Many familiar faces filled the screen as the hour of Destiny 2 played out, characters any player could recognize (Holiday did look slick flying that ship.) Destiny 2 means introducing new faces to the fold, folks that may have been there the whole time, but Guardians were to busy running around the galaxy to pay attention too. At least, that’s what I like to think. Getting down on the people’s level though, actually coming down from their Tower, Guardians will hopefully see firsthand the struggles that the Last City had to go through on a daily basis. New places and new faces means new content. Guardians always had a pretentiousness about them. I enjoyed my Guardian, but it felt like we were all on a high horse policing the universe without a care for those we were actually supposed to be protecting. This isn’t a new concept, though, even having been written into the lore. It’s known that children are told stories at night about Guardians to frighten them. Protectors or a something worse? Guardians are undead soldiers after all, Zavalas haunting speech while returning over and over again, shook me. My guardian has done this exact thing, but actually seeing the impact and hearing how twisted it sounded made me feel like one of the children that lives in the Last City.
Which brings this full circle back to the Strike. With only one Strike to tackle, any Guardian checking out the beta will probably play this a few times. It was with my second group that more problems started to crop up. The beta is a stress test on Destiny 2’s system, so having such sparse…everything…became more noticeable. There is a limited arsenal in Destiny 2 at the moment, and when the party hit the boss, we started to wipe. After the third wipe I began switching out weapons in every combination imaginable, but we just couldn’t land it. Having played Destiny since vanilla, I’d say the skills are there. But here is Destiny 2 presenting itself as challenging, but there is always that inkling that it’s a façade. Again, every Destiny expansion has done this. New encounters, new mechanics, new gear. It makes it all seem like the game has changed, but level up enough, equip the right stuff and that boss that was causing so much grief becomes laughable. One can only hope that this beta is not tricking players into a false experience, but that won’t be revealed until September. So, for now it’s the waiting game.
At the time of this writing, Guided Games is still in beta for Leviathan and with good reason, which will be discussed in a moment. The third week due to everyone having a life outside of video games, even fewer people could make it which meant it wasn’t happening with the group that we had been trying to attempt Leviathan with. Of my own volition I was determined to complete this dang raid. I turned back to Destinylfg.net and what I found was a pattern seen in Destiny’s community all gaming communities for far too long — elitism. Before reading any further, go to Destinylfg.net right now and put the search to the Leviathan Raid either LFG or LFM…OK done? Did something stand out? Was it that most people searching said something along the lines of “LFG must be 305 PL quick run must know what to do” This will be the most common thing seen on this website: elitists looking for other elitists to run with and the challenge of Leviathan doesn’t help in the slightest. This not only deterred me, a Destiny vet, but probably deters many new guardians as well. Why even try the raid if those who want to run it only want the best of the best? While I know Sherpas exist (people who will take the time to run new folks through the raid) — I’ve even run in a few Sherpa groups myself — they are few and far between. Only eleven percent of Destiny 2 players have completed Leviathan and I don’t see that number climbing much faster, but only time will tell. When Destiny 2 Guide 2 launched around fifty percent of players in the first Destiny had completed some sort of raid content, which was after a three-year period with the game. Where does this leave Leviathan then? Not looking good and it doesn’t speak well to PvE endgame content for the future of Destiny 2.
It’s a bit nerve-racking that lore, while mentioned, didn’t come up that much, other than story content. With such a serious overhaul to story, gameplay and the two combined, it’s odd that Bungie would leave out what they’ve done for Destiny lore access to the player base. They introduced a number of needed fixes (maps) and while these are already a drastic improvement to the core Destiny game, lore seems out of reach for the moment. It’s not to say that Bungie won’t talk about it later, but still. While not showcasing access to lore, it’s most certainly there. For lore nerds like myself, Destiny 2 already looks to be a dream come true.
Whether you’re a grown adult or a child, who doesn’t love Pokémon? The release of the Gameboy Advance began arguably the best era for handheld games, and leading the march was Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. These twelve year old games brought us the third generation of Pokémon we love today, so it seemed only fit for Nintendo to remake the duo. With their new 3D engine, Nostalgia hits hard for those who grew up in the late 90s and early 00s, as Game Freak was able to recreate everything you’ve come to love, while at the same time adding on top of it. While it would still be great to see new Pokémon adventures, this is one of the few cases a remake was warranted. Now all we need a second remake of Red and Blue.