Yesterday, Bungie decided to officially tease that Destiny 2 is indeed still a thing and if we believe what Activision told us last month, it will probably be coming later this year. The above image was tweeted out by the official Destiny Twitter account. Am I surprised? No. Am I excited? Of course. Am I nervous about what the game will be like? Less than I expected actually. Let me explain.
As a longtime fan of the Halo series, I was saddened when Bungie bid farewell to the IP and to Xbox, but was also sanguine about the thought of a brand new FPS-IP developed by an esteemed team with an impressive background in first-person-shooters. Throw in the promise of RPG elements in an online world and I was sold. They couldn’t mess this up. In my opinion they didn’t, nor was I disappointed with the game– though, that’s not the popular opinion, or at least not the most vocal.
That was then, let’s fast-forward to today and consider what the team at Bungie has to do in order to excite existing and new fans and, more importantly, entice those that felt burnt. With Destiny, they created a platform in which they kept expanding on with DLC packs, but it didn’t seem as though they were just exploiting their fans’ money with new maps or weapons. I feel as though with each expansion, Bungie was whole-heartedly trying to use the opportunity to enhance the Destiny experience and evolve the platform for their fans, especially the ones that felt disappointed. Bungie has always been one of those developers that keeps their finger on the pulse of their fan base.
First things first, people care about the story. The sequel needs to continue to dive deeper into the lore as well as create characters that people want to care about. Over time, if players aren’t building some sort of relationship with their character outside of the weapons and armor they’ve grinded for, people will lose interest. Personally, more cinematic scenes wouldn’t be what would drive my interest, it would be creating more compelling characters and story arcs.
Secondly, the base game needs to be what Destiny is now with all of its expansions. Tons of raids, strikes, and other types of multiplayer modes like the Prison of Elders and the Trials of Osiris need to be part of the vanilla game. I’m sure there will be DLC, but the base game needs to be buffer than what shipped back in September of 2014.
Though I fell out of Destiny sometime after the House of Wolves expansion, I am anxious to get my hands on the sequel. The gameplay mechanics of the original game were excellent and I loved playing PvP, but the game did grow stale for me. I have a few friends who still grind to this day, but after falling so far behind and the ever-changing characteristics of how light was measured and it’s correlation to you and your arsenal I felt like I would just revisit the series when Destiny 2 launched. It’ll be interesting to see if they can create a lasting memorable experience, similar to what Overwatch has done almost a year after release.
All of that being said, this brings us to what Bungie tweeted out today.
So, I’m not sure if the actual game is going to have as much life as this, but already in this short teaser, there’s arguably more character here than in all of Destiny. I’m sure all of the fans who despised Peter Dinklage’s voice-work in the original– I didn’t hate it — will be pleased to see this teaser starring Nathan Fillion who does a superb job breathing life into Cayde-6. It will be interesting to see where the series goes, but we won’t have to wait much longer to find out. The worldwide reveal is March 30th.
Pass The Controller 