Let me start off this review with a Reddit post that is currently gaining a lot of attention over on the Destiny The Game subreddit. It is a note written by a user to Activision’s CEO Robert A. Kotick and is a really strong representation of how a large majority of the Destiny player/community feels toward the direction that Destiny 2 is taking.
Robert,
The latest Destiny 2 “DLC” is not acceptable. Going off the main threads on Destiny’s forums, Reddit and the YouTube creator space Bungie has squandered our trust, our money and your future income.
The campaign is too short, too rehashed and reused, and too empty at 2 hours to be considered a paid DLC. The “Infinite Forest” tagline is not only not infinite, it’s literally unplayable outside of the missions we aren’t even allowed to select and replay. The “Forge” isn’t a forge, it’s a glorified NPC that hands out lack luster fixed-roll weapons for grindy gameplay. PvPs balance team just released a “delete button” in the form of an exotic weapon they obviously didn’t test so what are you paying them for?
Microtransactions for loot that should be part of the quest line is insulting. Charging for anything extra when this is the final main product is insulting.
You are not responsible for coding this game but you are the publisher. You are the bankroll and you have stock holders to answer to. Hold your developer responsible for the contract they signed and do what you have to and right the ship.
Here’s what we want: Immediately remove “Bright Engrams” and “Eververse” from D2 until a time where the base game is worthy of extra paid content. Create a roadmap of what we can expect for content in the next year, and give us details on how long story content will take to complete before we buy the package. Force the PvP team to do monthly balance passes and actually test what they put out.
You are not even half way through your “10 year plan” and my clan is downloading The Division of all things to play its free content a day after your major release. This saddens me to no end because Destiny is my hobby. It brings me joy when it’s good and it kills me inside when it’s bad. Bungie is taking us for granted and dragging their loyal fans through the dirt. This is un-acceptable.
Sincerely,
The Lighthouse Defenders Clan. People who’s hours alone in the full Destiny franchise approach 6 figures.
Bungie has notoriously garnered a reputation for shipping out broken or incomplete content ever since Destiny first launched in 2014. With D2’s release just a few months ago, fans have been crying out for major changes to improve the quality of life within the game and pleaded with Bungie to stop putting so many desired pieces of gear within their in-game Eververse store. With so many amazing items tucked behind a paywall, it’s painfully obvious which direction Bungie and Activision want to take this franchise that at one time had massive MMO potential. Unfortunately, Curse of Osiris is the worst so far and offers very little return to those willing to invest their time and money into the base expansion alone, without spending extra cash for Eververse items.
The campaign of Curse of Osiris features the first ever inclusion of the legendary Warlock Osiris, while offering very little character development in the two to three-hour story that comes with him. The best part is probably his Ghost, the first female companion of Light we have ever had. Voiced by the amazing Morena Baccarin, she delivers some of the best dialogue in the game so far, but really that’s about it.
Brother Vance returns to help guide the Guardian player on their quest to save all of existence, but this time he just feels a little… off. The mysterious Osiris follower is no longer a well-composed and stoic vendor, but now an overly energetic fanboy that acts as if he has been drinking coffee and nothing else for two days straight.
As far as the new Patrol Zone, it’s small. Very small. So small in fact that it is easily the smallest in the game as a whole, which is really harsh on your wallet when you consider that the expansion is just $15 cheaper than the whole base game right now.
The Public Space is just a bunch of reused assets from the Lighthouse from the first game, which is fine considering they are still the same space on Mercury. There just isn’t really much to do here except a puzzle or two, which are both boring and easy to figure out in a short span of time.
The Public Events offer the same rewards as anywhere else, and there is only one new PE to play on Mercury, you know, because its super small. There are plenty of new and old Exotic items to earn, but you will get burnt out fast playing the same one on Mercury maybe 3 or 4 times.
Some of the weapons and gear are nice to look at, but offer nothing in the way of stat or ability boosts (at least nothing noticeable anyway), with many of the weapons and armors being re-skins, again. Nothing worth grinding for offers any long-lasting replay value to the game, which is where D2 continues to drown itself again and again with each and every passing day.
All of the enemies are pretty much identical, with a handful getting a few touch-ups here and there but once again its the same old Vex with exploitive weaknesses in the front of their bodies. Hit them all in the juice box and you take them down. Pretty simple, pretty boring.
