In the first game, it was called the Darkness, an all-consuming evil that stands in opposition to the Traveler that always manifested itself in intangible ways, usually by corrupting alien races.
There, the warriors of the Traveler, an ancient life form that can imbue human beings and other aliens with supernatural powers and resurrection abilities, are investigating a threat that Bungie has been building toward for about half a decade. But to lapsed players or those aware of the game’s general themes, the game’s Guardians (that’s you) find themselves returning to the Moon, the original off-planet destination from Destiny 1. But taking into account those long-term changes to how the game will be designed and distributed, as well as played across platforms, Shadowkeep is without a doubt the strongest representation of Bungie’s ultimate vision for Destiny to date.įor those who have never played Destiny 2 or its predecessor, there is not much I can tell you about Shadowkeep’s plot or the actual meat of the expansion that will make much sense.
It’s also not the most impressive from a narrative standpoint, as some of its new missions and activities feel a bit too steeped in the game’s arcane backstory.
Shadowkeep itself is not the biggest or most ambitious expansion the series has ever seen - that continues to be last year’s Forsaken. The studio has also restructured its entire release model to accommodate a new free-to-play version, a seasonal battle pass to help fund future expansions, and an ambitious release model that promises new activities and interweaving storylines at a steady clip throughout the year, instead of in large batches that dry up quickly. The game now features cross-save, meaning I’ve moved my account over to Steam on PC, after Bungie split with Activision and acquired the rights to the game earlier this year. Shadowkeep, the latest expansion for Destiny 2, has made me reconsider all of this. It had never occurred to me that Activision, or platform owner Sony, would ever let my account migrate elsewhere. For instance, I believed all the progress I’ve sunk into the game on PS4, including more than 700 hundred hours of Destiny 2, would remain stuck there, where a dwindling group of my friends still picked up the game every week. I also thought Destiny would remain beholden to its publisher Activision, resulting in all sorts of decision-making and business choices that run counter to delivering the best possible product. But it’s fallen short of mixing those high-octane mechanical elements with the narrative and social scope of a true massively multiplayer online game, in the vein of World of Warcraft and other titles that inspired it.
The studio is unrivaled at designing exhilarating fantasy firearms to shoot at monstrous, primordial aliens, all against the backdrop of awe-inspiring, otherworldly vistas. I thought Bungie, the famed creator of Halo, would forever remain frustratingly stuck between delivering what it’s best at and what it hoped to achieve. In my five years playing Destiny, I had come to believe that there were aspects of the sci-fi shooter that would never change.