You set boots down onto the rocky terrain of a lawless frontier. Off in the distance, you see a scattering of Fallen. Some allies, most enemies, that will attack without a moment’s hesitation. You know this, so your bow is at the ready. A group of them stand in your path. You take the high ground, draw back, and attack from a safe distance. Precision arrows pierce unfortunate dregs. They never saw it coming.
Cloaked, you make your way through a series of passageways and emerge into the heart of the enemy’s lair. Except, you’ve managed to make friends with this particular boss. United in a common interest, he offers his riches as bounty for hunting down and clearing his territory of escapees from a recent prison break. You accept, knowing it will get you one step closer in avenging the death of your mentor. You stock up on a few necessities and venture back out into the wild.
Part Of The Story
A game is successful in fulfilling its promised fantasy when speaking about it to your fellow players can’t be helped but sound like role play. Destiny 2: Forsaken delivers on the immersion in a very organic way. You are thrust into the Tangled Shore (a new destination in Forsaken set in the asteroid belt), with a mission of revenge. It ultimately becomes a much larger story, seamlessly transitioning you to the endgame. After the campaign, you are left with a plethora of things to do. More than I’ve ever seen in a Destiny game.
A few months ago, the developers added in a new “pursuits” section in your inventory to store quests and bounties. It features 50 slots total. I originally thought this was way too much space for quests and bounties, and even doubted the success of its design in that regard. In Warmind, (the previous release,) we occupied around 2-4 of those slots at any given time. Then Forsaken hit, and I now have the pursuits tab completely filled with new daily and weekly bounties, mystery items, and new quests.
I find myself having to delete lesser bounties to make space for more! This level of activity density felt like a blast of nostalgia from my days playing World of Warcraft. It’s what was missing from Destiny to fulfill its primary mission; to build a dynamic event-changing world that would give you legitimate reasons to log in every single day.
Hobby Restored
Forsaken achieves this with a few interesting tactics. Firstly, they offer smaller daily challenges that do not reset weekly, breaking the monotony of the weekly reset. Daily challenges are now staggered throughout the week, meaning a different daily challenge will reset every day of the week. Spreading this out gives an immediate incentive to log on, and continues player engagement through daily bounties and quest progression.
They have finally introduced a dynamic economy with characters like The Spider. He not only features a rotating stock of items every single day, but the cost for those items also shift. Some days, a particular material will be expensive, others it will be a bargain, tempting you to stock up. These two relatively small things are the first steps towards the direction Destiny is headed.
Spider is a testing ground. I’d love to see this method of shifting economy be applied to not only more vendors, but also to activities. Perhaps one week a Heroic Adventure could be at 600 power difficulty, and reward an insanely large power boost. Perhaps on another day Lord Shaxx could give out free weapons for performing a simple task. Shifting the economy daily creates conversation and community engagement. Destiny had done this before with secret quests, but adding tinier versions of that same experience sprinkled out daily would add serious value to the hobby aspect of Destiny.
“a game’s ability to immerse the player lies in its ability to overwhelm them.”
While playing Forsaken this past week, comparing it to similar gaming experiences from my past, I came to a very interesting realization: A game’s ability to immerse the player lies in its ability to overwhelm them. If I’m unable to see the edges of the box I have been placed inside of, the world will feel infinite, the tasks endless, and the rewards too numerous to count. The game is far from perfect. However, I can confidently say for the first time, that Bungie knows the direction they need to take the series. Forsaken is a hell of a first step. This is what I’ve wanted out of Destiny since its launch 4 years ago, and we may finally have it.
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