Review: Destiny 2: Shadowkeep

<br>There’s no beating around the bush that Destiny 2 was a disaster. Bungie has owned up to their mistakes and the result is Destiny 2: Forsaken. While it’s not cool that it’s taken $140 to get here (and more if you splurge on microtransactions), Destiny 2: Forsaken presents Destiny 2 with its much-needed reset. The campaign is compelling enough thanks to its excellent boss design, though Uldren lacks the history to be a strong antagonist. The new locales are a joy to explore and provide a nice change in pace compared to the vanilla worlds. Gambit is an exciting new mode, but, like the Blind Well, is heavily dependent on what kind of teammates you have. Destiny 2 needed something to save it and Forsaken bought it a new lease on life.<br><br>This is an easy one but an important first step. Due to all the change that has come with Forsaken getting one’s bearings on what all has changed with menus and inventory will be the most important. There are now Triumphs to be tracked, Collections to be had and an assortment of other things that are all around different. The Cryptarch can now break down Shaders in quantities of five; all those Shaders going to no use? Head over to Rhaul and he’ll be happy to get rid of them quickly as you can hit a button over and over (took me less than five minutes to get ride of most of my useless Shaders). Players returning might also notice that all of the modifications are null and void. This is due to the entirely revamped modification system, so might as well delete those too. Don’t freak out seeing that light level of certain items has gone down, this is just the modifications being useless and one’s Light Level going up will quickly fix this.<br><br>With Armor 2.0, Bungie is fully embracing the RPG potential of its franchise. New weapon and armor mods allow players to mess around with different elements and stats to build a character that fits their play style. Players can not only tweak little things like Resilience but also stats like how fast your abilities recharge. It's an exciting system that hardcore players will love tinkering with. It's also available for every player, regardless of whether or not you purchased Shadowkeep.<br><br>It's lucky that the rest of Destiny 2: Shadowkeep is quite good, though familiar. The Moon, a vanilla Destiny location, never got its fair shake back in 2014. Unlike the other areas in the game, it was easy to finish off the Moon sections and then never come back. In Shadowkeep, Bungie has made it a location players will want to keep visiting. Though the design is familiar, the studio has done quite a bit to make it more visually appealing. Giant chasms have torn the landscape asunder, new caves have opened up never-before-seen locations and an enormous Hive citadel looms large over the horizon. Adding to the spookiness of the locale are Nightmares of fallen Guardians, whose silhouettes replace the standard Patrol Beacons. It's clear a lot of compassion went into bringing back the Moon and transforming it into a place players want to visit.<br><br><img src="https://www.freepixels.com/class="; style="max-width:400px;float:left;padding:10px 10px 10px 0px;border:0px;" alt="" />The dreaded Eververse store is back and Bungie really wants you to know about it. Previously, the store was relegated to the Tower and completely skippable. That’s no longer the case as Bungie has slapped the storefront into the Director, a menu players need to frequently bring up.<br><br>What New Light doesn’t provide is mostly story content and endgame activities. To access this, you’ll need to purchase the expansions and Annual/Season Pass content separately. You can nab Forsaken now for $24.99, and Shadowkeep for $34.99.<br><br>Unfortunately, there’s almost no way to earn these items through gameplay. Random tiers on the Battle Pass (we’ll get to that) drop Engrams that contain some of this gear. Other than that, players need to rely on two currencies:<br><br>Silver is Destiny 2’s premium currency that can only be purchased with real-world money. Meanwhile, Bright Dust was introduced as an in-<a href="http://Reisefuchsforum.de/proxy.php?link=http://onolearn.Co.il/jono/profile/odellaleman5435/">Slg Game Dlc</a> currency that would allow players to earn Eververse items without Silver. With Shadowkeep, however, Bungie has significantly neutered what players can buy all while increasing the amount of Bright Dust players can earn. Items purchasable with Bright Dust are hidden away in a less-than-stellar menu. Only a few items are available at a time with new ones rotating in every few hours.<br><br>Let’s not mince words here, the Destiny community was in this exact situation three years ago in the months leading up the release of The Taken King. It was to be sold for a price of $40 and required the installation of all previous DLC, even though House of Wolves did not require the Dark Below. Players at the time were outraged at both the price tag and the need to purchase a DLC that was seemingly only required because Bungie said so. One would think the developer would learn a lesson from this, and they did; it was just the wrong one. We are now approaching the second year of Destiny 2 and Bungie is showing us exactly what they’ve learned: that they can get away with it. Curse of Osiris is almost universally panned as being unworthy of players’ time and money. It isn’t required to play Warmind, offers hardly any mechanical changes and yet Bungie, without offering any explanation, says it will be required for Forsaken all the same. This would be bad enough by itself, but Bungie isn’t content to stop there; no, they’ve decided that they need to milk their players even more than they already are, and they’re going to do it with the "Annual Pass."<br>