From the opening moments, Destiny 2 delivers Dominus Ghaul, an excellent antagonist whose cruelty earns our fury by taking away everything that had been built up in Destiny and its expansions, including our Guardians’ Light. The campaign that follows is filled with brilliant cutscenes that give the cast an opportunity to show great emotional range, and you can hear the sadness and determination in their voices. Zavala (played by Lance Reddick) is unwavering in his plan to assault Ghaul, while Ikora (Gina Torres) seems distraught and near the point of giving up. That context gives both new and returning players a sensible reason to climb the Light-level based power ladder, whether for the first time or all over again. It kept me moving forward through fun missions set in eye-catching environments, including the exhilarating penultimate mission.

Loading

Meanwhile, a soaring soundtrack backs pulse-pounding missions before shifting gears to evoke a tinge of sadness. The sound design is impeccable overall, with rewarding splashes of glimmer each time you open a chest or a silencing of the ambient noise when you aim down sights. Every adjustment is important, giving you the audio information you need instead of overwhelming you with everything at once.

“ Bungie’s laid out a wide range of activities.

Especially early on, there’s so much to do it’s almost overwhelming. I found myself frequently getting distracted from the activity I embarked upon by something enticing, like a roaming boss or public event that promised some quick loot. It’s a good problem to have, in that I never felt bored, but keep in mind these all seem targeted toward early Light level Guardians. While all of these battles will help get you to level 265, climbing to the max of 350 (the cap indicated in menu tips) is going to require tackling much tougher challenges like Leviathan, Nightfall, and Trials of the Nine – the endgame, in other words.

Every Bungie Game Ever Reviewed by IGN 13 IMAGES

“ The final encounter fizzled out a bit.

Thankfully, the excellent quests and more elaborate Strikes that followed the campaign come with much-improved boss encounters and an extra dose of quality lore. After the campaign ends you can still experience some new story events via additional Quests on each of the four planetoid locations in Destiny 2. These not only flesh out the intriguing new characters we’ve met there, but also do a good job of guiding you into new spots you may have missed and fun encounters built to be played with a three-person Fireteam. They also end with big rewards, like Exotic Quests and coveted Legendary items, making them a great way to continue your climb to max Light. I’m hoping that Bungie doubles down on these with even more quests, either daily or weekly, as some left me wanting more.

Loading

The four world maps do a fantastic job of setting the tone, too. Whether it’s the milky waterfalls of Nessus or the overgrown European Dead Zone, each offers a colorful and unique palette to explore as you acquire their plentiful loot. Adding to that, there are also items scattered throughout each destination offering snippets of lore about the location, and gear sets you can acquire by turning in tokens earned from the above activities in exchange for reputation at that destination’s vendor. Bungie understandably wants to encourage everyone to take all this in, but goes a little too far by withholding the fast-moving Sparrow bikes for too long in order to force you to walk through it the first time (unless you get lucky and get one in a drop or pay for one via Bright Engrams).

“Stay Alert Out There” - Cayde-6

The first Destiny is a strong first-person shooter built using expertise from Bungie’s days developing the Halo series, but subtle touches have made a big difference in Destiny 2 when it comes to making moment-to-moment combat more explosive and exciting. For example, popping an enemy’s shield with the right damage type causes it to hit its nearby allies with area-of-effect damage, and scoring a headshot on a Fallen treats you to a light show as its soul escapes its body; both are welcome bursts of validation, and Destiny 2 dishes out these types of visual and gameplay rewards left and right.

“ Destiny 2 is full of game-changing items.

The gear chase has some rocky parts, though, because Destiny 2 doesn’t take the time to explain how its upgrade and infusion systems work. Mods can be a bit confusing at first because you have to absorb a lot of obscure rules. For instance, if the mods are Legendary they’ll add 5 attack power to your gear; however, if they don’t have a mod attached you can still infuse a Rare weapon into a Legendary weapon and see a Light level increase. Sound confusing? That’s because it is! But once you get acquainted with the math it’s a little more comprehensible. If you don’t want to have the same frustration at wasted progress that I did, I recommend checking our Destiny 2 wiki guide for tips on how to do it efficiently.

