I had a terrible sense of foreboding from the prospect of Destiny 2.
Maybe it was the way I looked it up on Wikipedia and every bloody paragraph started with the
words "Just like in Destiny 1..."
I felt like I had enough to go on right there.
Oh boy, another instalment of the game so emblematic of everything that's wrong with
triple-A games these days that if you stuck pins in it then all of triple-A gaming would
get twinges in its back.
Another fucking skinner box drenched in grandiose scenery to distract from the fact that it's
got no fucking gameplay ideas beyond "go to place and shoot the lads over and over and
over again" and no real story beyond "here are some lads who deserve to be shot after
you have gone to the place."
Don't forget to preorder for your bonus golden catsuit and matching staple remover, although
we're going to reward you with new bits of armour every time you successfully shoot a
certain amount of lads, the way one rewards a budgerigar with yummy millet seed every
time it climbs the little ladder and rings the little bell, so your physical appearance
is going to be in a state of constant flux like one of those suits from a Scanner Darkley,
but even if it wasn't every character is overdesigned to the point of meaninglessness so you can't
make any kind of mental attachment.
Which will hopefully pay off in a couple of years when we want you to stop playing this
particular Skinner Box and buy Skinner Box 3: The Return of Jafar.
But let's not preemptively write off Destiny 2 like a prom date who picks us up on a riding
lawnmower.
Besides, it's either this, or Knack 2, or asphyxiating myself to death in my car, and
since the neighbour borrowed the hosepipe I'm stuck with this.
Destiny 2 returns us to the wonderful future Earth where humanity is watched over by a
giant cue ball with the vague understanding that it's benevolent and that no giant snooker
player is going to show up and pot the entire planet down a black hole.
I played the original Destiny and yet couldn't tell you now what the fuck happened in it,
but none of it seems to matter a tinker's cuss because a generic evil alien race invades
the Earth and puts a great big muzzle on the cue ball, taking away the superpowers of Earth's
guardians because they couldn't remember the safeword in time.
The main villain is the sort of ridiculously operatic figure one should expect from a Bungie
game and looks a bit like a Muton from XCOM got elected Pope.
Fortunately one hope remains in the form of a lone Guardian who never speaks and has no
name and, if you're me, looks a bit like David Warner wearing bright pink lipstick and green
eyeshadow because why would the character creator even have that if it didn't expect
you to use it.
The protagonist, or as I liked to call them, Widow Twankey, crawls out of the ruins of
the Earth and manages to get their powers back by, as far I understood the process,
asking nicely.
Your job then is to get the old band back together, meaning, three guys we saw for two
minutes in the intro sequence that are apparently important.
They haven't got their superpowers back but I guess we need them to tell us what to do
next.
Actually, maybe these guys were in Destiny 1, but just to reiterate, I played Destiny
1 and I haven't a fucking clue.
It's classic Bungie characterisation: some very determined self-righteous people who
do the right thing and have no sense of humour, and some who are designated 'funny' characters,
meaning they are also determined, self-righteous and do the right thing, but they also overclarify
their statements a lot and determine aloud whenever a situation has become 'not good'.
These characters personalities are entirely defined by things they say, not things they
do.
Because they don't 'do' anything.
They wait for you to show up and tell you to do things, and those things are invariably
"go to place and shoot the lads".
So as the only Guardian who thought to ask nicely we are the only one who can save the
handful of hub maps from all around the solar system.
Just us and the other ten million players running around, but that's probably one of
those things we're supposed to suspend our disbelief about.
Still, Density 2 at least started off a bit less like a dreary mire of knee-deep cold
sausagemeat than Density 1.
There's a nice straightforward alien invasion and for a while the plot moves along at quite
a clip.
You start off on smashed up Earth picking bits of alien shoe leather out of your bruised
bottom, then a few time jumps later you're getting your powers back, then you piss off
to an ocean planet, and you've barely unfurled your beach umbrella before the plot mission's
done and it's time to piss off to the next planet.
So Destiny 2 has quite a long Pissabout Deferment Index, or PDI, which is the term for the amount
of time a free to play or Skinner box game gives you to get settled in before it starts
pissing you about.
It only started when out of nowhere the next plot mission required me to grind up two more
levels.
Which wasn't much, I only had to do a couple of sidequests, or rather 'adventures' as they
are called here.
Which I suppose is one way to make them sound interesting.
"Ho, traveller, are you a stalwart enough hero to *adventure* to a place and shoot the
lads?"
But then after the next plot mission I needed to gain another four levels to proceed and
yeah, I guess I see what we're doing here now, Destiny 2.
Still, at least the scenery's nice.
In fact, that brings me to a strange epiphany that struck me while I was playing the game
that I'd like to share with you now.
It was while I was following a series of objective markers in order to get to a place wherein
might be found some lads to shoot.
I paused about halfway down a corridor to take a break from the sheer roller coaster
of excitement the mission was turning into, and found myself staring at the wall texture.
We were in one of the several hundred ancient alien temples covered in somehow still functioning
LEDs that Bungie have made across their career, and the decor had gone for an intricate pattern
of narrow lines and right angles.
But then I looked closer and saw there were multiple layers of lines, some in sharper
relief than others.
I got curious and looked around the entire surrounding area for where the pattern repeated,
and I couldn't find it.
Every part of the walls seemed to be a unique combination of lines and little glowy lights.
Who were you, mysterious wall texture designer person, with whom I feel a strange kinship
as I gaze upon your work?
What ambition spurred you through the years of practise and higher education that brought
you to this place?
When you dreamed of your artwork being hung up on walls to be viewed by millions, is this
precisely what you had in mind?
I picture them heading back to their cubicle to touch up another series of functionally
identical but slightly varied wall textures and passing a meeting room where they overhear
some designers discussing how best to word the latest iteration of going to a place and
shooting some lads, whereupon they heave a weary sigh and add another few names to the
workplace massacre checklist they know damn well they no longer have the balls to execute.
Are you sure there isn't something else about Destiny 2 you'd like to talk about, Yahtz?
Like, say, the PVP or the level design, or the fact that the three different categories
of weapons are now called something different to what they were called last time?
No.
I want to talk about how I stared at a wall for five minutes and it was somehow the most
interesting part of the game.
I'm starting a new wave of game criticism right here.
It's called, up yours, publishers.
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