Destiny 2

Thanks, didn't follow any of this!

 

FYI, destiny 2 anniversary thingy only provide 1 free activity. The new dungeon is only available as a paid dlc (so it will be platform locked. Instead of cross platform like season passes).

 

I think it provides besides a bunch of cosmetics, and mainly the new Gjallahorn dungeon I guess? I think the new dungeon you mean is a 2nd dungeon and coming later. I'm talking about the pay pack. The 6 man activity is free to all.

Basically if I understand:
30 th pack: Gjallahorn quest, new Dungeon (likely related)
Free to all: new 6 man activity, new weapons, sandbox update
Later: 2nd new dungeon you can buy ala cart for $5 or get by preordering Witch Queen deluxe (this one was why all the controversy as initially there was no ala cart option)

Bungie continues to make it confusing as hell to buy their product.

Oh well, it's not like I'm not going to buy new Destiny content. It was $22 with gamepass discount.

 

I actually don't mind paying them if the contents are cross platform. Like season passes.

As I play on pc, Xbox, playstation

 

The new free activity... Bungie no longer "veil" their exploitation of gambling and addiction... Their "laziness" also became more apparent

The new areas are disconnected. People simply teleport around. So I guess its easier to be worked on by multiple different teams.


The gameplay... Now it incorporate full on gambling wheel thingy. Complete with the usual gambling-like bleep blops sound.

 

PSA the witch Queen dlc, from the intro mission, doubled down on what makes destiny series bad, and removed things that made destiny campaign awesome.

For example

* do X on repeat for 3 times become repeat for 5 times and even for 10 times
* no set pieces
* must kill most enemies instead of just the commanders

 

So far the WQ Legendary difficulty campaign is pretty cool I guess. Gives a challenge and you dont just sleep through it. I have not completed the campaign yet.

Also seems they upped the visuals a little bit again (Series X). Which they seem to do every expansion. Some scenes are breathtaking. The "organic hive" environments remind me of the movie annihilation, which was under the skin creepy. I wonder if Bungie took inspiration.

 

To me they looks like They reused the organic hive environment from old dlc. Merged it with other dlc with nature and verticality.

On pc theres downgrades and upgrades. NPCs like the one on the 1st new hub have low res textures. The realtime shadows now cut off to only around 5 meters around the player in cutscene.

The hdr has been upgraded substantially. Now it no longer suffer from black crush.

The challenge in the legend difficulty is not actually a challenge due to smarter enemies but simply because how annoying the game is designed.

• Repeat X every Y for Z times.

• High damage enemies that 1-2 hit kill you spawns with no indication. This is actually pretty strange. As destiny before WQ usually clearly telegraph these things via audio AND visual, and sometimes even encounter design AND level design.

Feels like WQ was made by a new group of people. That took the wrong lesson from older DLCs and forgetting the less obvious formulas that supports everything.

Makes me feels like when valve explains how they made l4d1 and l4d2, and compare it with what turtle rock did with back 4 blood.


Oh. And where's my setpieces bungie... It was always awesome! But I hadn't even encountered one in WQ

 

Turns out there are 1 boss battle where the enemy AI was substantially upgraded. Feels more like a halo AI than destiny dumb AI.

This makes me even more curious why bungie didn't use that kind of AI for more encounters. It was fun and makes the player experience that the bosses are smarter than the dumb peons