Look, there really isn’t much to say here because there isn’t much to CoO at all. It’s lazy, not worth the time or money, and does nothing to enhance replayability. If anything, it really puts into perspective where Bungie’s priorities are. If you are planning on picking up the game at some point, you might as well read up on how D1 played out and wait until next September when Bungie begins cleaning up their act and implementing quality changes to their game. By this time, the entire game will be discounted and you can enjoy it, along with all of the expansions, at a discount with all the quality of life fixes Bungie removed from their franchise at D2’s launch. Disappointing, boring, uninspired (I really can’t use that word enough), and infuriating, it’s clear to many that Bungie is more interested in making money off of young kids begging their parents for more in-game currency to gamble their way into addiction in an attempt to earn the coolest looking gear that D2 has to offer. It feels immoral to ship content this way and to center it around a bunch of scummy microtransactions. Breaks my heart that this feels like the best we will ever get out of a developer that has fallen so far with a franchise that had so much promising potential.
Current List of Valid Complaints:
- Content is “walled off” behind a pay wall, such as being able to play Prestige challenges and even earning quest rewards, such as the Exotic Raid Shotgun. This means a large portion of content previously available to players who owned the base game have now been locked out, unless they pay an additional $20.00. This also means that Bungie has effectively locked out players from earning the Destiny 2 Platinum achievement, “The Prestige”, unless players fork over the extra $20.
- The “Infinite Forest” is not re-playable, and is only accessible during CoO Campaign Missions, which are not re-playable. Meaning this whole area can’t be visited on Patrol and is not freely explorable.
- Players feel “conned” that they paid for an “expansion” that feels more like a subscription to keep playing, when the content feels like it is not worth $20.00. While the price and experiences are subjective, I can personally tell you that this DLC is absolutely not even close to worth $20.00 USD.
- Releasing a DLC so soon after a game launch feels scummy, considering how shallow and unfulfilled the base game is. The DLC does next to nothing to improve upon these areas and instead uses its first chance to entice players to spend more money for items that were largely featured in trailers and Twitch Streams from Bungie.
- The Eververse has a larger loot table than any other aspect of Destiny 2.
- Bungie freely tosses around terms like “infinite”, “DLC”, and “Expansion”, when the truth of the matter is that the size and scope of their latest content release is on par with House of Wolves, one of the most poorly received updates to Destiny since 2014.
- There are new items to earn, however there has been no comment from Bungie on how players are to store these items. The in-game Vault is small, unmanageable and incapable of housing even the gear from the base game.
- Losing unique Exotic weapons and armor from D1 due to the events of the D2 campaign led players to believe this was due to new weapons and gear being created for D2. While this is partly true, the amount of reused and returning D1 Exotics now all but eclipse the total “new” Exotics weapons and armor (excluding Eververse items). This raises the question, “why did we lose it in the first place? Many are speculating if the plan all along was for Bungie to spoon-feed players content they previously earned and call it “new” in later DLC and expansions.
- Bugged weapons that are literally game-breaking are not really a make or break deal, but it does raise questions about Bungie’s level of quality assurance nearly 4 years into their franchise. Mistakes happen, sure. But the bigger concern is how Bungie handles them. Typically when a weapon or piece of armor is over-powered, it gets nerfed to a point where it becomes practically unusable, and this affects both PvP and PvE. Apparently Bungie’s PvP and PvE sandbox are incapable of differing from each other, meaning a change in one heavily impacts the other.
Prometheus Lens shipped with a bug. We’ll address the issue and talk solutions in ‘This Week At Bungie’ on the blog.
— DeeJ (@DeeJ_BNG) December 6, 2017
This list is just the short-end of things I noticed that keep me from wanting to touch this franchise again. There are countless other issues that plague this game, and Bungie has promised to improve some of them over time. But how many years does it take for a AAA developer under a massive powerhouse of publisher to get their act together? Why are these even problems in the first place? Why are we, as consumers and players, putting up with this?
It’s hard to say what the motive is here, but it wreaks of greed and undermines the player’s experience while disrespecting their time. Everyone wants someone to blame, and it’s hard to figure out just how to feel when something you love and wish to see succeed fails so miserably over and over and over again. It’s certainly clear that the Halo days are over, with many of the original devs no longer under Bungie’s roof. What we have now is a team of devs and managers that is simply incapable of maintaining consistent transparency, often times coming off like straight-up lies with their over-promised and over-hyped undeliverables. Bungie is not who they once were, and their true colors of intent shine more brightly than a Guardian’s light. It’s just unfortunate that with each and every passing release, it seems more and more that Bungie only cares about making a quick buck at the expense of their hardcore fanbase, which is dwindling faster than ever. Sure, you could say that this is largely subjective but let’s face it, perception is reality, and truth of the matter is, it shows. And it breaks my heart.
Curse of Osiris is a snooze fest that is hardly worth your time, let alone your money. Filled with short and uninspired events, with returning characters that you hardly know and barely care about, this is one expansion that you’re probably best to avoid. At this point, if you have not purchased Destiny 2 you might as well just throw in the towel. Your money is spent better literally anywhere else.
