Destiny 2: The Witch Queen Review: A Step in the Right Direction

 So if  you have read my past posts about Destiny 2 or really heard any honest yet faithful Destiny fan, it should be no surprise that Destiny is a hard game to love not only privately but also publicly. Privately, many a player such as myself can play the game but think often at times "Man I could be playing Final Fantasy 14 or ANY other game right now but I just want to play this right now and use space magic to find a new awesome space gun to fight space monsters". Publicly, anyone finds out you're a Destiny fan then it's like people want to conduct an intervention to help you with your unfortunate fascination with this game. 

To be honest I get where they come from in not understanding how anyone could be a fan of the game. Since the original Destiny launch back in 2014 the game has not had the best reputation. Players would leave in droves either due to the incredibly disappointing and frustrating RNG loot system, the daunting amount of grind players would have to go through for a single piece of loot and, probably the most important and critical part of Destiny: the cost.

Destiny is not a cheap game to enjoy and that is because Bungie in their delivery of this new content has always had a problem meeting a cost-to-content ratio. I could go out and pay 30 to 40 dollars for a new game or an expansion to an MMO like Final Fantasy 14 and feel that it was money well spent for what I was getting. One could even say that putting down 30 dollars for something like Cyberpunk 2077 right now would even be a worth while investment because the game has been going through so many updates and improvements that it slowly but surely is beginning to look and feel like the game that CD Project Red promised back during development. Destiny, no matter what expansion, has always had that problem for me and many other players. 

I will repeat something I have told multiple people and even written before: I paid 6 dollars and 40 cents for Destiny 2 at launch and at the end felt like I had paid too much for this game.

Cut to years later and most Destiny 2 "expansions" have either been hit or miss with only Destiny 2's Forsaken being a clear hit with all other content drops being mostly misses with the community at large.

However, with all of that said, I recently played the first two Legendary Campaign missions of the Witch Queen expansion that Bungie lets you play for free even without having purchased the expansion and even in those first two missions I was curious and got slightly hooked into what the Witch Queen was selling.It was clear that this was not just another Destiny expansion from the past, not even Beyond Light was compared to this. There was clearly something different about this expansion and I liked what I was seeing. So I played the free stuff, stayed on the free side of things for a little bit and waited for reviews to come in. Everyone, even casual fans really liked this expansion. It was refreshing, the legendary difficulty was enjoyable and the delivery of the story was engaging and constant. Savathun was a clever and cunning villain to go against and not a 'been there-done that' antagonist like any other main antagonist before. This was not another Fallen "Kell of Kells" situation where some random Eliksni was claiming to be the real deal here no the real deal is here and she has a power only a few chosen have in the universe and it really hooked people in to the story of this expansion. 

After biting the bullet and purchasing the expansion I can safely say that this has been the best Destiny experience I have had with paid content since Forsaken as the Witch Queen succeeds in telling a solid story with an engaging mystery that can hook in most if not all of the Destiny fandom. 

A Worthy Opponent

 

The key to any good vs evil story is the evil; the villain is key. Much like Batman's Joker or Sherlock's Moriarty, the Guardians have Savathun and I think she is more worthy of an opponent to the Vanguard and our guardian than any villain that has come before.  Oryx was an interesting villain, sure, but Savathun is more compelling as she has secrets that could potentially unveil greater secrets to the Destiny universe that any one who has followed the Destiny lore would find  jaw dropping. On top of that she has been name dropped throughout Destiny 2 content since vanilla Destiny 2. There was a whole strike named after her and our once Hunter turned Awoken/Hive hybrid member of the Vanguard, Eris Morn, has mentioned her many times as the sort of greatest member of the Hive since Oryx. In this way, Savathun is the Destiny equivalent of Thanos from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Savathun, from the start, is cunning and clever, leading our Guardian to key moments and events that we cannot be sure if we got there by our own means and motivations or was part of Savathun's plan all along. In many moments throughout the story she is either the most honest person in this universe or the greatest liar. Because of this, there is this sort of doubt that built within me as I was playing the story as the sequence of events I experienced was either a facade or real. Moments where my Guardian interacted with her she was either being the most honest person in the whole universe or the greatest liar and it really did help make Savathun a much more complex threat to me but also to the world as a whole.

What also makes her a unique and ultimately greater threat than any "Kell of Kells" we have seen come and go many times before, she has our power: The Light. The Light which makes every Guardian super powered and able to do things only other beings could only dream of, she has that now. Which means that she can be killed but she can also be brought back along with her new Hive army the Lucent Brood. Ghosts, which are the sort of Guardian Angels to Guardians that can bring them back to life, have chosen Hive soldiers as their would be Guardians and have invigorated them with the power of the light as well. So the threat that we face is not some new faction of the cabal with bigger weapons but an army with our weapons and our power. 

Which then leads to the great mystery of the expansion: How? How was Savathun able to take the Light and use it for herself and her army?

The Game is Afoot!

