Fan service or storytelling done right?
Nearly a month on from its release, I have finally completed the campaign of Destiny 2’s latest addition to its ever growing catalogue of expansions; The Witch Queen. And, major spoilers for the rest of this review, the storytelling is amazing.
Most will probably be thinking that taking this long to complete the main campaign must mean some serious content to sink your teeth into. Well, not quite. The reason it has taken this long? Logistics. Bungie quoted a completion time of around 7 to 9 hours, but this was NOT our experience!
With the new campaign mode, Bungie introduced a feature not seen before in its campaign missions, an option to play each mission on a Legendary setting. This option guaranteed greater rewards for each section completed and an exotic if the whole campaign is completed this way. The option itself meant the missions are harder to complete, enemies are tougher and certain areas have a ‘wipe’ mechanic. This means if playing as a fireteam, teammates can be revived only once and each teammate can only revive a teammate once. (This inevitably lead to the phrase “Nope, just wipe” being used all too often with my fireteam).
This new dynamic makes completing missions and progressing through the story hugely more satisfying than the normal affair of mostly just breezing through to the endgame activities. However, this is also partly why it’s taken this long. Having to arrange times for everyone to be on, so we can continue as a team, with the trials and tribulations of life inevitably getting in the way. But this is where it shined in my opinion. The team play and progressing together, sharing the ups and downs was awesome. The satisfaction of completing that mission that had alluded us, was, and I’m not afraid to say this, emotional at times. We also discovered that when the shit hits the fan and we have to concentrate, we are like a well oiled machine and our comms are on point!
Another thing The Witch Queen does amazingly well, is tell a rich, deep and at times, WTF story. I’m not kidding, there was some serious jaw dropping story revelations throughout the campaign. These moments were handled so well and really added scope and depth to a storyline, that Bungie has been planning to play out over the next few expansions to come. Judging by the final cutscene, we have a LOT more to come.
I had serious doubts when Bungie announced that Destiny 2 will become an ongoing live service that will simply be added to in the form of expansions, and we weren’t likely to see an official ‘Destiny 3’ anytime in the distance future. This idea didn’t sit well with me, as I thought they’d run out of steam and the story would basically become something that wasn’t important. I’ll simply say, I was wrong.
That’s not to say that some of their ideas haven’t missed the mark. Some of the ‘Season’ content that they have added in the past became rather stale and quite often a rinse and repeat situation. So much so that I actually stopped playing Destiny 2 sometime in the middle of September last year. And in an attempt to find a game that my friends and I could play together, picked it up again around November. This was an inadvertent stroke of genius on my part. It allowed me to go back and complete multiple seasonal content, which varied the activities and broke up the grindfest and repetitive nature that made me stop playing in the first place. Seriously, if you’re finding Destiny 2 a little repetitive or lacking substance, take a break and come back in a few months after more seasons have been added. You won’t regret it.
I digress though. The Witch Queen is brillaint. The new Throne World area is varied and filled with secrets to uncover. The new activities won’t exactly bowl you over with innovation, but they’re meaty enough to keep you playing. The new weapon crafting system is pretty fun, although at the time of writing, Bungie is still promising a rework on how certain materials are obtained that are needed for weapon crafting. It allows you to put the perks you want on the guns you want.
Finally, I can’t mention The Witch Queen and its many new additions to the base game, without mentioning Void 2.0. Bungie have basically taken all perks and customisations from the Stasis subclass that came with last expansion; Beyond Light, and applied it to the Void subclass. And oh my gosh, has this made Void so much fun to use. I won’t go over everything they’ve done to it as that would be a whole article on its own. Suffice to say, it allows for some incredibly powerful buffs and character builds that, whilst not game breaking, certainly make you feel all powerful when attempting the harder endgame content.
The Witch Queen expansion has ticked all the boxes for me and Bungie are back on top form. After a rather wobbly effort in the form of Beyond Light I strongly recommend giving this a go. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. Remember, if the fun stops, have a break, maybe even a well known chocolate covered two (or four) fingered biscuit, and come back when more content has been added for you to get your chocolatey covered paws on. Seriously though, wash your hands first, you filthy animal.