My turn to roll a grenade into the room, lol (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Thursday, March 03, 2022, 14:58 (1002 days ago) @ Cody Miller

So I’m playing this campaign and thinking “yeah, they’re finally getting back closer to the old Halo style campaigns they used to make”… but then the whole thing turns into a snake eating it’s own tale, because as soon as I start thinking about Witch Queen in direct comparison to Bungie’s Halo campaigns, it falls miles short. It’s just not in the same league at all. The gameplay is just so much more repetitive in D2. Bungie’s Halo campaigns had so much more gameplay variety, better storytelling, and more memorable moments that begged to be replayed over and over, because they played out so much differently every time you played them. Witch Queen doesn’t really have any of that, IMO. If I pretend that D2 is the only shooter that exists, I might be more impressed with this campaign. But Titanfall 2 exists, and Mass Effect 2, and the Bad Company games, and The Last of Us, etc. I would never expect a D2 expansion to match the scope or scale of those sorts of campaigns, but quality? Sure. So basically, I feel like the Witch Queen campaign trades in a lot of the potential that D2 has to deliver something truly unique for a safe, basic, competent attempt to imitate the kind of campaign Bungie mastered 15-20 years ago.

Interesting observation.

First of all, I don't think you are ever going to get the style of battles Halo is known for. It's just now how enemies, their placement, their AI, and the sandbox itself is set up in D2.

I think there are certain genres that are all or nothing. When you make an MMO, or an Open World game for example, you've committed yourself to a certain experience that is incompatible with the experience of a game like Halo. I think you're correct when you say it has to "trade" a lot to get this.

Now I've been on the outside now for over 3 years, but I seem to recall the past few expansions having less of a focus on a narrative, and more on activities. Why the change now I wonder? What does Destiny want to BE?

I think The Taken King was the perfect blueprint for a major Destiny release. The campaign mixed traditional linear missions with excursions into the open world in ways that worked to establish the new play space and introduce us to the various locations. The more traditional linear missions were well done, and they didn’t overstay their welcome. Most importantly, there’s that moment where the campaign ends and you suddenly realize that the campaign was just an entry point, and now you have this whole web of story missions and quest lines and strikes and activities that spiderweb their way out across the Dreadnaught. I remember suddenly realizing that the campaign missions were really just an introduction to the REAL content of the expansion. IMO, that formula was peak Destiny. Taken King had it’s share of problems and annoyances too, but that fundamental blueprint was spectacular, and to your question, it was the kind of experience you can’t get from a traditional linear shooter. It was the design that justified Bungie’s creation of a “shared world shooter”.

For whatever reason, they never really went back to that same blueprint. The closest they came was with Forsaken, I think. In some ways, I preferred forsaken (mostly because I preferred the Dreaming City as a place to explore). But I don’t think the structure of that expansion felt quite as amazing as TTK, mostly because I found the campaign a bit too long, and the majority of it took place in the Tangled shore which we then largely abandon as soon as we’re done with the campaign missions. I was happy to leave the Tangled Shore in favour of the Dreaming City because I though DC was a far better patrol space, but I did feel a bit like the majority of the campaign was spent getting to know an environment which became obsolete and inconsequential almost immediately.

Getting back to Witch Queen though, it’s a bit shocking how abrupt a halt the game comes to once you’ve finished the campaign. I’m tentative on this, because it is just the 2nd week after all. But logging into the game yesterday at reset, I felt very strongly that there was simply nothing of consequence left for me to do. There’s the raid in a couple days, and there’s some cool potential with weapon crafting in the future, but right now I can’t find a single compelling reason to play anymore… and we’re just barely over a week past a major expansion :-/