 

There is an old saying that is used to described trigger happy protagonists say like Rambo or Fox McCloud from Star Fox "Shoot first, ask questions later." here I think the way to describe this expansion is "Ask questions first, shoot later."

Past Destiny expansions have absolutely played to a song and dance everyone would be familiar with from the moment you start up a new one. You would be thrown into the action, take out a few enemies, hear some dialogue, have the (not so) dramatic reveal to who the main enemy is and do missions with little to no variety and also be stopped dead in your tracks in the progress of the main story to farm strikes.

Cure of Osiris, House of Wolves, Rise of Iron and even Forsaken did this to a point that anyone familiar with these expansions would know how the next expansion would play out. The Witch Queen, for the better, follows it's own path of telling the story and laying out the expansion before the player. It does not feel like a traditional Destiny style campaign. This is due to the expansion being laid out more like a mystery the player has to solve as opposed to an obstacle that is needed to be taken down with a couple of bullets and space magic. Sure there is a great deal of that but it is not the primary means in which players have to use in order to triumph over Savathun in the battle to stop her grand scheme.  

Almost each mission not only moves the narrative forward but also expands the understanding of the Destiny universe as a whole and it can really draw players in both new and old to unravel some of the great burning questions of the Destiny universe. For the purpose of trying to stay away from spoilers, there's one quest line in particular that answers some questions about what happened during the key apocalyptic event known as The Collapse. For the longest time, anyone who was familiar with it could do a TL;DR version and say "Traveler came and saved humanity" but this one particular quest makes it clear that there is so much more to the story than anyone new or familiar with the Destiny lore than what would be believed. 

Which is where I have to give big points to Bungie for this aspect of the Witch Queen. Too often have I felt that the campaigns to these expansions had a threat not as big as was to be believed and did nothing to expand upon the already mysterious and ambiguous history of this world that is supposedly dripping with a great deal of history and puts it front and center to reveal that there is more to the world of Destiny than what players like me have supposedly known as gospel for the last several years of this franchise. 

Build-Your-Own

 

The Witch Queen has added in a new feature for acquiring new loot: Weapon Crafting (or Shaping if you want to be technical) a new system in which it allows players to take new weapons or current weapons we can earn and instead of relying on the RNG gods to smile upon us after Nightfall or activity loot drops to give us the Hakke shotgun with our dream perk combinations, we can make those god rolls ourselves.....and it's not perfect.

At first, I liked the idea of crafting my own arsenal with this new system and using it for my ideal load-outs and PVE content but I just found it to have the same problems that the franchise has had for me since Destiny 1: Too much grind and not satisfying enough. 

The way in which you can craft these weapons is by acquiring weapon shapes(or patterns) to some of these new weapons but in order to do so you need to find Deepsight Resonant weapon drops (Weapons with red frames around them) that come with currency material rewards for earning a certain amount of XP  which will allow you to then earn the ability to craft said weapon and make it your own with perks and characteristics you prefer in the weapon you made. 

Once again though, it is a grind-fest. In order to have a bigger range of access to the perks you want to use on these shotguns, auto-rifles and SMGs you need to level these guns up and then take them back to the Weapon Crafting artifact and use materials found from other Deepsight Resonant weapons and craft either enhanced versions of familiar perks like Killing Wind or Kill-Clip and you can choose to either enhance them or replace them with other more engaging  perks.

Like I said: Grind Fest. While I do like the idea of it I do feel that the implementation of it does leave much to be desired as we as players have a lot of grinding to do on a daily basis/weekly basis and the fact that these crafted weapons ask us to do EVEN MORE grinding it becomes a problem and the easier choice is just to hope the RNG gods smile upon us and give us a Funnelweb SMG or Krat (Krait?) Autorifle with the kind of perks and traits we would want and not grind out the materials and specific weapon drops to EVENTUALLY get the weapon we want. 

Endgame

So the biggest thing about any Destiny expansion is the endgame. What do we do when all the main shooting and looting is done and what is there to do after words. 

This time around I think the Endgame is okay. For starters, there's still more questions to be answered about Savathun and what she knows about these major moments in the Destiny universe. These questions are answered through side-quests and missions to help understand the Throne World that Savathun created, how her Hive became Light Wielders and how she was able to lure away the Traveler. 

Each week we can go on a small side-quest into her mind-scape that Savathun herself left behind in the event should we have defeated her.There is also a new weekly horde-ish mode called the Well-Spring which every day changes whether we do the Attack variant of the mission or the Defend variant and this is done in order to continue to find Throne World specific gear like weapons and armor. 

There's also tough side-missions and a new raid as of writing this review, and while I will not talk about it because I gave up Destiny raiding a long time ago, the community response has been positive for the most part so if you like Raiding then good news.

There is also the ability to replay the campaign missions through match-making but the twist is that you have to unlock the activity by gaining a certain level of reputation with the Throne World NPC. It is a cool idea to replay the campaign missions with a high difficulty and with a fire-team at your side but I think it should have been something that should have been unlocked after beating the campaign initially. 

