1, where you can fire them continuously but eventually have to slow down to let them cool off. You can manually vent at any time with the reload button, as well as cancel a vent like you would cancel a reload, but if you overheat, you’ll be forced to vent until it cools down to zero. There’s also a perfect reload mechanic where if you tap the reload button again when it’s close to fully cool (there’s an audio cue to help), you’ll gain a brief period of slower heat generation. Two frames currently: balanced, which gains heat slowly and can be vented when nearly overheated to vent faster; and dynamic, which hits harder (especially against powerful targets) and has a faster cooldown between shots. Mostly primaries, though there is a special-ammo hand cannon in the mix as well. Testing them out a bit, they feel alright, with potential for longer sustained gunfights than you would get with a standard weapon. It takes some getting used to the heat/vent system, but it’s not like it’s a steep learning curve. I don’t know if they’re worth going crazy over (maybe there’s some crazy perk combo, who knows), but I always welcome new additions to the sandbox. I know people have been raving about the special hand cannon, though.
So, for a Star Wars-themed expansion, was it heavy-handed? In my opinion, not really, though obviously your mileage may vary. The influence is mostly in the visuals, with some winks and nods to classic SW moments throughout the campaign (Spider has a sand barge on Mars, the shield generator for the superweapon is in the Venus jungle, the entire opening sequence playing out similarly to A New Hope’s intro, the final encounter is kind of a combination of both Death Star destruction sequences). Nearly all the references are more in line with the original trilogy, with a little bit of prequel influence and barely anything Disney outside of Dredgen Bael channeling Kylo. There’s thankfully no overt lifting of dialogue from the movies, or at least nothing I noticed, so there was nothing that really took me out of it and made me roll my eyes; the most “dialogue” moment that did was a Shank making R2-D2 noises occasionally. Instead, I ended up enjoying how they added little homages to the series through the design and style of different enemies and set pieces, and as someone who’s been sour on Star Wars for years now thanks to Disney, I don’t really know what that says about me (maybe it’s just nostalgia for when I could actually enjoy SW, maybe I’m a hack fraud, who can say). To me, it doesn’t exactly look like discount Star Wars, nor does it look like plopping Star Wars assets directly into Destiny, it’s a blend that manages to work well overall. Again, your mileage may vary in that regard, but given how concerned I was at the announcement, I’m pleasantly surprised that I’m pretty much unbothered...at least with the campaign stuff. Eververse is more of a direct rip of SW assets, and as such they do take me out of the game when I see other players flying X-wings or running around in stormtrooper or Vader or Boba Fett outfits. No real use in complaining, though, the grounded style of D1 has long since left the building.
Systems-wise, it’s more of a refinement of what’s already there than a major overhaul. Leveling is still a pointless system, but at least it’s a lot faster now, with the first campaign mission jumping you to 300 and a legendary completion pushing you even further; still hoping they just remove it sooner than later, but for a temporary solution, it’s fine. Not much new with the Portal aside from Orders that will just come in as you’re playing and can be completed quickly for more rewards; we’ll have to see how well the Vanguard Alerts system replaces the old weeklies next week (editing later, see section below). The new Vault sorting and filters are done very well, letting you narrow down your search much faster than before; DIM and other online tools will still be more powerful, but this works in a pinch (add an actual search, please). Exotic armor ornaments being agnostic is a welcome addition for fashion, although it will take some getting used to inspecting other players in PVE and not knowing immediately what they have on. They also didn’t add Kepler to the Director, instead sticking its node on the Timeline for some reason. Given communications about how they underestimated how much people like the Director, maybe this is a stopgap solution and they’ll revisit updating the Director down the line, but I dunno.
