Am I destined to not enjoy Destiny 2?
Knowing that it’s barely the same game I played almost a decade ago, I wanted to see how welcoming Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate is for people who haven’t played since launch.
It’s not like I’ve never played Destiny 2 before — according to my PlayStation, I’ve played almost 200 hours — but that was back in 2017 and I genuinely don’t think I’ve touched it since. But Ryan is infectiously excited about the newest expansion, The Edge of Fate.
Destiny 2 has gone through a lot of changes in the last nearly eight years — changes that I’m only vaguely aware of because Ryan’s written about them (or won’t shut up about them). Knowing that it’s barely the same game I played almost a decade ago, I wanted to see how welcoming the game is now for people who haven’t played since it launched.
Short answer? It’s rough. I’m not saying it’s bad, per se, but I genuinely don’t know of any other game that is less willing to let me just play the tutorial.
Your mileage may vary
Before I get into too much more, a disclaimer: In the 12 or so hours I’ve played since I reinstalled Destiny 2, it has crashed no fewer than six times. Six isn’t a lot, but it’s also roughly six times more than you’d expect from an eight year old game.
At the moment, I can’t actually get back to playing because it crashes every time I make it to the Guardian select screen. I’m currently booting my PS5 into safe mode (did you know PS5 had a safe mode!?) and rebuilding its database. I have no idea what this will do, but it was a recommendation, so I’m trying it.
Now, this seems to be a me problem. I’ll probably just redownload later and hopefully that’ll fix the issue. But it feels important to flag it as something contributing to my experience here.
Directly to my experience, actually, because …
Kepler or bust
I started with a fresh character for this old-is-new-again experience. I made a quick Awoken Warlock and the game, helpfully, dropped me into the tutorial level. I actually remembered quite a bit of it as I fought my way through the Cosmodrome. A couple hours later, I was ready to head to the Tower.
And that’s when it crashed for the first time.
Not a big deal. I just relaunched the game and reloaded my character, ready to head to the Last City and learn about all the new stuff that I’d find there
Except that it immediately — with literally no choosing on my part — dropped me into the introductory mission for Edge of Fate. I hadn’t made it to the game’s hub yet. I hadn’t registered my ship. I hadn’t met any of the vendors. Hell, I don’t think I was technically part of the Vanguard yet. But there I was, heading to Kepler.
And I was immediately out of my depth. To be clear, the gameplay levels very well, so it wasn’t too hard. It was just incomprehensible as someone who, again, hadn’t even made it to the Tower yet.
So the first chance I got, I tried to return to the Tower.
And my game crashed again.
So that’s how I was introduced to the new expansion. And that’s a problem.
See, based on what Ryan’s written and told me, there’s a lot of cool stuff happening in Edge of Fate like new traversal options that are Metroid-inspired. The problem was, I had barely gotten used to the vanilla traversal options.
I fought my way through some random baddies, I learned about the matterspark ability, I met some guy with glasses, there was some time-nonsense, and then I successfully made it to the Tower. I figured I’d have a better grasp on what was going on once I finished the tutorial.
Tutorial, interrupted
When I got to the Tower, it was populated, the shops were all open, and basically no one cared I was there. It took a lot of digging through menus that I barely understood to find a way to actually (re?)launch the next part of the tutorial mission.
Which took me to a depopulated version of the Tower and introduced me to a bunch of people I’d already met. At this point, I’m mostly back on track for the “new” player experience. But there are still huge swaths of the game’s mechanics — stuff I know has been introduced over the last several years — that I’m clueless about.
Look. Destiny 2 is still a really good shooter. It’s gotten, frankly, bloated with mechanics and systems that the game is not interested in teaching you — at least not right away. And as frustrated as I am, I want to figure them out.
It’s also been around for eight years, so there are a million guides and videos out there. If you’re willing to put in the work, there’s a whole lot of game to discover. Once I figure out how to get the damned game to run again, I look forward to finding it.
This post originally appeared on BigFriendly.Guide
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