Destiny 2 (Curse of Osiris + Warmind + Forsaken + Shadowkeep) Review

It’s XXVIII century. Humanity has long settled in the near space, met other races, divided into species and experienced the most important event in its history: a meeting with the Wanderer, an inanimate object wandering from star to star, invisibly changing life around him. A giant whitish ball hovering over the Earth saved people from death, and the Golden Age of history began, full of incredible discoveries and achievements. To protect itself from the darkness and cruelty of external enemies, at one time the Last City formed a guild of Guardians, immortal warriors on spaceships, whose valor, courage and determination are the only things that separate the Earth from destruction by forces beyond the familiar reality. But now the stakes are higher than ever – because the very Light emanating from the Wanderer is under threat. The Cabal Empire, led by the cruel conqueror Ghaul, intends to seize the divine essence by force in order to subjugate all peoples – and it is you who are destined to end the Red War, Guardian.

Desitny 2 is a sci-fi first-person shooter with an interesting story and a thoughtful, albeit not well-disclosed, world of the distant future, for which our time is like the Middle Ages.

This is a fantasy world where high-tech knights in artsy armor and helmets strive to the ends of the world to uncover another secret of a forgotten past and overcome ancient evil with the help of biotic magic and ornate rifles. The Guardians and their inseparable Ghost companions (artificial intelligence associated with the Wanderer and providing resurrection after each death) are fearless loners who fight against hordes of invaders on every planet in the solar system. On Titan, which the unsuccessful terraformation turned into a solid ocean, the old holds of the floating dock city are besieged by the endlessly breeding and worshiping pagan deities of the Hive, on Mercury, the fighting squads of clumsy but formidable Cabals arrange a barrage of fire wherever they land on their shuttles, teleporting unknown Nessa and Io, strange Vex robots want to transform all worlds into parts of their common machine intelligence, and the Ether-fed cosmic scavengers, the Fallen, prowl across the Earth and the Tangled Shores wherever there are no Possessed – creatures crippled by the Darkness who no longer belong to this world …
Each planet has its opponents, but often representatives of one faction land on the territory of another faction and begin to fight among themselves, which gives a chance to bypass the battle – or to take part in it as a third party.

In addition to the main story mode (“Red War”, which tells about the consequences of Gole’s attack on Earth and the first serious defeat of the Immortal Guardians), the game has several optional, but interesting and world-expanding chapters that need to be purchased additionally (Destiny 2 itself is now free). In “Curse of Osiris” we return to the destroyed Mercury in order, with the help of a local religious fanatic, to return the hero of the past stuck in the Infinite Forest-simulation of the Vexes; the system of planetary defense “Rasputin”, in “Forsaken” we get to the Tangled Shores and the Reef of the Awoken to suppress the riot in the Prison of With the fresh addition, “Abode of Shadows”, we return to the moon torn apart by the mysterious Pyramid, where the Hive erected the Scarlet Fortress and from the abyss itself Nightmares began to appear in the form of phantoms of those whom the Guardians had long ago defeated. This is a full-fledged (in the case of “Les Miserables” – also very voluminous) add-on, adding new planets to the map with their own secrets, secret sectors (dungeons) and types of opponents.

The main plot is quite linear and serves as a kind of tutorial for the game – the opponents are weak at first, there are almost no weapons; enough time is given to understand the game mechanics and customize the developing character for yourself. Initially, you can choose one of three classes (heavily armored Titan, fast Hunter and wielding “magic” Warlock), gender, race and appearance of the character. The most important thing in Destiny 2 is the development of the hero’s power characteristics, the constant increase in the level so that over time you come across enemies more and more difficult, because new weapons and armor are obtained only this way, in battle (or in the built-in store for real money). The strength level is calculated from the total coefficient of kinetic, energy and power weapons, as well as from the numbers of the helmet, bracers, body armor and boots, which in turn can also be enhanced by breaking unnecessary items. Weapons and armor drop from enemies in the form of engrams (spheres) of blue, purple and yellow colors: purple items are considered legendary, and yellow, exotic items are the most powerful and rare (you can also get a random and especially powerful item in encrypted an engram that needs to be deciphered from a particular character). The main mechanics are shooting from all kinds of weapons, fast movement and, most interestingly, jumping and flying: the levels are almost everywhere built in such a way that you can easily fly from one rock to another or smoothly circle through the air a group of unsuspecting opponents in order to throw in them a singularity grenade. Fights with a large number of not very difficult opponents turn out to be spectacular and dynamic, and fights with bosses force you to turn on your head and count each charge of the grenade launcher, which the monsters swallow, almost without noticing. Each enemy defeated builds up a scale of superpowers, which can be released at enemies with a spectacular shock wave, a clot of dark energy, or a barrage of electricity, and spheres of light will appear in place of enemies, which other players can pick up in order to quickly accumulate their ability scales.

