Destiny 2 is Free Until November 18th, So I’m Free to Ramble About it
Right now, as I type, Destiny 2, the base game at least, is free via Battle.net, not long after being part of a Humble Bundle monthly deal for €12 and was free on Playstation Plus in September. You get it from Battle.net before November 18th, it’s yours forever. Which makes it the perfect distraction while people wait for any news on Borderlands 3.
You notice I didn’t say Fortuna. Because I have to reiterate this: Destiny is nothing like Warframe, apart from the batshit crazy story and the space ships across the solar system. Nope, this is Borderlands except very serious, a soap opera in space.
By the way, Destiny 2 is an 80GB download. Which will take a while because everyone’s busy downloading the free game. This is the base game, meaning you only get vanilla Destiny 2, none of the DLC stuff. There are some limited areas of the Forsaken DLC currently available to try (most notably the Gambit PvPvE game mode) and some game-wide changes, but it’s all just vanilla. If you want everything, you need to buy the Forsaken DLC, which comes for everything and costs about €40.
Gameplay-wise, Destiny 2 is a lot like Borderlands but with armour pickups. You have three guns and a special ability and some sort of weird skill tree. You also have a couple of abilities tied to your special ability. The Warlock guy I picked this time round (because she was yellow) has a magical flaming sword ability, a fiery grenade and a healing circle thing, but for some reason, in the introductory tutorial level thing, I had a purple nuke, because during the tutorial you play as a different subclass for some reason…
You play the game a lot like Borderlands too. You have to start off slow, taking cover and shooting enemies with weak weapons, but over time you get stronger, capable of both taking and dishing out more damage while being able to use abilities more often.
Even the map layout is a lot like Borderlands. Each planet is split up into patrol areas where you can wander around freely, but you can head into smaller, instanced locations to do smaller missions or kill mini bosses or whatever. The maps are really nice though, it’s definitely worth wandering around, even if you get shot at most of the time.
The guns are cool though. They all go pew pew and feel gun-y. There’s only three ‘elements’ to get your head around as well. Solar (fire), arc (electric) and void. It’s simpler than Borderlands, but you’ll still want to mix and match weapon types to match enemies. There’s a nice mixture of things, from automatic SMG things to revolvers to burst rifles. There’s grenade launchers as well but the ones I’ve used to far didn’t seem to do much. That’s probably because I’m a low level, but even at my low level, there is plenty of variety in weapons.
When it comes to the story though… it really doesn’t inspire me. There’s a big bad guy who kicks your ass and wants to take over the solar system by controlling the big white moon thing and trying to convince it to give him the same powers the guardians have. There’s only two real conclusions to that story. But I really don’t have any reason to care about the baddies. There’s no redeeming features. They’re big, ugly brutes and they’re not really painted in any other way.
Right off the bat though, you’re kinda painted as the chosen one, which seems weird since you very clearly enter areas with many, many Guardians in them. Dialogue specifically says that only ONE Guardian managed to regain their Light (i.e. the ability to respawn and their powers) but there’s loads of guardians around and not long after that dialogue, you get more dialogue calling any remaining Guardians (plural) to go to Titan.
Really, the story is not meant for newbies. It’s meant for people who played Destiny 1. Anything from Destiny 1 is only loosely explained. Like the enemies you fight against who aren’t the Red Legion, the obvious bad guys. I have no idea who the Fallen are or what they’re doing on Earth or anything.
What irks me more though is that Guardians don’t talk. Their Ghosts talk for them. Which is really weird because the NPC Guardians all talk, and Guardians are all clearly humanoid beings with duties and things. The player character stands around blankly while Ghost talks and emotes for them.
You know what though? You can completely ignore the story. It doesn’t matter. There’s loads of things to shoot at and loads of guns to use. Sure, you’re only really getting 2/3 of the full game with Destiny 2, but it doesn’t matter as the base game is free and that will give you plenty of play time and entertainment.
There’s nothing to lose, really. Might as well give Destiny 2 a go while it’s free.