What Halo Infinite Can Learn From Destiny 2 (& What It Shouldn't)

DWQA QuestionsCategory: QuestionsWhat Halo Infinite Can Learn From Destiny 2 (& What It Shouldn't)
Joesph Ming asked 2 weeks ago
The prime example that comes to mind is The Black Armory from the “Season of the Forge.” This was something built up as offering players a special kind of new weapon to chase via a new kind of public event. Both of these claims were true, but unfortunately the forge events wound up being overly grindy (and poorly balanced at first), and the weapons largely weren’t worth the effort. Successive seasons have had similar struggles, but not to the same degree and were largely successful.Destiny 2’s fourth expansion, Shadowkeep, and its most recent seasons have kept the positive momentum going. With the release of Shadowkeep, Guardians got to return to The Moon to take on nightmarish versions of many defeated foes. The main content additions also included two new strikes, one new Crucible map, two new-ish Crucible Maps and the “Garden of Salvation” raid. Shadowkeep also brought with it the reorganization of the Crucible and the launch of “Armor 2.0.”
The skeletal-looking baddies can inflict massive damage from long-range. When they aren’t projecting lethal ammunition, they disappear via smoke clouds. They also cast deadly spells, fire Arc totems at a relentless clip, and use their powers to conjure dark clouds to disorient the GuardiCrucible remains mostly intact outside of quality-of-life improvements. Bringing the player count back up to 6v6 was the right move and the lower time-to-kill vastly improves the experience. The significant multiplayer addition in Forsaken lies with Gambit, a new mode that blends PvE and PvP elements. The 4v4 mode tasks players with killing AI-controlled enemies and collecting and banking motes of light. After accumulating 75 motes, a Primeval enemy appears and the first team to defeat their Primeval wins. Of course, it’s not that simple thanks to the PvP elements. Players can spend motes to summon Blockers on the enemy’s map. Collect enough motes and a player can invade the enemy’s map for a short period.Forsaken’s plot is a refreshing break from the consistent ‘save the world’ plots of Destiny games, and expansions tend to throw at us. The tale is more personal and adds additional depth to the generic light vs. dark struggle that has permeated the series to this point. Forsaken represents a leap forward for storytelling in Destiny, surpassing the benchmark set by The Taken King .Uldren Sov serves as a passable antagonist but ultimately suffers from a lack of interaction with your Guardian. Outside of a handful of cutscenes from Destiny and a brief interaction at the start of Forsaken, Uldren hasn’t had much impact on your story. Much of the animus you’ll hold for him lies solely on whether you like Cayde-6. It doesn’t help that a random final boss appears out of nowhere to rob Uldren of his spotlight.When Destiny 2 launched, it was arguably a shell of the original. Sure the story was a little more cinematic, but much of what had made Destiny fun and compelling was now strangely absent. Customizable class builds were gone, replaced by ones pre-made by Bungie. Randomly-rolled loot was gone too; now all one had to do was get a gun once and that was it. No more chasing godrolls. Supers were toned-down and put on an excessively long timer; the other abilities were too. There was “more” to do in the hub-worlds too, but it all somehow came-off as even more shallow than the activities available in the original. Throw an over-emphasized Eververse and a merely “okay” raid (with disappointing loot) on top of that and the recipe for a disastrous launch period is complete.Let’s not mince words here, the Destiny community was in this exact situation three years ago in the months leading up the release of The Taken King. It was to be sold for a price of $40 and required the installation of all previous DLC, even though House of Wolves did not require the Dark Below. Players at the time were outraged at both the price tag and https://www.destiny2fans.com/Articles/essential-tips-for-destiny-2-the-final-shape-in-2025.html the need to purchase a DLC that was seemingly only required because Bungie said so. One would think the developer would learn a lesson from this, and they did; it was just the wrong one. We are now approaching the second year of Destiny 2 and Bungie is showing us exactly what they’ve learned: that they can get away with it. Curse of Osiris is almost universally panned as being unworthy of players’ time and money. It isn’t required to play Warmind, offers hardly any mechanical changes and yet Bungie, without offering any explanation, says it will be required for Forsaken all the same. This would be bad enough by itself, but Bungie isn’t content to stop there; no, they’ve decided that they need to milk their players even more than they already are, and they’re going to do it with the “Annual Pass.”The following months also weren’t kind to Destiny 2 and its fans. First, fans starved for meaningful content wound up being sorely disappointed with Curse of Osiris thanks to lackluster rewards and the reality of what the “Infinite Forest” actually was: a technologically-impressive loading zone. It sounded cool on paper and was a technological achievement on the part of Bungie, but it unfortunately didn’t amount to much in terms of gameplay.