![]() ![]() Last season's Menagerie felt like it hit the sweet spot: letting players decide what weapons or armour to chase. Ever since seasons were separated from DLC with Season of the Forge and the Black Armoury, each has had a different approach to awarding weapons. If anything, though, they're a too generously awarded. Both Shadowkeep and the Vex Offensive activity that headlines the Season of the Undying (which runs in parallel to the expansion's release), each have their own new weapons. Ah shit, here we go again: another year of dismantling Go Figure. Nevertheless, I was surprised how much being awarded the same old guns hurt my excitement for the year ahead. The lack of new world or vendor loot isn't a surprise-if Destiny 2 game director Luke Smith's essay on the state of the game pre-Shadowkeep had a single throughline, it was the limitations of what a development team can reasonably produce. You will play a Control match on Vostok and be rewarded with a Does Not Compute. You will run the Pyramidion strike and earn a Ten Paces. But there's also a lot of repeating the same things that we've been doing for over a year. And yes, there are new Strikes and a couple of Crucible maps from the first game that make their PC debut. Yes, the Crucible playlists have been retooled, giving players more control over what mode they play, (and letting you earn Glory score without ever having to suffer through a round of Countdown). Nothing delays a fireteam like having to bounce between vendors hoovering up bounties for every activity that might be on the cards for that evening.Īs for specifics additions and changes, yes, there's a new Nightfall variant-The Ordeal, which has curated modifiers that increase in number as you up the difficulty. That said, I'd love a central bounty board that collected them all up for easy access. Thanks to the XP awards now granted by bounties, which award progress along a season pass full of goodies as well as powering up the new seasonal artefact, the steady tick of treats keeps things moving at a nice pace. There's a renewed focus on bounties now, with each vendor offering a powerful reward if you complete a set number within a week. The slower journey to the hard cap of 950 may have been remixed, but the notes are largely the same-relying on the weekly drops of powerful gear from three-player Strike missions, Crucible PvP matches, the still-brilliant competitive PvE of Gambit, and the new raid, which challenges players with a series of puzzle-like encounters among the vibrant, Vex-infested greenery of the Black Garden. In the meantime, the familiar and steady rhythm of Destiny 2 resumes after players have hit the relatively easy-to-reach soft power cap of 900. The campaign's ending may be abrupt, but, as always, the expansion's story is more of a tease of things to come-some of it through the next year of seasonal releases, the rest likely further out still. It helps that, even for the returning locations, enough has been subtly changed that it feels like time has passed-a rare thing in a game that's largely about doing the same things over and over. While many will likely turn to Google, I've enjoyed getting lost underground, refamiliarising myself with the strange sights of the Hive's stronghold. Most of Shadowkeep's guns are tied to quests that require tracking down trinkets throughout the world. I get a kick out of revisiting destinations like the Traitor’s Ketch, where Taniks once challenged players in the ways of old, or from navigating the tunnels under the surface using nothing but memory and guesswork. It helps that this is the Moon's first appearance on PC, but-even for people like me, who spent hours farming Helium Filaments in the first game-Bungie has shown enough restraint when it comes to resurrecting old content that here the return feels novel and exciting. As for the returning parts of the map, Bungie deftly avoids the disappointment that can come from retreading old ground. The red tower looks almost like a painting, looming dark and ominous in the distance. ![]() The Moon has always been one of Destiny's most evocative locations, but the new areas in Shadowkeep-the Scarlet Keep in particular-are astonishing in their beauty.
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