There is a lot really involved in interacting with other players: you can accidentally bump into other people in many locations, and some game modes are specifically designed to play with friends.

For example, Raids are especially difficult missions in separate locations, with their own storyline and their own teamwork logic. In other modes, there is a built-in autoselection of players – for example, in Raids or Nightfalls, which are quite realistic to go through alone, but this will have to be completely confused. In addition, Destiny 2 has Gambit, a match between two teams of Guardians overseen by a cunning Drifter, who need to fill a special installation with the Light of defeated opponents as quickly as possible in order to summon the Primal Monster and defeat it before the other team (with each death of a player The primitive becomes stronger, and you can send your “spies” to the other side to spoil the rivals’ score), or the Forge, where you need to defend a giant mechanism from the Fallen and charge it with balls of energy to forge special weapons. There are also more traditional game modes, for example, Crucible with various Guardian vs. Guardian battles (capture the flag, all-versus-all, and so on – if you’ve heard of Counter Strike or Overwatch, you can imagine that).

The fun begins after the end of the main campaign.

The player finds himself in the Tower of the Guardians free to go anywhere, take one of the many contracts, get involved in a new adventure from the chain of assignments, in the end, just explore a world full of mysteries. Each planet in Destiny 2 is truly artistic and expressive; yes, maybe there is not as much real and clearly narrated plot in this game as it could be (even despite all the cinematic inserts), but the environment itself and the music create an atmosphere that tells its own story without words. For example, one of my favorite locations, the planet Ness, where for centuries the onboard system of a spaceship that crashed a century ago with the voice of Alice from Yandex has lived for centuries: filled with cubic architecture and red plants, a broken world under a cyan sky with two suns; The European Dead Zone on the site of modern Germany, overgrown ruins with a church converted by a local sniper into a combat headquarters radio tower; foggy and uncomfortable fabulous Io with giant tree trunks in yellowish-gray soil, where a half-witted scientist lives with a violently robotic hand by the Vex … there are less than a dozen locations-planets and they are not too large (each can be crossed on a glider from edge to edge in twenty minutes), there are not so many characters with whom you can talk (usually one per planet) and their roles are exclusively utilitarian – to exchange resources for money or give a new assignment with interesting items as a reward – but all this works for immersion and over time, this strange world seems convincing and even logical. The Red Empire wants to gain immortality in order to bring its iron order to the unreasonable worlds, and the Hive arranges its rituals to nourish its deities and help them get into this world, not suspecting that they are being used; the homeless Fallen scatter to all planets from the Tangled Shore from the asteroid belt, and the main crime boss is very unhappy with the fact that the “elven prince” who has returned from oblivion is gathering an army of Scorned, listening to the whispers of a long-dead sister …

It seems as if this world lives on its own. Something is constantly happening around: from time to time ships appear from nowhere and squads of marauders land, flocks of some creatures fight with others, heavily armed fighters guard treasures that you can try to take away – and once again in ten to fifteen minutes something happens more interesting: open events in which anyone can take part. They are different on each planet, and each has a small background: the Cabal are going to carry out the extraction of resources or the Fallen are dropping a walking tank, you need to prevent them and pick up their reward at the end. And if you fulfill several hidden conditions (for example, do not be too lazy to shoot down one of the turntables while extracting resources in the EDZ), then the event will become more difficult and will be marked as heroic, which will increase the chance of getting something valuable after the battle.

