Destiny, right from the beginning, had a problem. It wasn’t the gameplay — Halo pioneers Bungie know how to make a snappy, engaging shooter; it was the writing. This was a game so enthralled with itself that nobody realized a line like the now-infamous “That wizard came from the moon” was terrible until fans started complaining, and blaming Peter Dinklage didn’t help. It made what should have been a rollicking game with friends a pompous, tiresome exercise. Thankfully, Destiny has gotten over itself.
Destiny 2, which rolled out a beta for PS4 players yesterday and has Xbox One players hitting the ground today, hasn’t changed much in the basics. The core shooter gameplay still feels tight, responsive and fun as you dodge behind obstacles, pick off enemies, and get the feel for the handful of guns the game throws at you as you play through the opening areas. You still fiddle with armor and guns to get the best mix. What’s changed a lot, though, is the tone.
Part of this is the game almost gleefully just destroys almost everything from the original, literally lighting the first game’s hub level on fire and making you sprint through it, blowing away a new class of enemies:
The symbolism of leaving everything in ruins is fairly clear, but it’s leavened somewhat by the fact that everybody is a smart-ass. The destruction of humanity’s last city doesn’t feel like a dirge, but a party. Hey, these guys wrecked our stuff! Let’s go blast ’em and take theirs!
More than anything else, this is a relief. Destiny was a fun game to play, despite its flaws, but you had to do a lot of busywork to actually play it, and a lot of that busywork was joyless. When you weren’t doing missions, Destiny could feel like being cornered by some guy at a party who really wants to tell you about his “triptych” of science fiction novels. This feels like what Bungie was trying to achieve in the first game — a Star Wars-esque story that fills people with hope. Hey, all it took was burning everything down!