‘Destiny 2: The Edge Of Fate’ Day One Review: Kepler’s Awful, Lodi’s Great

Destiny 2 has taken a leap of faith into the next era of the game, overhauling its format, launching into a totally new story and attempting to retain players while attracting new ones.

That first step is The Edge of Fate, the Destiny 2 expansion that launched yesterday. I just wrote a piece about how numbers are…quite poor, less than half the players of the previous least-played expansions, but I’ll use this piece to talk about the expansion itself. Keep in mind, these are just day one first impressions, and this is not a full review of the entire expansion, which I’ll do later on.

It’s not great!

So far, I dislike most of what I’m playing here other than a single aspect: The narrative, and I might as well start there.

This is one of the only times I can remember where Destiny has created a genuinely interesting series of mysteries where I truly have no idea what’s going on and have smacked directly into plot twists I’ve never seen coming.

The lynchpin of all this is a new character named Lodi, who first appeared in trailers and drew the reaction of “what is this exceedingly normal-looking guy in glasses doing in Destiny?” Well, that’s part of the mystery! Lodi also excels because of his excellent writing and especially his voicework, which is the best I’ve seen in Destiny in a long while. Again, if there is a single aspect where this expansion shines, it’s this, and while I’m not done with the campaign yet, it’s excellent, and has me genuinely excited for this new era.

Narratively, at least.

The playable expansion itself? Woof. Kepler is probably the worst zone I’ve ever seen in Destiny. The art direction here is just non-existent, the place a hodgepodge of rocky outcroppings, architecture stolen from Titan and endless series of pustule-filled tunnels that all blend together. The Final Shape, The Witch Queen, Beyond Light, even Lightfall all had clear, quite good aesthetics, and that’s one area Bungie has always shined. It’s a huge miss here.

Bungie has also made this zone non-traversable by sparrow to artificially increase its size. Rather, you’re meant to get around by a series of destination-only powers that involve teleporting guns, Strand matter moving and a Samus Aran ball of electricity which might be the dumbest mechanic I’ve seen in this series. These feel like gimmicks for their own sake, and while there are maybe one or two puzzles where these systems combine to be kind of neat, overwhelmingly I find myself groaning whenever I’m told to use any of these, especially the electric ball (which, fun fact, is also making people motion sick).

I’ve engaged with the new loot systems on a cursory level. One thing that feels weird to me is that there’s going to be such a limited pool of “new gear” to get season bonuses and hunt through the new Tier 1-5 system. Yes, you can use your old stuff, but I can’t just try to go get a Tier 5 version of my Bygones now. For the millionth time, all this old gear will have to be reissued under the new Tier system, which already feels like an exhausting concept. How many times can we do this?

I can’t quite make heads or tails of the new armor system yet. This is the first time we’ve had to regrind armor since Artifice armor was introduced. Some didn’t even do that. There are very awkward aspects to the new system, like how exotics don’t fit in at all, but initially it’s hard to get your head around which new stats to invest into and when to replace your old faithful gear. I can’t say if this is all good or bad yet, albeit I will admit that we needed some significant armor changes and reason to pursue it again.

I have not engaged with The Portal yet. I’ve been entirely on Kepler. I remain skeptical of this system, with Solo Ops being entirely relegated to Lost Sectors, and Fireteam Ops requiring a premade team to get the most out of the new modifier-picker system. Otherwise you’re just doing a playlist with preset ones, which is no different than before. And somehow Pinnacle Ops doesn’t have a single dungeon or raid in it. All old content outside the Portal now feels useless as you cannot get new gear from it.

I’m not feeling good about this expansion. Once I get through the (very good) narrative of the campaign, I’m not sure if the rest of this is going to be engaging from here, particularly if we’re done doing week-to-week beats to return for. There is promise in the new era’s story. I’m not sure if there’s promise in Destiny 2 overall from here. But again, it’s day one, and more to come later.

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