I am currently enjoying Destiny 2’s new Shadowkeep expansion, which takes us back to the moon and has us hunting new gear and old bosses. As my first impressions review stated, there’s quite a lot to like, and having cleared the campaign on three characters, I love a lot of the new changes the game has brought from finishers to my early experiments with the armor 2.0 system.
Yesterday, Destiny Community Manager Deej asked for constructive criticism feedback about Shadowkeep, so I figured I had to write a full article to chime in with my own thoughts. While there’s a lot to like about the new expansion, it does feel like it’s missed the mark in a few ways. Though it’s possible some of this will change over time.
Nightmare Hunts
I am really not loving Nightmare Hunts so far. I suppose this may change at higher difficulties with new modifiers and these fancy “Overload” and “Barrier” champions thrown in, but for now, Nightmare Hunts feel like a half-length strike with no actual mechanics other than the final one of “kill Nightmare ads to make the big Nightmare stop being immune.”
I like the rewards from Nightmare Hunts, different mods and quests to get new Eris moon weapons and gear, but the actual mechanics of Nightmare Hunts are just not all that interesting, and I don’t think making them just harder with more irritating enemies is going to really be a fix for that. It’s weird that the “new” activity in this expansion seems less interesting than the Forges, Menagerie or dare I say Reckoning from the much smaller Annual Pass bits of content. Maybe I’ll warm up to them over time, but they seem pretty uninspired for the most part.
Armor Affinity
I am starting to like Armor 2.0, as it costs pretty much nothing to get your armor to at least level 5 or 6 and start playing around with mods, as I’ve now unlocked a decent amount through token turn-ins, prime engrams, random drops and clan rewards. The customization aspect is cool, and I like the special artifact mods which allow things like a free enhanced reloader on pretty much any piece of gear.
What I do not like, and I can already see I’m not alone in this, is the idea of elemental affinity. Elemental affinity means that depending on what type of gear drops, you will be lacking access to certain mods because they don’t fit that “type.” This seems like an artificial way to increase the grind in a way that isn’t fun, as I don’t particularly relish the concept of grinding out three sets of each type of armor I like plus the RNG of looking for good stats, and having to memorize which mods go with which element.
This also applies to exotics, which are drops that are much more rare, but you may see one drop that simply doesn’t have access to the type of targeting or reloader you want. Like I get it, Bungie wanted to make armor grindable, hence this split. But I don’t think this was the way to do it, as it just feels too disorienting to be missing mods you’ve supposedly unlocked due to the elemental system. I already have to re-grind every armor set in the game after the 2.0 version, and this just seems like another layer that doesn’t need to be there and certainly doesn’t make the game more fun.
The Abrupt Campaign Ending (Spoilers Follow)
One core problem with the Shadowkeep campaign is that while it gets its atmosphere and big reveals right (rounding the corner to see the Pyramid), the entire storyline just…kind of barely exists. It’s more or less:
ERIS: This Pyramid is trolling me with ghosts
US: That sucks
ERIS: We should go inside it
US: That seems like a bad idea
ERIS: No we definitely should, but first you need some spooky armor
(one spooky armor set later)
PYRAMID PERSON: Hello there
(end)
The problem is that this entire campaign feels like the introduction to a story, rather than a complete story like the D2 vanilla campaign or Forsaken. I am fascinated by the reveal of the Pyramid and its inhabitants after all this time, and yet now I know that we’re going to have to sit through another year at least of teasers before anything major comes of this and we actually find ourselves shooting Pyramid soldiers or whatever in Destiny 3. It’s frustrating.
Granted, we still have more story to come with the arrival of the raid (though weirdly I don’t understand how the Vex or Black Garden are connected to what we just played as they’re not mentioned at all), and as part of Bungie’s “ongoing narrative” more stuff will happen in time. But taken as an initial playthrough, it’s easy to see people popping out back on the moon after that last mission and going “that’s it?”
Those are my gripes for the moment. I may find more later, or these three could get better in time, we’ll see.
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