Vanguard Alerts seem to work pretty well at addressing a couple of issues: rewards through lower-intensity gameplay, variety in activities, and weekly high-difficulty content that’s clear to find. The variety quickplay playlists for Fireteam/Arena Ops are now finally working properly again, with a lower difficulty that lets you slay out without having to worry about being on your A-game for rewards. Complete a few runs, and you’re guaranteed a specific weapon at a higher tier and power than you’d normally get with an added origin trait, and there’s a chance to get one on every completion otherwise. There’s a similar system with a particular Crucible playlist that rewards a different weapon. GM Alerts give you a specific activity on high difficulty like GM Nightfalls of old (how they were earlier when they were more spongey), and a single completion will get you the week’s weapon with the bonuses listed above; repeated playthroughs have a chance at dropping it again, but given the more bullet sponge nature of that power delta, it’s probably something you only want to do once a week, with repeat farming still better done through other Portal stuff. The Alerts menu also has links to the current raid (and dungeon when it launches), with weekly challenges for full clears giving bonus loot. While this is basically just bringing back systems they removed for no good reason, it’s still a welcome change and a positive course correction.
My concerns, as always, are in the continued execution. Right now, once you finish the campaign, the question of what to do next is basically answered by either “play the new thing” or “return to the Portal mines,” and I don’t know if that’s going to be all that enticing long-term, especially since you’re still doing activities the same way as before if you want relevant rewards (locked into the hardest difficulty you have access to and picking the easiest modifiers you can to make it slightly less painful). Don’t get me wrong, the Lawless Frontier is a lot of chaotic fun, but all content has a shelf life, even if it’s helped by having a pretty large amount of variants. The dungeon will be launching next week, which is probably going to be the only new endgame content for quite some time, aside from maybe an exotic mission with the mid-season update if you count that. That’s a lot for a single piece of content to be carrying, but then again Bungie did effectively kill off the entire concept of an endgame now that everything can be cranked up to max difficulty and there’s nothing really special about dungeon and raid loot anymore. I suppose the raid is still there, but good luck finding anyone to actually play it thanks to its ridiculous design of two separate difficulties and the additional feats on top of that, effectively making twelve different difficulty settings that split up the potential playerbase for no good reason. The calendar for the months ahead is also somewhat lackluster, with no new events to shake things up, just ones we’ve already seen before. Maybe we’ll get lucky and see some updates to the seasonal events like there was with Festival of the Lost (which was surprisingly well done), but I’m not holding my breath (look at Solstice) (editing later, the TWAB mentioned a Crucible snowball fight mode in addition to the usual Dawning stuff, so that’s something). I suppose there’s at least some longer structure for the expansion in the form of rep grinds with the syndicates and fully upgrading your lightsaber, but once those run out, you’re back to the usual. And that’s without getting into the other issues, like difficulty in acquiring loot you might want (apparently all the Portal stuff from Edge of Fate/Ash and Iron simply doesn’t drop anymore, so fuck you if you wanted a Mint Retrograde (they’re working on it, supposedly)), old content still being effectively irrelevant, crafting being nonexistent, the new player experience still being a crapshoot, all the effort going into Eververse, and so on.
If this review sounds more positive than you might expect, it's not entirely my intention to, I'm just judging it based on my past experience with the series. Like, it’s not terrible or anything, and it’s not godly, it’s just an okay expansion, and that’s about all I could reasonably expect, even if I'd obviously want more (and Bungie desperately needs to be doing more). I’m not disappointed, but I’m not blown away either. Maybe I still have some kind of Stockholm syndrome for this damn series, where I can see all the potential it could have but utterly fails to achieve time and again, yet I keep coming back hoping this time it’ll finally live up to the ideal in my head. Maybe it’s sunk cost and I’m retarded, I dunno. I guess at the end of the day, it’s still fun to play even if there’s a lot that could be better, and that’s why I keep at it, though less than I did before.
Is it worth buying? Well, if you already bought the full year like I did (I was naive), you might as well give it a whirl for the campaign, if nothing else. I thought it was a pretty good time, though certainly not worth forty bucks on its own. If you’ve been burned out on Destiny recently, I don’t really think it’s worth rushing back to. They’re making steps in the right direction, but it’s going to take a lot more than one expansion to unfuck the mess they’ve made of things.