Destiny 2’s approach to the Shader system, which allows you to customize the colors of your various pieces of gear and weaponry, is also confusing and awkward because it encourages you to wait before applying any customization to your gear. Instead of a Shader color being something reusable which you unlock and then apply to whatever you like, they’re now consumables that must be individually earned as loot or purchased via the Eververse Trading Company. This feels at odds with Destiny 2’s focus on striving to evolve your weapons and armor, and I found myself simply holding onto my shaders until I had enough to not worry about coloring a piece of gear only to replace it when a better item comes along minutes later.

Loading

Also purchasable from the Eververse are The Bright Engrams, Destiny 2’s version of a premium loot box. They can include items like cosmetically different ships, Sparrows (some of which have different stats), mods, weapon skins, exotic emotes, and more. It seems like a place where Bungie could’ve gone wrong by prodding you to spend real money to get more, but so far that doesn’t appear to be the case. You are given free Bright Engrams each time you fill up your experience bar after hitting character level 20, so you should still feel like they’re in plentiful supply even if you opt not to spend money. You can also break down Eververse items for dust that will allow you to purchase from a rotating inventory of similar items.

Destiny 2’s three character classes – Titan, Warlock, and Hunter – have all been simplified relative to Destiny. Each of their subclass trees now only include an upper or lower power path with a few grenade, jumping, and power options, but that’s enough so that each still has distinct abilities and playstyles that work well together in traditional tank, support, and damage-dealer roles. Figuring out how to use subtle customizations and weapon pairings to make the most of your chosen build is still a rewarding puzzle to solve. For example, as a Titan you can build into an Arc damage type subclass which could then receive a boost from a Warlock that’s using Arc projectiles, if you planned properly. The Hunter’s dodge seems underpowered in the early stages, though, since the other classes’ abilities have a clearer immediate benefit to the team. While the Titan starts with a shield that protects everyone and the Warlock has a healing or damage-buff ability, the Hunter is left with a relatively weak dodge move that reloads or recharges their melee but does nothing for the team. It isn’t until they unlock a certain pair of Exotic boots that reload everyone’s ammo can fully contribute to the team in a way other than direct damage.

It’s unfortunate that while the first subclass (which allows you to specialize your character) is well integrated into the leveling experience with a story event of appropriate gravity, others just drop like an ordinary piece of loot. It was a missed opportunity to tell a story about reacquiring your powers, similar to the way Destiny’s The Taken King DLC gifted you with your new abilities. Once done doing world events to power up these random pickups things get better, and you embark upon on a more interesting quest to get a bit of backstory delivered by your Vanguard leader, but these moments don’t compare to their grandiose counterparts of Destiny.

Loading

“ Watching an upward sword strike send your enemy off in the distance will never get old.

Thankfully, the more conventional kinetic and energy weapons feel well balanced across the board, giving you different archetypes to choose from for each weapon type. Suros auto rifles, for example, have a higher rate of fire than the Omolon weapons, but reduced range, stability, and handling stats. Veist autorifle’s have the highest rate of fire and better reload speed, but again at the cost of range and stability. Each of the weapon types has these subtle differences, allowing you to create loadouts that compliment your character’s armor stats or Exotic abilities for the best efficiency possible.

“I’ve Got My Eye on You.” - Ikora Rey

Another major shift from Destiny is that the competitive experience of Destiny 2 relies more on team-based tactics, moving away from Destiny’s one-man-army style. The time to kill seems much longer because grenades and shoulder charges don’t always kill in one hit, and that gives you the opportunity to retreat from an encounter when your shields go down, like in Halo. That usually works well, since many of the 11 PvP maps (12 counting the PlayStation exclusive) are well suited for the new four-vs-four teams, but a few may be a tad too large. This makes it easy, and even strategic, to avoid the other team until you’re forced to clash in the center over a capture point, should the match go into overtime. But this excess room in certain maps often causes Competitive Playlist matches to drag on way too long without action.

