DESTINY 2

[benjipwns]

i love how it's just this linear path that you can't speed up or anything except mashing esc on the cutscenes, which doesn't help for all the scripted crap or when you're hurt and plodding along a path for what feels like an hour, also how it just warps you to new parts as you hit the triggers rather than being a real connecting scene/map switch

soooo i dunno, mebbe at $5

not doing anything wins again

[MMaRsu]

I'm like an hour and a half in and holy shit this campaign is dull

Same I streamed a bit on my twitch channel but wasnt too impressed.

Like I said in the stream if the game is about loot then why not showcase that in the first five minutes?

[CatsCatsCats]

Oh it’s out? Thought it the 8th for some reason — eta oh you must just mean the original campaign or something

[seagrams hotsauce]

i love how it's just this linear path that you can't speed up or anything except mashing esc on the cutscenes, which doesn't help for all the scripted crap or when you're hurt and plodding along a path for what feels like an hour, also how it just warps you to new parts as you hit the triggers rather than being a real connecting scene/map switch

soooo i dunno, mebbe at $5

not doing anything wins again

Man, when it turned into MGSV for like half an hour I almost lost it

[demi]

[CatsCatsCats]

I’m biased since I already paid for this but that looks hawwwt to me

[seagrams hotsauce]

I finished the campaign. What a weird fucking game. Every level basically boils down to walking down a hallway for a few minutes while expository dialogue plays, clearing a few waves of baddies that spawn out of monster closets, and then doing that three or four more times. I had heard people praise the 'lore' of the game before, but there was literally nothing in the story that pulled me in or that I cared about since the whole game is so aggressively generically video-gamey. The art is impressive from a technical standpoint I guess, and it performed really well no matter what was going on on screen, but Jesus Christ is it flat. The whole art direction feels like a director in Hollywood asked his prop guy to design him a fake alien game for a cutaway shot, and then the guy got carried away and spent 300 million bucks on it

[kingv]

It sounds like Warmind actually slowed down the grind considerably... that seems like an odd choice...

[toku]

I finished the campaign. What a weird fucking game. Every level basically boils down to walking down a hallway for a few minutes while expository dialogue plays, clearing a few waves of baddies that spawn out of monster closets, and then doing that three or four more times. I had heard people praise the 'lore' of the game before, but there was literally nothing in the story that pulled me in or that I cared about since the whole game is so aggressively generically video-gamey. The art is impressive from a technical standpoint I guess, and it performed really well no matter what was going on on screen, but Jesus Christ is it flat. The whole art direction feels like a director in Hollywood asked his prop guy to design him a fake alien game for a cutaway shot, and then the guy got carried away and spent 300 million bucks on it

Literally all the "interesting" bits of lore are relegated to armor fluff and D1 Grim cards. All of that stuff was written by the head bungie writer dude who quit/was fired before D1 even shipped when he had this big world bible for the story that never happened. Him and a couple other fantasy novel writers (one of them was a goon who has a book series now).

Bungie doesn't give a fuck about any of that  or the nerds that like it so we basically just get big bad alien dude talking mean with a lot of bass in their voice that dies quickly everytime. Massive plotholes, things just fucking happen, nothing ever gets explained in any sort of meaningful way.

The strangest thing about...all of this is you can't even figure out what Bungie is focused on right now. Everything they do is a fucking mess. Story is a mess, infrastructure playing catch up to D1 still, pvp still sucks, still only one raid.

I have no idea what the big update in the fall is gonna but I'm 100% certain it's gonna be a disappointment or delayed...probably both.

[Skullfuckers Anonymous]

Got it through the Humble Monthly and have been playing it the last few days. I'm surprised how little content there is and that you need to level up to 15 to do any of the coop content besides the same 2-3 public events.

I'm at the final mission where you are forced to drive the tank and I think I'm done with the game; the tank controls are awful and there's no way around it because your regular weapons do no damage to some of the other vehicles. Is there any reason for me to go on?

[CatsCatsCats]

Haven’t gotten around to Warmind yet, any impressions?

[benjipwns]

I finished the campaign. What a weird fucking game. Every level basically boils down to walking down a hallway for a few minutes while expository dialogue plays, clearing a few waves of baddies that spawn out of monster closets, and then doing that three or four more times. I had heard people praise the 'lore' of the game before, but there was literally nothing in the story that pulled me in or that I cared about since the whole game is so aggressively generically video-gamey. The art is impressive from a technical standpoint I guess, and it performed really well no matter what was going on on screen, but Jesus Christ is it flat. The whole art direction feels like a director in Hollywood asked his prop guy to design him a fake alien game for a cutaway shot, and then the guy got carried away and spent 300 million bucks on it

Literally all the "interesting" bits of lore are relegated to armor fluff and D1 Grim cards. All of that stuff was written by the head bungie writer dude who quit/was fired before D1 even shipped when he had this big world bible for the story that never happened. Him and a couple other fantasy novel writers (one of them was a goon who has a book series now).

