The first piece of DLC for Destiny 2 dropped on December 5th called Curse Of Osiris. After following this game from its inception here at LRM, we decided to review this newest addition to the game from Bungie.
If you have been following some of our previous stories on Destiny 2 which you can find below, you’ll know that the jury is most definitely still out on this AAA game.
Related article: The Biggest problem With Destiny 2
Related article: Bungie Comments On the Current State Of Destiny 2 Is It Enough
Well what is the verdict so far on Curse of Osiris? Honestly, it’s a nice update, but for paid DLC I don’t think this quite ticks all the boxes. Let me explain why.
First we have to look at the story missions, which take roughly two to three hours tops to complete. That’s not too bad, because the story is only a fraction of the gameplay. However, I thought the story was honestly very bland and safe.
Osiris had been built up through Destiny 1 to be a legend in the Universe; he was a guardian that was exiled from the Tower of the Vanguard for straying into territory exploring the darkness. But all we get for a story here is basic, easy, paint-by-numbers set pieces. Osiris has discovered a threat and gone missing, we find his ghost, go to rescue him in a place called the infinite forest and eventually we rescue him and kill the big boss who was messing with him. That’s hardly a scintillating story, Bungie.
So what about the new playable area? It’s called The Infinite Forest, and it is located on the planet Mercury, a new play space. Bungie told us this place would be fantastic — a randomly generated set of encounters leading us towards a final goal. I’d call that an oversell. It forces you to go from gate to gate and the environment and enemies are different behind each gate. The problem is, it’s fairly dull. The enemies are no threat at all, and most of them can simply be avoided to get to the good stuff. It feels very cheap compared to getting brand new playable areas, which is kind of what you expect when you purchase paid DLC. This game does rely on micro transactions to fund on-going content, so you’d expect a little more for $20 DLC when these are also in play.
Bungie also sold this DLC as having 2 brand new Strikes. The problem is that these are simply missions inside the infinite forest again, but with some small mechanics on the final bosses. We also had them shoehorned into the story itself to artificially extend its duration. I’m not impressed.
Now if this was a free update to extend the base game based on the money generated from the micro transactions, then I’d instead be very impressed and excited to see what actual DLC brings. A lot of the Quality of Life updates have been good, there are more ways to play the end game and increase your power levels.
The Prometheus Bug
Bungie has also released a new gun which shipped with a “bug” called Prometheus Lens. It’s so overpowered that Bungie decided to sell it in-game to anyone who wanted one. However this bug has had an unintended side affect. Despite being the only gun anyone uses in the crucible multiplayer right now, it’s actually made the game mode more dynamic and fast paced. It was fixed in an update on December 12th and while that’s understandable, I can’t help feeling like the multiplayer space is just a little duller as a result. Food for thought!
One of the new additions is Heroic Strikes, something we asked for in previous articles, but what they have given us is not what people were asking for. They offer better rewards and the power level required to run them is higher than normal strikes, but that’s of absolutely no consequence to anyone who was already maximum level of the base game. The thing that made Heroic Strikes work in Destiny was that they had random modifiers, sometimes ones that made you feel more powerful, sometimes ones that made you weaker. Again I have to say this just feels cheap and not worthy of paid DLC (It also should have been in the base game).
They have reintroduced some grinding for the more active players with new weapons attainable through something called “Verses” which require quite a bit of playtime to unlock. Verses are a neat addition to the game for sure, but again they feel like a free update, not paid DLC. Another thing is that other than helping you to increase your overall power level, so far the guns seems fairly uninspiring. Though I should point out I have only picked up two of them so far, out of a possible 10.
Master Works
Bungie has also made one very promising change to weapons in this update. Master Works. These are guns already available in the game which can drop randomly with one extra random stat on them, you can also dismantle Master Work guns you do not like and use the cores from these to upgrade a weapon you like into a Master Work. This is admittedly so far a welcome new feature, and once again gives you viable reasons to keep playing content over and over to get enough Master Work cores to upgrade the weapons you really like, unless lucky enough to have one drop already with Master Works. This is a big plus point, but at the same time, I don’t feel it has any relevance to whether you should purchase this DLC. The update for Master Works exists in the base game also, as it should be.
Lastly we have a new additional lair to the Raid activity. It would be fair to say this was met with some skepticism by the community, just adding onto an existing Raid rather than giving players a brand new Raid. I must saym although I have not personally completed it yet (my group all stopped playing), I have watched many streams and videos of the content, and based on other players’ reactions, they have actually hit this one out the park in terms of gameplay. That being said, the loot form the Raid still seems fairly inadequate, so I don’t see this being played as much as Destiny Raids were. We used to run the oldest Raid called Vault of Glass 3 times a week, just to have a chance to get the overpowered gear for our friends.
To give you an idea of what this Raid Lair is like, you can watch the video of a group taking down the final boss very quickly, the video is under 4 minutes long, but probably required many long hours of practice.
The problem here is that whilst this is a good update to the game, perhaps even a great update, it also feels like much of this should have already been in the base game.
When we then grade the DLC based only upon the brand new content such as the new playable area and the Raid Lair, its severely lacking. Bungie could have easily offered this update to all players for free, especially considering the negative responses to the game so far. Sure, they would have to give players who bought the season pass something else for their money instead, but instead they have kept away a huge chunk of their player base that refuse to give them any more money until they fix much of the game. You must question where all the profits from DLC and micro transactions are going.
It’s sad to say, but I’d recommend to any fans on the fence that they simply stay away from Destiny 2 until September 2018. It’s a certainty they will release a massive update which will cost players around $45, but they will also include all previous content as a part of the price. The best time to play the game will be when there is a massive amount of content, and they have fixed many of the problems the game has right now. In addition, you will likely save yourself around $50. We only have to compare this paid DLC to the content given to games like The Witcher 3, which is staggeringly far ahead of Destiny 2 in terms of DLC quality.
One move forward and two steps back seem to be Bungie’s current philosophy. It’s not working; the only members of my clan still playing the game are those that were stupid enough to purchase the Season Pass like me. Those who smartly decided to wait and see are quite happy to just wait for the big update in September 2018.
I’m pretty sure that’s not what Bungie was going for here.
What is your opinion on this paid for DLC, worth the money, or will you be waiting for the larger/cheaper update?
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