As much as things change, they indeed do stay the same. This is a sentiment that echoed through my mind as I viewed Bungie’s Warmind reveal stream on Tuesday, April 24th.
As much as I wanted to believe that this stream would absolutely change my mind about the current state of this deeply troubled franchise, that didn’t happen. In fact, quite the opposite. Bungie had essentially two major beats to hit during this stream, not only for the betterment of their fractured community but for the future of their game as well. For one, they desperately needed to come off as humbled, and receptive to the criticism they recieved as a result of the direction they took the game in, and secondly, to appeal to said criticisms with a detailed dive into the community’s most pertinent concerns.
Guess what? They did neither of these things.
In fact, I would be hard pressed to distinguish the Warmind stream from any other weekly update, or content reveal they’ve done before. Like Ana Bray, the new hero at the center of this new DLC, they spoke with an air of confidence that feels unearned. They hinted at things we may or may not see fully realized, and when all was said and done, it didn’t feel like anything had happened at all.
What did they show us? A “new” planet we’ve been to before, that being Mars with a glacial makeover. A “new” enemy type that bafflingly appears to be another variant on an existing enemy in the form of “Frozen” Hive. Exotic weapons that were previously broken and will finally be fun to use, with new perks and bounties that will make them stronger. PvP upgrades including increased player counts, online rankings and (returning) private matches. A new co-op event called Extraction Protocol, a Horde-like mode with new currencies and loot to grind for, including Rasputin-inspired IKELOS weapons. Were this 2017, this would have any fan of the franchise in a state of delirium. Indeed, until you genuinely sit and think about what’s being offered here, it actually sounds like a significant upgrade.
But the longer the stream went, the longer the gameplay dragged on, and the less unique things seemed.
Essentially, the stream boiled down to watching Bungie play a Public Event for half the stream, and Crucible for the other, detailing all of the new ways to grind and shoot things, and little else. There was no mention of the lore, there was no mention of the campaign and its structure, or how it would improve on the obvious storytelling deficiencies present in the game. (Will our character EVER have a voice?) There was no mention of our new enemy, where they came from, where their power lies, and how it would change the way we would approach them tactically. In fact, the constant repeating of the phrase “We’ll let our players figure out the rest” whenever detail threatened to rear its head was more troubling than intriguing, leading one to believe that there isn’t much else past what they’ve shown.
You can tell that Bungie themselves are very convinced that they’ve nailed it, like so many times before. The consistent, underlying problem, however, is that they seem to have no interest in convincing us they have, instead of coming off as self-assured and cocky to a fault. As the stream continued to devolve into self-congratulatory self-interview between Deej and the Bungie sandbox teams as they goaded each other on with MLG circa-2004 level trash talk, any pretense of actually deferring to their community was lost. This was a stream full of guys congratulating themselves that they “listened” while showing all of the passion and enthusiasm for their work as a newscaster would reading their cue cards. This was not the stream I was looking for, and I wish I would’ve walked away with renewed faith in what’s to come.
(In fact, if I wanted to be extremely cynical, I would say that Curse of Osiris and Warmind are following the EXACT same trajectory of D1 expansions The Dark Below and House of Wolves, from an underwhelming initial content drop to a much-improved variant featuring a Horde mode later on.)
I know I sound disappointed here, but to be honest, it would be disingenuous of anyone to expect the world from this expansion, or even a Taken King level of overhaul and improvement. I can wholeheartedly applaud the strides they’ve made while continuing to see exactly what Destiny 2 continues to be, improvements or not. The reality is, as an expansion of this current foundation, anything that feels like a huge leap for D2 in its current state is still going to be an incremental improvement when compared to the original game, and it’ll feel that way until all of the features of the original are restored.
Until then, this is what was presented: Another minor step forward, featuring content that may or may not be entirely new, but is entirely all too familiar. We will again have not the changes we truly asked for, but the ones Bungie feels are necessary. The sentiment that what’s old is new again, as long as you add a minor twist endures. Mars is a planet we’ve seen and explored before, but it is “new” because the Hive race lives there now. Escalation Protocol is basically a Hive variant on Prison of Elders. Destiny 1 features are great, but not when they’re positioned to act as upgrades to Destiny 2. I would go on in more detail, but I don’t want to due to sheer exhaustion. I think that’s the point.