There is also one particular end-game mission that I have to dock some points for the overall content package as it does something I have seen Destiny do far too often. A mission that can allow a fireteam to join in but there are no matchmaking capabilities what so ever. 

Which I do not understand. For a game that has tried so hard to unite the community with cross-save and cross-play across all major platforms why does that same game not allow match-making for all activities? It doesn't lessen the experience and if anything matchmaking in these activities could possibly lead to new static fireteams being made and clans joined.To me, it seems ridiculous for a game that has been described as a "shared-world experience" and limit how much "sharing" can actually happen. 

Void 3.0 aka S'plosion the Subclass

In the Beyond Light expansion, Destiny introduced the Stasis sub-class and with it came the means of customizing certain perks and abilities within the sub-class. Players could complete quests in order to gain Memory Fragments and be allowed to augment the Stasis class with things like increased Recovery or increased slide distance or the ability to spawn Stasis lance throwables to freeze other enemies at a distance.It was a fun way to change how the sub-class would interact with the enemies and the world around the player. Void 3.0 seeks to do what Stasis did back in Beyond Light and unfortunately it has created a huge disadvantage for every other sub-class in the game.

Void 3.0 is essentially an explosion based sub-class now because the Void subclasses now can be granted the abilities to blow up enemies when they are defeated by Void based abilities like a Warlock's grenade or Titan's Mini-Shield lob. Enemies can be hit by a Void based de-buff that creates a small explosion when hit with other Void offensive abilities or void energy based weaponry. The problem that this creates is that there is truly no reason to equip any other sub-class or energy based weapons when it comes to the new Void class. Pair any Void sub-class with the Graviton Lance exotic pulse rifle and you are pretty much ready to go for any open world or match-made activity. 

The result of Void 3.0 has unfortunately made things like strikes, nightfalls, gambit (if you still play that) and anything else easier because everyone will now run Void sub-classes for the greater advantages easier and less engaging. Strikes in the past have had a problem that if a very enthusiastic Guardian would go on ahead of the strike they would essentially destroy everything in their path leaving nothing for everyone to do who fell behind or couldn't match the speed of said Guardian. Now with Void 3.0 that makes things less engaging and far too easier for one guardian to show up, toss a void grenade ability and destroy the entire room of enemies.I have seen kill counts go down significantly and the time it takes to complete a strike go down greatly as well. 

However, it is not entirely the fault of Void 3.0. 

Too Easy and Too Much Money 

As Destiny 2 has gone on through the years, our abilities being further powered through new power levels, exotic weapons and armor to continue increasing our abilities to cause chaos and destruction upon the poor enemies of the Traveler, Destiny 2 has become far too easy with the content it currently has on offer. 

The only real challenges seem to reside in Nightfall Vanguard Strikes, Raids, Gambit (to an extent) and the PVP side of Destiny. Nightfall strikes at even higher power levels, Raids and certain missions in the game are virtually inaccessible through matchmaking restrictions and fireteam requirements. So what that leaves is the bare-bones Nightfall strikes, weekly vanguard strikes and activities you may have access to with or without the Season Pass. Which in turn means that activities that challenge your powers are behind certain requirements that you can't meet and leaves easy to complete and easy to access content. 

Bungie has charged us so much money to try and squeeze the most out of the player financially and the player has tried so hard to squeeze as much as they can out of Destiny through pay walls and requirements for activities and content that I say although Witch Queen is a good expansion it still does not fix great fundamental problems within the Destiny experience as a whole. 

While the Witch Queen was worth the cost of admission for the quality of the campaign, the story and some of the endgame content I still find myself in this position that hate the requirements to jump into this content. I understand it costs a lot of money to keep Destiny running the way it does but the amount charged is absolutely ridiculous. The seasonal content that has been released since Forsaken is not worth the 10 dollar asking price and it never will be in my mind's eye. 

It's so frustrating though because when Forsaken hit - it came with all the seasons they planned to release. Season of the Drifter, Season of the Forge and Season of the Opulent were all part of the Forsaken expansion when you bought it. You didn't have to buy the expansion and then buy the subsequent Seasons you got it with the expansion and the fact they abandoned this model of the seasonal content disappoints me to no end. 

That would really give the bang for your buck for the expansions if you knew after the initial content drop there is weeks of new content following behind it with the Seasons. Instead Bungie has continued to take this approach of charging you for the burger and the napkin along with it. 

IN CONCLUSION

With all of that said my ultimate conclusion on The Witch Queen is that this is a great expansion to the Destiny 2 content offering that Bungie has released with great quality of story telling and overall expansion based experience. Destiny as a whole is a story with long thing strings connecting to different pieces of story and lore but Witch Queen for the first time feels like it's connecting these pieces together in a satisfying and meaningful way for the story that is Destiny. 

Should you be a casual or dedicated player of Witch Queen you can't go wrong with this offering.