Loading

Trials of the Nine is the new version of the Trials mode that’s been the lifeblood of PvP in Destiny for years, and it includes two different modes that alternate every week. The first, Survival, pits you against another four-player team to see who can whittle down the other side’s pool of lives first (not unlike a Battlefield match), while Countdown has you either defending a vital area or attacking and planting a bomb in said area (which should sound familiar to Counter-Strike fans). From what we’ve experienced in the Competitive Playlist, they’ve been very fun with a team once you get started, but it can take an excessively long time to find a match due to apparent bugs that Bungie has acknowledged are an issue.

Trials of the Nine opens up each weekend and encourages you to enter for your chance at Powerful Engram rewards resulting in top-tier gear. It’s still seven wins to go to the top of the ladder, which awards you a unique cosmetic aura, and you can simply reset your card with the press of a button (no more consumables necessary). At first, I was worried the departure from Trials of Osiris would be jarring, but it actually felt right at home with the same weight and nervousness in each encounter. They’ve also given all players a chance to earn rewards by giving tokens for participation, and they can be redeemed after your first win. More rewards continue to be unlocked until you finally finish off your card. It gives everyone something to strive for, regardless of level.

“ You aren’t allowed to pick and choose which modes you want to enjoy.

116 IMAGES

Also, a downside to bouncing between so many different types of activities is that it’s hard to keep a group together. World activities, PvP, and Leviathan all have different group size requirements, meaning you’re often a person short for some activities or forced to abandon a team member when transitioning from the four-player Crucible PvP into a three-man team activity like a Strike.

The new Clan system in Destiny 2 does a great job of giving people a reason to stick together. Now, our crew of IGN friends and family have begun completing team-based objectives and sporting our IGN banners with pride as we enter each activity to level up. It’s great seeing your Clan’s overall progress increase, and because it gives you a big reward for your personal contribution – and smaller rewards for overall clan objectives – it’s worth your time to join up with one. I’m looking forward to watching the engrams stack up as our Clan completes tasks for the week, or I’m able to finish one myself for the team.

“I Need My Fireteam.” - Zavala

The Leviathan Raid and its smaller end-game cousin, The Nightfall, are the premiere PvE events of Destiny 2, and so far they’re both successful in their purpose of keeping hardcore Destiny players like me coming back. The combat-focused Nightfall does this by forcing your three-person Fireteam to formulate a plan before going in so you can capitalize on whichever of the rotating set of modifiers you happen to draw. These can include extra goals like jumping through rings, killing enemies, or finding a specific target to increase the time left on the countdown clock, and they add a new level of challenge to each run, especially if you’re attempting to complete some of the harder quests at the same time. There’s a lot of skill and strategy that goes into running The Nightfall, and that makes it highly replayable.

Loading

T

“ In addition to the nice loot drop, we’d made a new friend.

But the biggest, baddest PvE activity is Destiny 2’s Leviathan Raid, which continues to live up to Bungie’s high standards of new and varied puzzles and challenging boss battles that require teams of six well-coordinated players to pull off. I love how Leviathan immediately mixes up what you may expect from a Destiny Raid encounter and adds cutscenes showing off your Fireteam of six guardians.

Now, I’ll briefly discuss Raid mechanics, so if you don’t want to know anything at all about the Leviathan Raid before going in, please skip over the next two paragraphs.

Leviathan opens like most, forcing your team into a gauntlet-like activity where you need to plant flags in the ground to proceed. You then fight through three encounters before a final boss. This time, however, the encounters are varied and add new ways to fight, like one room where you’re forced to rely on stealth, and another that makes you run a gauntlet with a bomb as your team shoots arrows allowing you to proceed. Each experience forces your team into two groups and each forces you to work together to a common goal after you’ve met the requirements to enter, and it’s a clever approach that felt both challenging and distinct from any I’ve done before.

Loading

The architecture on display is a castle covered in ornate gold designs and mysterious machinery, leaving you to wonder who built it and why were you invited in? You learn some of those answers upon completion, and that lore reward added to my sense of accomplishment. And unlike Destiny’s previous Raids, this one dishes out some interesting story revelations, too. After completion you’re encouraged to return to find the treasure chests you’re given keys for as you clear each section, and there are additional secret chests you can unlock in the areas below the main arena. Should you not wish to return, you’ll still have tokens you can turn in for a chance at powerful Legendary weapons and a unique armor set for each class. Visually, it’s massive in scope as you scramble to the tops of an incredible building and still have the workings below to explore.