Bungie doesn't give a fuck about any of that  or the nerds that like it so we basically just get big bad alien dude talking mean with a lot of bass in their voice that dies quickly everytime. Massive plotholes, things just fucking happen, nothing ever gets explained in any sort of meaningful way.

The strangest thing about...all of this is you can't even figure out what Bungie is focused on right now. Everything they do is a fucking mess. Story is a mess, infrastructure playing catch up to D1 still, pvp still sucks, still only one raid.

For reference:
https://kotaku.com/the-messy-true-story-behind-the-making-of-destiny-1737556731

How did such an ambitious game wind up with such a bare-bones plot? Why did Bungie seemingly change so much of the story before it shipped? And how did it ship in a state that required so much tweaking after it launched? What really happened behind the scenes of Destiny?

...

the story that has emerged is one of a studio that was overwhelmed by a sudden reboot, a ruthless production schedule, and a number of other debilitating factors including the technical challenges of a brand new game engine. Bungie’s last Halo game, Halo Reach, had come out in 2010. The studio had been working on its next big thing at least since then. Despite that, much of Destiny as we know it today wasn’t actually conceived until 2013, a year before it shipped.

In the summer of 2013, just over a year before Destiny came out, the story got a full reboot, according to six people who were there. Bungie ditched everything Joe Staten and his team had written, reworking Destiny’s entire structure as they scrapped plot threads, overhauled characters, and rewrote most of the dialogue. The decision was made against Staten’s wishes, sources say. Destiny project lead Jason Jones and the rest of senior leadership were unhappy with the writing team’s supercut, and their reaction was to scrap it all.

The pre-reboot Destiny had way more of a focus on story than the actual game wound up having. “Story missions [before the reboot] always began with a Communique from a character,” said a source. “They were 30-45 second cutscenes of the NPC setting up the mission context. Osiris announcing a dramatic discovery about the Vex and asking you to dig up an ancient relic on Mars, or the Crow calling for help from the middle of a firefight with Fallen on Venus. And then every mission ended with a full cutscene, three to five minutes.”

So in July of 2013, Bungie’s leadership decided to totally reboot Destiny’s story. They kept much of the lore and mythology—the Traveler, the idea of Guardians, enemy races like Cabal and Vex—but they overhauled Staten’s entire plot, according to the people who spoke to me for this piece.
...
Joe Staten left the company during the mid-summer reboot, although Bungie didn’t announce his departure until September, 2013. Two sources say the parting was not amicable, and when I reached out to him, Staten declined to comment for this article.

One source said after they got the extension, the studio’s priority was to polish and perfect the gameplay: how the primary thing you did in the game—shoot guns— felt, how public spaces would function, how encounters worked. They prioritized this instead of building a strong story; narrative took a back seat, as did the writers themselves. “The writing team Joe put together was ostracized,” said one person who worked on the game. “The story was written without writers.”

As if that wasn't enough:

Four sources pointed to Destiny’s technology—the tools they use to design levels, render graphics, and create content—as an inhibiting factor in the game’s development.

“Let’s say a designer wants to go in and move a resource node two inches,” said one person familiar with the engine. “They go into the editor. First they have to load their map overnight. It takes eight hours to input their map overnight. They get [into the office] in the morning. If their importer didn’t fail, they open the map. It takes about 20 minutes to open. They go in and they move that node two feet. And then they’d do a 15-20 minute compile. Just to do a half-second change.”

[demi]

Haven’t gotten around to Warmind yet, any impressions?

Story campaign is terribly short, like a literal TLDR

Mars area is better than Mercury. Some cool hidden stuff to find. Long quest line for the Sleeper Simulant. Escalation Protocol is mad fun, but unfortunately at this stage everyone is lowlevel so you need a lot of people. I think more people will do Escalation when they level up.

New guns seem ok (again they're mostly reskins, and feel just like every other gun). New exotics are cool, and Graviton Lance is nasty. Crimson got a buff and feels nice too.

Leveling up is fucked, and I think its super easy to fix.

[CatsCatsCats]

Just booted it up, good call on crimson, fucking shit up with it as voidwalker

[toku]

lol pvp

https://streamable.com/tskl1

[seagrams hotsauce]

so the toku i ran around emoting at wasn't u after all ;_;

[CatsCatsCats]

Yeah that was real short. Boss was pretty cool tho

[seagrams hotsauce]

yo MMrasu, you still playing this?

[demi]

Tomorrow, Bungie is having a stream to reveal (or tease) Year 2 in September.

https://twitter.com/Bungie/status/1003682817039929345

[toku]

no expectations

[demi]

https://twitter.com/Bungie/status/1004031902443900928

[CatsCatsCats]

Huh interesting hope it’s good

[Kurt Russell]

So Bungie are charging twice now.

Once for the expansion and once for a "season pass" to access content across the three seasons of the new expansion.

$60 x 2

 

[toku]

Looks cool but I have zero faith in bungie at this point.

[Skullfuckers Anonymous]

So Bungie are charging twice now.

Once for the expansion and once for a "season pass" to access content across the three seasons of the new expansion.

