Destiny 2 First Impressions

First Impressions

The Good, the bad, and the confusing; My time with Destiny 2.

By Josiah Sapp

Destiny 2 (D2) gets released worldwide on September 6, 2017. For a fan like me, this date can’t come fast enough. To satisfy those who are waiting and to stress test their servers, Bungie opens up their game for a brief moment in a beta test. It took roughly 5 hours of gameplay to experience everything the beta had to offer but it’s enough to get us all excited and gives us some impressions on what they did differently from their first installment.

The Good.

Right out of the gate, the first thing you notice is your new abilities. In Destiny 1 (D1) you have a rechargeable grenade and melee ability that you use in every combat situation. In D2, a third power is added to each class that specifically benefits that class’s play style further mixing up the combat sandbox. This is immensely satisfying and feels like we have more options to handle what the game throws at us. Need cover? The titan’s barrier has got you covered. Need to dive out of enemy fire? The hunter’s combat roll is nice in a pinch. Need healing? The warlock’s rift will patch you right up. All things adding to the way the game moves.

Movement is another big change. They added ledge grappling to the gameplay and it makes a big difference. If you’re falling just short of a ledge, more often than not you’ll grab that ledge instead of falling to your doom. It’s subtle, quick, and effective. It makes navigating jumping puzzles or getting away from enemies an enjoyable experience.

The Bad

If you present an entire skill tree of branching options for me to choose from, I’m gonna have fun selecting what best suits me. D2 no longer has flexible skill trees. Instead they introduced a locked, two play style skill tree system. You basically get two ways that you get to choose how you want to play a subclass. In D1 you had a wide open selection of perks to choose from when crafting your character. From a gameplay and design standpoint, it seems like a step backwards.

With the new abilities mentioned above, unfortunately one of the worst parts of the game so far is the recharge rate. Yeah you get new abilities but you hardly get to use them. I couldn’t tell you how many times I reached for a grenade and it wasn’t there or how I needed cover and the titan barrier wasn’t available. All resulting in my demise and a collective sigh from my fireteam. It’s seriously slow and takes you out of the experience all together.

The Confusing

One of the biggest and most confusing change is the weapon setup. In D1 you had a primary slot with kinetic damage(auto rifle, scout rifle, pulse rifle, and hand cannon), a secondary slot with elemental damage (sniper rifle, fusion rifle, shotgun, and sidearm), and then a heavy slot with boosted damage (rocket launcher, sword, and heavy machine gun). It had its kinks but it was a smooth operating system. In D2 it’s all upside down. There’s now a kinetic slot with the same weapon types, a energy weapon slot with the same weapon types as kinetic but with elemental damage, and all previous secondary weapons got bumped to the “power” slot. Meaning that snipers, shotguns, fusions, rockets, swords, and grenade launchers all in one spot. Here’s where the confusion comes in because it cuts how you engage enemies virtually in half. Want to headshot that guy way off in the distance? Too bad, your power sniper is out of ammo. Want to take out that cluster of enemies? Nah, your rocket launcher ain’t got no rockets. Instead you’re stuck with taking pot shots with the best hand cannon you have. I get that Bungie wanted to move away from snipers dominating all gameplay but this is pretty dramatic.