DESTINY 2 Video Game- WHAT'S NEXT FOR PC PLAYERS

Based on dozens of hours of gameplay, an analysis of the mechanics of Destiny 2, its direction of development, the reasons for the high entry threshold for endgame content, and whether you should even play it on PC.

 The sequel to one of the most successful games of this generation of consoles has finally found its way to the PC, and therefore to a new audience. Many players around the world will discover the world of Destiny 2, in which the Last City on Earth is under the protection of the cosmic deity the Wanderer, and his apostles - the immortal Guardians - wage an endless battle for the fate of humanity. Almost every online publication hastened to assess the new chapter of Bungie's Sci-fi epic as quickly as possible, as always missing out on a key feature of MMO projects - extensive post-release support.

In the month and a half that have passed since the game was released on consoles, a lot has changed. Several patches were released, a raid was launched - the key endgame activity of the game - and a full rotation of all social events was carried out. Bungie showed what the game will be like before at least the first DLC, and right now, on the eve of the release on PC, it is most appropriate to look at it as a whole product.

And that view is essential - many PC gamers still have the wrong idea of   what Destiny is. This text aims to show budding Guardians what lies behind Destiny 2's deceptive marketing facade. We take a look at the prettier story campaign and how its role in the game structure has changed. We will look at the game economics and the challenges that are at the heart of the game. Endgame, the cornerstone of the game and the embodiment of Bungie's game design philosophy, will not be spared either. And maybe this text will help someone decide if Destiny 2 on PC is the game for them.

FIRST PHASE: "KINDERGUARDIANS"

You have created a new character and entered the brave new world of Destiny 2. And immediately the obvious advantage of the sequel over its predecessor is striking - this time the game has a full-fledged storyline. While it still serves as a stretched learning curve, changes in structure and presentation have significantly increased player engagement.

Destiny 1 tried to tell its short story with four cutscenes and hundreds of lines of bored Peter Dinklage's monologues. In the sequel, players are invited to take part in the war of the Guardians who have lost their superpowers and the alien equivalent of Bane named Goul. An extensive roster of characters entertains the player in every possible way with jokes on the radio, and a kaleidoscope of unknown planets and locations flashes before his eyes. It is not very striking that the structure of the plot is similar to the gathering of scattered members of a rock group for a reunion tour. Destiny 2's storyline campaign features the expertly crafted 10-15 hours of space operas for which Halo's creators are so renowned. And although it has grown in quality at times, it is still just the icing on the cake, allowing you to get acquainted with most of the game mechanics and activities.

And there is something to get acquainted with. Despite the tendency to "lighten" many of its mechanics, Destiny is still an incredibly addictive game with a huge number of nuances hidden from the beginner's eyes. Over the years in the industry, Bungie has learned to create in their games a unique sense of the unstoppable battle dance of death that no other shooter has yet been able to reproduce. All the gameplay changes that the game went through are mainly aimed at increasing the transparency of the combat system - the character development build can be reconfigured in seconds, the redesigned subclasses began to provide more freedom for profiling, and weapon pumping lost many annoying moments (and acquired a couple of new ones). Mechanically, Destiny 2 is a natural evolution of Halo and Destiny 1, but this is a case where "if it works, don't break it."

Where the “simplification and relief” situation is not so straightforward is the way Bungie constructs the mythology of its universe. Dropping the controversial Grimoire system, Bungie has added a text attachment to every Legendary or Exotic piece of your gear. This solution is somewhat similar to the games of the Souls series and is ingenious in its own way: now not only munchkins are interested in hunting for loot, but also those who like to explore the game lore. But the lack of an in-game code still means that the task of exploring the game's universe still rests on the shoulders of fan portals and Youtube channels.

The story phase of Destiny 2 is the tutorial. Insanely beautiful training, with expensive videos and spectacular battles. You will ride a tank, capture a huge starship, destroy a galactic weapon of terrible power and save all the Guardians. Also, you will not learn anything about the deep elaboration of the backstory of the game and about the mechanics hidden in it. When judged by its storyline campaign, Destiny 2 doesn't make a lasting impression. But fortunately, after the end of the plot, all the fun begins.

PHASE TWO: REAL DESTINY STARTS HERE

And now comes the solemn moment of the completion of the story campaign. Ghale is defeated, the Last City on Earth is free again, the guards regain their superpowers, and the player gets the maximum level twenty. Here the game goes through its first major metamorphosis and shows its completely different side. At the forefront of the corner is no longer cooperative runners around the planets and not saving the universe - the entire foreseeable future in the game you will be driven by an unquenchable thirst for more powerful loot.

Level 20 in Destiny 2 is a mockery, a legacy of the original progression pattern of the first game. Twenty levels are not enough for you even to fully pump all the subclasses of your character (a vital action in the context of the local combat system). The real indicator of a character's development is his Strength level. Strength is an average indicator of the attack and defense of all your equipment, and it depends on its level what activities and what missions you can perform.

And there is plenty to choose from. Guardians have access to an absolutely outrageous amount of PvE content - procedurally generated planetary patrols, and chains of additional tasks, and multi-stage public events, and very inventive hunts for exotic weapons. Against the background of such a variety, you don't even immediately notice that the local equivalent of dungeons - Strikes - is only available as a randomly ordered playlist, that the test system is too simple, that the much-publicized "Lost Sectors" is generally useless and annoying after the third time. Destiny worlds are not overwhelming in scale, but they are so rich in content that loot hunting does not feel like a chore.