Destiny 2 main locations

Plus, in addition to daily activities and all sorts of weekly tasks like hotspots or contracts, Destiny 2 has its own life thanks to the so-called seasons. Every three months, there are new types of individual tasks with a story background, which are designed to influence the world of the game. For example, last season it was the attack of the Vex, who teleported from the Garden of Salvation to the Moon and had to fight with them in order to destroy the copies of Infinite Mind created in the Forest of Simulation. This little story continues this season as the Cabal find Vex technology and are going to change the course of time to replay their defeat in the Red War. The new mode is available to everyone (but all sorts of goodies, as usual, cost money) and it is very difficult if you go through alone. In addition, during the seasonal holidays there is all sorts of moderate fun – for example, on Halloween you could run iterations of the Infinite Forest in the dark with hidden pumpkins and defeat a variety of opponents, all in carnival masks.

One of the fun things about the game is its deliberate “high fantasy” styling. The harsh goodies speak in chiseled phrases like “Go and fight, Guardian!”, “What are you whispering to the void? Does it answer you?” and stuff like that – extremely pretentious, GUARD. Go and fight the DARKNESS with the power of your inner LIGHT, GUARDIAN, I believe in you, GUARDIAN! The combination of such irrepressible pathos, knightly armor and the stern tone of the notable secondary characters of the plot, the serious lieutenant Zavala and the cold-blooded Ikora Ray, brings a smile.

But in general, there are funny and memorable characters here – for example, the cheerful and somewhat frivolous robot unicorn Cade-6, constantly in a good mood; the eternally irritated scientist Asher Mir, who in Russian dubbing sounds like Professor Legasov from “Chernobyl”; sarcastic Neuromatrix of the ship “Exodus” (“Something I got bored … kill everyone> :)”, “Captain, should I rename you Courier?”); an enthusiastic admirer of Osiris, brother Vance, in whose cell, if you try, you can collect a particularly interesting weapon – and the mysterious and imperious Osiris himself, in the Russian version voiced by the voice of the sultan from the Turkish TV series “The Magnificent Century”; Martian military artificial intelligence Rasputin, clattering something inarticulate majestic on scraps of Russian at the moment of launching weapons …

This is a whimsical world, woven from elements of classic science fiction about distant worlds and discoverers, heroic fantasy like “The Lord of the Rings”, old knightly novels and simple plot, but visually expensive action films. Even if the plot is not the most important thing here, on the whole, it is a large-scale, cinematic story with a slight admixture of understatement, a huge scope for action and research. And it is important that over time the game continues to develop and improve: during the release of the “Shadowkeep” add-on (the plot of which, by the way, I rather did not like – what happened was the Pyramids from other dimensions, super-civilizations like the Wanderer, but giving death instead of life? mystical-tragic intonation without specifics does not benefit the story) the developers made all the previous story content along with the game itself free, updated the armor and weapon modification system, added spectacular finishing techniques, each season has its own activity … world Destiny 2 is evolving and who knows what will happen next.

Such games will not last forever: someday it will become more difficult to find companions for the next raid into the depths of Mars on Savatuun fans, the servers will empty up to eleven people on the network, like poor Law Breakers, Bungie will announce the third part and come up with something completely different for it – but while the world of Guardians, Light and Darkness lives and grows.

Tens of thousands (right now – 70,500, this is the fifth place in the world on the Steam site) of people around the world harness their gliders, cross chasms, painstakingly select pieces of armor and customize power weapons, fight among themselves for awards and fight their way through hundreds of enemies on the plains Mercury, the ridges of the Moon, the docks in the middle of Titan’s ocean and the forests of the European Dead Zone. Time and time again, they defeat the Cabal psions on Nessus and the Hive in the caverns of Mars, spend gold dust on new clothes, cover each other in races through the dark halls of the Panopticon, and dance around chests with successfully obtained loot.

Nice game with great art style, unusual fantasy world, smooth and adaptive gameplay (movement speed is not as important as aiming accuracy and battle rhythm), space to explore and hundreds of little secrets that are interesting to reveal (I opened all the chests and lost sectors on all planets and at the maximum reached 934 power levels, starting from the 20th). At first, it may be a little difficult to enter all the diversity, but over time everything becomes easier and you plunge into this world with your head, learn every path without a map, remember where and in what quantities enemies usually appear and even the golden chests of the region you begin to find intuitively.

Nick Koriagin

Self-taught artist, writing his first book, dreaming of bigger things & drawing something he enjoys with passion and hope to get better in skills.

<strong>ART COMMISSIONS OPEN</strong>: If you need some <a href="https://www.fiverr.com/share/3KRl49">stylized cartoon art</a>, I’d be just happy to work with you.