$60 x 2

 

Pretty sure they did the same thing for Destiny 1.

[Kurt Russell]

Pretty sure they did the same thing for Destiny 1.

Nope, not at all. The seasonal content was paid for by cosmetic purchases and drip-fed out over the year. All you had to pay for was the expansion packs.

This time around, you need to pay for (in addition to Destiny 2 and the 2 x dlc packs):

Destiny 2 Forsaken - $40 (gives you the expansion, new world, new raid blah blah)
Destiny 2 Forsaken Annual Pass - $30 (gives you the drip-fed content and end game activity, such as the new raid lairs over the three seasons of Destiny 2 Forsaken)

In addition, you can't even play Forsaken without purchasing the other dlc. So you're in the hole for around $200 if you want the complete Year 2 Destiny 2 experience.

[Skullfuckers Anonymous]

Pretty sure they did the same thing for Destiny 1.

Nope, not at all. The seasonal content was paid for by cosmetic purchases and drip-fed out over the year. All you had to pay for was the expansion packs.

This time around, you need to pay for (in addition to Destiny 2 and the 2 x dlc packs):

Destiny 2 Forsaken - $60 (gives you the expansion, new world, new raid blah blah)
Destiny 2 Forsaken Season Pass - $60 (gives you the drip-fed content and end game activity, such as the new raid lairs)

In addition, you can't even play Forsaken without purchasing the other dlc. So you're in the hole for around $200 if you want the complete Year 2 Destiny 2 experience.

Oh wow, you're right. They're really trying to suck their fans dry.

Looks like it's $40 for each ($70 for both), not $60. Not that that's much better.

[Kurt Russell]

Yeah I screwed up the pricing. It's $70 / $80 for the complete expansion and a season pass (rather than $60 + $60 = $120).

Still can't believe that they are actually selling DLC for DLC now and everyone (including me probably) will buy it because we've already sunk a year into this thing.

[CatsCatsCats]

Oof

[demi]

They said there's going to be bundles closer to release for people who need the whole package

[toku]

https://twitter.com/gameinformer/status/1017076904963264518

you diving back in demi?

[demi]

I've been playing still, and already bought the special deluxe edition.

[Purple Filth]

Still need to get back to this 

[kingv]

Does anyone know enough about the forsaken annual pass yet to know if it is worth a shit?

[toku]

https://www.reddit.com/r/raidsecrets/comments/90ilwb/heard_yall_might_be_interested/

[demi]

Got it already

[toku]

was it hard? did you do it solo?

[demi]

It can be difficult, usually goes down to the wire. Didnt do it solo

[demi]

[toku]

bungie knows how to cut a nice trailer

[demi]

[Mistress 9]

Anyone been doing the Solstice of Heroes?

[demi]

Yes, I finished my Titan, doing my Warlock now

[Mistress 9]

Yes, I finished my Titan, doing my Warlock now

Are you actually enjoying it, or just being a completionist? Im still working on my first character, but its nice to have a reason to log in lately.

[demi]

completionist. its not worth doing 3 times. just do your main and leave it at that.

[Mistress 9]

completionist. its not worth doing 3 times. just do your main and leave it at that.

I probably won’t be able to even complete it on one, since my “clan” doesn’t log in anymore and I haven’t done one of the raid lairs. Oh well.

[toku]

I need to reinstall and catch up myself.

[Mistress 9]

What system do you play on toku?

[toku]

PC

[MMaRsu]

yo MMrasu, you still playing this?

Not really but I could be pursuaded to play some coop. I did like only the first few missions tho

[kingv]

Anyone been doing the Solstice of Heroes?

Is this basically like the book or whatever they had st the end of destiny 1 year 1?

I still haven’t even booted up warmind wouldn’t mind burning through the campaign though... if anyone plays on X1.

[demi]

[toku]

love my space dark elves

[demi]

that trailer is so fire.

also finished my warlock armor. need to do hunter now, but unfortunately i havent touched a hunger since launch, so i basically have to blaze through the story and get these subclasses RIP

[Mistress 9]

Damn Demi that fucking sucks.. I play on two consoles and I’m not going anywhere near making 3 characters on both. For now atleast. I had no problem doing this back in D1 but it’s such a chore to play D2’s story, despite there not being anywhere near as much to do. 

Re-doing those story missions solo for SoH has been fun though. Kinda makes you realize what they could’ve been.

[toku]

[Kurt Russell]

[kingv]

I finally knocked through warnind campaign last night.

It honestly wasn’t bad for what it was. Like most things destiny, however, I couldn’t repeat the events of the story with an sense of coherency.

I’m probably done with it until forsaken, since any progress I make now will be killed with the upgraded gear in about 2 weeks.

[demi]

Its almost here~

They announced on stream yesterday that on September 1 (a Saturday) for 24 HOURS everyone can play Gambit, the new mode in Forsaken.

Also the patch on Tuesday introduces the new weapon changes, the new TTK changes, everything. Maybe PVP will be fun again!

[demi]