Destiny 2: Forsaken first-look review – in pictures

Destiny 2: Forsaken first-look review – in pictures

Destiny has enjoyed something of a rough ride in the four years since the first game’s release. Destiny 2 delighted everybody at launch, but it soon became clear that Bungie’s attempts to cater for the casual crowd had left the hardcore with nothing worthwhile to do after a few weeks. Its latest DLC, Forsaken, adds a ton of new stuff, so we’ve spent a couple of days with it to find out how it’s shaping up so far.

It’s payback time

Destiny’s storytelling often feels undercooked, and its lore opaque. While Bungie has created a rich, detailed and unique sci-fi setting for its series, it’s struggled to populate it with interesting characters and a clear sense of history and tradition. Destiny 2’s plotline was a step up from anything in the first game merely by virtue of having a coherent, understandable story, but Forsaken takes things further with its Western-themed revenge plot, in which the player goes rogue to take out the murderers of their friend and mentor: Prince Uldren of the Awoken and eight twisted Fallen Barons that serve him.

Prison break

While we’re not talking The Last of Us levels of storytelling here, there’s more emotional and moral weight in the story missions and associated cutscenes than anything previously seen in Destiny. We won’t spoil the plot, but it begins with a prison break of one sort and ends with another of an entirely spookier kind. While there’s nothing massively novel about the story missions’ gameplay – they fall into line with Destiny 2’s missions, basically – the fights against the Barons are enjoyable, and we can see them being fun to replay in Heroic mode later.

Gambit and bounties

There’s a vast amount of post-campaign stuff to get your teeth into here, with daily and weekly bounties available to pick up from almost every vendor, plus daily and weekly challenges within Vanguard strikes, the Crucible and all-new game mode Gambit. Gambit is a joy to play, pitting four players against another group in a race to kill enemies, bank motes and beat a huge boss, with each team in its own separate arena. Occasionally, one member of your team will have the opportunity to invade the rivals’ arena, killing other players to stop them banking motes.

The Dreaming City and the Tangled Shore

Forsaken introduces two huge new playable areas to the game: the Tangled Shore and the Dreaming City. While both are located on the Reef, a collection of asteroids and derelict spacecraft floating between Mars and Jupiter, the two places couldn’t be more different. The Tangled Shore is a rusty, ramshackle tech graveyard that suits Forsaken’s Western theme perfectly. The Dreaming City, unlocked to players after the story missions are finished, is like a vast sci-fi take on Tolkien’s Lothlorien, full of soaring, sweeping architecture and natural beauty. It’ll also be the location for Forsaken’s upcoming six-player raid.

Nuts and bolts

Destiny has always been a loot-driven game, and Forsaken adds dozens of new weapons and armour pieces to the mix, including an entirely new type (bows, which feel great to use) and several new (and old, but new to Destiny 2) exotic pieces – many tied to lengthy, multi-step quests. It also gives the Hunter, Titan and Warlock classes three new subclasses and super powers each, while Destiny 2 as a whole has been given a number of sandbox changes that shorten PVP time-to-kill, increase weapon strength and generally help players enjoy the power fantasy that the game promised but never quite delivered.

Destiny 2: Forsaken first impressions

It’s only been a couple of days, but the signs are clear: Forsaken appears to have put Destiny 2 back on track. The story missions might only take eight hours or so to complete but the quality of life changes brought in, along with the huge swath of gear, missions, strikes, game modes, bounties and other content, suggest that there’s plenty of life left in the series, and plenty of reasons for lapsed Guardians to consider a return.