Not everything is so rosy with the PvP component. Currently, only 2 multiplayer playlists are available to players: one is focused on the ability of players to destroy each other, the other on the ability to work in a team. This scissor work would probably have been more positively perceived if the PvP activities were truly balanced. But the dominance of 5 very specific guns and 3 character builds suggests a slightly different situation. For an inexperienced character in "blue" loot, local PvP will only be endless pain and humiliation.

Fortunately for many Guardians, the game economy is designed in such a way that competitive modes can be ignored for a very long time. For completing tasks, the player is given special tokens related to the type of activity or planet on which it is performed. Accumulated enough of these tokens - get a set of new equipment.

Up to the 265 level of strength, the game is imposing entertainment for a couple of hours in the evening, where you can develop in absolutely any way, not know the grind, ignore the deep features of balance and just have fun. This is the golden mean of Destiny 2, the game is at the peak of comfort and accessibility, and most gaming sites have drawn their conclusions about the game based on this game segment. This time should be appreciated, because then Endgame begins.

THIRD PHASE: GIVE UP HOPE EVERYONE WHO ENTERS HERE.

Upon reaching 265 power level, the game is going through its second metamorphosis, currently the final one. Unexpectedly, the player discovers that the NPCs attached to the planets have stopped issuing actual rewards. Of course, no one cancels the random drop of items, and you can grow in strength even while continuing to carry out patrols and raids. However, if you value your time, your leisure time in Destiny 2 runs the risk of being reduced to a rather meager set of activities. From now on, PvP is your friend, the Shadow Raid (aka Nightfall) is your comrade, and Raid is your mother.

Let's take a look at Nightfall - in the first part it was a complicated analogue of the usual Raid, with its own characteristics, but without much sophistication. In Destiny 2, Nightfall has become the most uncomfortable activity with a constantly ticking timer and a modifier that changes with the map every week. Going through it with random people is not feasible, and in order to achieve success, you need a well-functioning team and well-chosen equipment.

Each weekend, a separate PvP event "Trial of the Nine" is launched with its own unique loot. Almost identical to the "competitive" playlist, the mode immediately hints at its high threshold of entry, requiring a pre-assembled team of four players to participate.

There are other limited-time events like the Faction War and the Iron Banner. In fact, these are all the same social events and PvP competitions, seasoned with unique loot and a separate token system. On the one hand, this is an amazing way to mobilize the community - everyone wants a unique loot, everyone wants their faction to win. On the other hand, just like in Trials of the Nine, these activities are home to the ultra-hardcore part of the Destiny community, and it's insane to try and confront them alone.

But all this is just a prelude to the key event of Endgame. The culmination of the entire in-game progression, the triumph of the sophisticated fantasy of game designers - His Majesty Reid. The main thing to understand about Raid in Destiny 2 is the only activity in the game where teamwork is valued far above the ability to shoot. It will not work to fill everything with napalm - each stage of the raid has its own mechanics, which turns a first-person shooter into a cooperative solution of a "sapper" under intense enemy fire. Finding 5 accomplices for such a grand event is a difficult task, and then the player realizes that he is facing another game again.

Endgame in Destiny 2 is no longer an accumulation of power. The qualitative development of the character practically stops after reaching the 280 level of strength and further growth for many occurs with the prioritization of convenient, rather than powerful weapons. At its core, Strength is an elegantly disguised character debuff that slows down its progression in the game. Such a built-in brake can be perceived negatively - cunning developers artificially slow down the game - but it also has another, more noble task.

Endgame requires a command - let's give the player time to find this command! From a game of numbers, Destiny is turning into a social game. You either find yourself a clan, a team, make new friends and acquaintances, wipe noisily and cheerfully in Nightfall or Raid, or you are a bitard without friends, are embarrassed to go to DestinyLFG and are endlessly disappointed in the inaccessibility of high-level activities. Bungie has implemented Guided Games specifically for the latter, but it is extremely slow and inefficient. Hence the rather sad statistics - less than 10% of the players completed the Raid on consoles. Someone is simply not ready to memorize maps and algorithms of actions, someone cannot find a command for themselves.

IS IT WORTH PLAYING?

Many PC gamers, in their woeful observation of Destiny 1's solemn march across consoles, have compared the game to Borderlands. Also a shooter, also cooperative, also about a manic obsession with loot. And, perhaps at some point in time, this analogy really was pertinent - the lopsided, plotless mess that the vanilla game played was really too obsessed with its imbalanced pumping system. But even then, under a heap of bad decisions and controversial moments, in the very depths of the game, there was something that became more accessible and obvious with the release of the sequel. Destiny 2 is an MMO. Moreover, at least 3 different MMOs.

This is a cooperative shooter "for the evening", and a multiplayer bacchanalia of automatic rifles and revolvers, and tactical memorization of Nightfall at the level of Special Forces coordination. Not every game is capable of being so different and equally interesting.

And yet she has something that could be called a problem. All this multi-level pyramid of activities, all these dozens of quests and tons of loot - all this is just the foundation for Endgame. For a very complex, very demanding and slightly monotonous Endgame. Bungie managed to make a great eyeliner for it, but didn't try to draw a new audience into it.

And perhaps in a global context, this is correct - in the fall, a new shooter comes out almost every day, and the audience will return with the release of the first DLC, in which the missing game modes and new activities will most likely appear, and all the gear suffered through raids will turn into pumpkins. But when the combat system is so addictive, when, until recently, the game was striking with the amount of content, the reduction of all high-level activities in it to the routine cleaning of the same 3-5 activities is perceived as a mockery.

If you're willing to put up with it, Destiny 2 PC is the game for you. If you have decided for yourself not to go to the raid, you may well get an exciting 30-40 hours. Everyone else should be smart about whether you like what Bungie is offering right now or whether it might be worthwhile to wait for a discount or DLC release.