One of the biggest questions around Destiny 2 Rite of the Nine 2 is if Activision and Bungie are doing enough to fix what is an extremely wonky machine, and if so, can it be saved? Destiny 2 does have a dedicated fan base, but even that has hit a low point compared to when Destiny found itself going through these same woes, just with less grief, which makes sense. Destiny isn't perfect and it came a long way from when it launched, but many of the problems in Destiny 2 didn't exist for Destiny. In many ways Destiny 2 felt like it had taken about a thousand steps back. Now Destiny 2 finds itself not only on the same trajectory as the original, but also with more patches and leaks to fix. The boat was sinking as soon as it hit water, it just took a little time at sea to see just how bad things were.
That same week the raid dropped, I was able to pull a fireteam together for the weekend, landing epically on Leviathan's Golden walkway towards the gates of opulence we made our way in. Having watched and read up on what to do because we didn’t feel like messing around with figuring out mechanics, the Bath House was up first. We did not succeed on getting it that first night and spent a number of hours just trying to get coordination down, eventually calling it and deciding to try again the next day. Meeting up the next night we aced it no problem, coordination was up, fatigue was gone and we were on point. Next was the all too known (by now) Pleasure Gardens. Stealth isn’t Destiny’s strong point and that’s all that will be said on the matter. What did cause us grief was attempting this freaking room for the next four hours while the dog (bosses) continually got more glitchy. They would cut in and out, reset their paths, see one of us even though they were facing another direction and it lead to general frustration among the whole group. We had figured out what to do but the game mechanics weren’t helping, especially when they constantly kept breaking. At this point we had already spent nine hours banging our heads against just two rooms. The fireteam called it quits for the second night and a third night seemed less hopeful.
Destiny 2 is headed in the right direction. Perhaps it's too little too late or maybe it could pull a healthy player base back in. For now, Destiny 2 is trying its best and is showing signs of quality of life for its future. Today it’s no surprise when buying a new game to be hit immediately by a patch, because what game makes it out of the door ever without having to go through a few updates and patches once it’s out the gate? Usually a major update will hit games freshly released within the first month followed by the steady stream of content and improvements. All of this is commonplace in the video game world and yet we as the audience still find time to get mad that games aren’t the perfect embodiment of what was envisioned. Developers do have a responsibility to be open with their audience and it does become a let down when certain things promised are nowhere to be seen or the game is more broken than let on. So let the saga of Destiny as it continues through the ages be a lesson, one that we are seeing more and more frequently – Anthem is on the horizon, after all. But it's our responsibility as players and developers to keep the dialogue going to get the best experience possible from all sides. Good luck out there, Guardian.
The one thing that continually will linger on the mind while playing is the exact sentiment above. Why was Curse of Osiris not included in the base game? Curse of Osiris is small, adding only one new destination, a new raid space next week and some other minor things, which I’m sure you can guess. It’s grating, because for such a slice of content, it could have easily made its way into the base game — obviously I’m not a developer nor do I pretend to know the ins-outs of development — that said, this DLC really is small enough that if booting up Destiny 2 for an outside party, they might think it’s part of the base game.
Looking back at the original beta for vanilla Destiny, there was a tremendous amount to do and see, even some leveling involved. The Destiny 2 beta feels like Bungie is keeping their cards close to the chest because anything that could rock the boat might just tip it over. Destiny is successful, but it comes with a reputation, and scuffing up that reputation in anyway could make or break sales numbers once September rolls around. The beta gives enough of itself to put players at ease while also remaining the carrot and the stick. For a Destiny fan, it’s easy enough to digest; take everything learned from Destiny and apply that to this beta, it’s a guaranteed good time. For those who might be making their way back though, this might look more like a shooter than the online multiplayer game Bungie promised. While I can only speculate as to why the amount of content was significantly trimmed down, it’s probably for good reason or it’s just actually a beta.