“ A few bugs forced us and other Raid teams to restart several times.

With all of that content, there are 30 to 40 hours of great gameplay waiting for you in Destiny 2 before the Raid. When you approach max Light level, though, there are only a few activities that someone who loves the level climb like I do can participate in to get Raid-ready. I wish that more Adventures had an additional incentive, such as a reward for completing all of them on a given destination or a Powerful Engram for completing a particular set that told an interesting story. It’s unfortunate that most progression is tied to Public Events, as they give a huge experience drop for each heroic completed and they spawn so frequently. Even the weekly Flashpoints consist of simply completing Public Events on a certain planet.

Loading

That said, once you’re ready for the Leviathan Raid you can hop in and tackle its many challenges for loot. Once completed, Quests like the Destroyer of Worlds line will advance, allowing you to enter an extra-challenging Strike mission.

Bungie has promised that Destiny 2 will continue to evolve with a roadmap of content on the way that already includes Trials of the Nine added today, and Faction Rally on September 26. Looking into October, they’ve already teased the Prestige difficulty Raid and Iron Banner, another popular PvP mode for competitive players. Hopefully, Bungie can keep up this cadence as the additions so far have been expansive. Time will tell if Iron Banner and Faction Wars can keep up the same level of excitement as a Raid.

Update: PC Version Impressions, October 25, 2017

Loading

“ Overall, the PC is the best platform on which to play Destiny 2.

Loading

Destiny 2 on PC looks stunning should you be running it at 4K 60fps, or as high as your PC and monitor permit. I consistently found myself stopping simply to admire the environment or PvP gameplay I was enjoying at 120 frames per second on my Ryzen 1800x and Titan X (Pascal), even while streaming my gameplay at 1080p 60fps using OBS. Compare that to the locked 30 frames per second on consoles. On an Intel Core i5-7600K with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 and 16GB of RAM we saw framerates of 120 and up at 1080p while exploring the open world at max settings.In a graphical sense, playing on PC is noticeably nicer than the PlayStation 4 Pro where I originally spent the majority of my time playing. Small details like the sparkling textures on the ceiling of the Pyramidion Strike or the additional lighting effects for explosions and skyboxes are dramatically better here. After adding a 144hz monitor into the mix it was hard not to be enamored with the incredible smoothness on display.The biggest miss for the PC version is the absence of a general chat window where you can freely talk to anyone and everyone in the zone, as you’d expect to find in virtually any large-scale multiplayer game. Without one we’re spared from spammers and people being deliberately annoying, but at the same time it’s needlessly difficult to interact with players you encounter who are not already on your friends list. You can message random players in your Fireteam if you’ve entered a strike and your team in the Crucible, but they will have to hit enter on their keyboard to see the message. This additional barrier to communicating gives the console version of Destiny one strong advantage: the ability to easily make new friends in the tower or open world before heading into a mission.There is a concern that aim assist for controllers might be used by cheaters to gain an advantage in PvP by fooling Destiny 2 into thinking they’re using a gamepad when they’re actually on a mouse, but thankfully we have yet to encounter anything that suggests that’s a real problem rather than a theoretical one. Time will tell if this becomes a rampant, but meanwhile, Bungie appears to be committed to keeping the PC free of cheaters to the point where it’s potentially a detriment. Bungie has implemented a strict lockdown on what you can do while you’re playing because of a fear of cheats. The official site warns that third-party applications like Discord, OBS Game Capture can be used with restrictions, and anything that puts an overlay over the gameplay other than Nvidia Shadowplay or AMD ReLive could potentially cause problems.That said, those restrictions haven’t impacted my experience while playing with my friends so far. We opened Discord in the background and were able to chat freely. When using OBS I did run into difficulties when trying to take screenshots, but when streaming software was turned off everything I typically use worked as intended.