What do you need to do after finishing up a saga? Following up on those decades-long expectations, hoping they could capture the magic that they had. Ultimately faltering towards the end as the dust settles, with the story-beat being quite intriguing, but ultimately feels similar to before.
And like a certain comic-book series on the silver screen, the same can be said about Destiny 2, still chugging along for a decade. And this latest expansion, Edge of Fate, is perhaps like the follow-up Spider-Man movie after Endgame, where the stakes don’t matter. Still, it does set up the following narrative arc, which consists of the Star Wars-adjacent expansion coming later this year.
So, what’s new in Destiny 2?
Welded Around the Past
As a quick pick-me-up from the previous expansion, after some shenanigans in the Episodes that were focusing on the main ensemble and their roles after the decade-old saga, when a rumbling of something happening off-world, in a new planet that somehow has a human interpreter that’s asking for help.
It then becomes a rabbit hole of conspiracies, as Vexes and Taken make things complicated and the ever-looming presence of an Entity controlling how everything is already planned in advance. Which is a red flag since Guardians always make their own fate, remember?
And that makes or breaks our cast as the chapter goes on.
It’s weirdly engaging to be at the start of the next saga once again, this time going towards the past with our new supporting character, Lodi, being someone from the 1960s and suddenly being jumped to a few hundred years ahead in the future. And the best part, he knows the old cast’s past as well. So, perhaps that’s the higher power at play, for sure.
Primed But Unpolished
But what falters me for this expansion is how a bit directionless the overall gameplay feels. With the game’s power level now reverting to the way it was back in the first game, from Power level 10 to a max level of 450, which is quite easy to understand, even for newer players.
But the way it pivots to the new content is a miss for me, too, when compared to the old ways, where planets were aligned on the menu to guide you towards the expansion. Now the latest expansion has its own menu, which is good for navigation, but lacks the charm of suddenly seeing our hub map change for the first time.
Navigation seems to also be a sticking point for me during the missions as well, perhaps it’s the dev team trying out new ways to make players explore the area, but it mostly disorients players where some highlights or even mission critical items could be lost within the bodies of enemies that you have slayed and that has happened to me a bunch of times.
On the positive side, the new powers like being able to morph into a ball ala Metroid is actually a fun way to traverse into the location and like Samus, you can also attack while in this form and even unlock hidden places, which does play around the notion of a Metroidvania that Destiny 2 has somehow replicated, unintentionally or by design, we may never know.
And having a sort of teleporter and constructing creator as tools to play around the area in Kepler makes it quite fun to experiment in combat encounters, as the dev team also reduces the amount of special ammo dropping, with it being counted within a bar below your weapon counter. A balancing act that works out, in my view.
An aspect that I dislike is them sunsetting the roguelite elements from the previous season that reward players for, you know, playing the game. It was intuitive for the series and I do like having to do some of the more interesting older Strikes missions to get more weapons or items for upgrade, but the new more time-based Strike missions also suffers from that disorientating issues that I had for the main campaign, now with a Perfect timer ticking down quicker than you would usually do.
Lodi-ng Up?![]()
It’s fascinating to see what the Destiny 2 team would go after this, with the plans of adding that upcoming Star Wars expansions looming in the background as the end of the year approaches. Is Edge of Fate a good expansion? It is questionable, but it has an interesting premise that could work if you are interested in the upcoming lore, but for the newcomers, maybe looking back at older stuff could be the guide for you to either continue onto this new era or put a neat wrap on it.
Played on PC, Expansion bought by reviewer.