Hey all I’m back with a look at the first expansion of Bungie’s MMOFPS’ Sequel. It’s my review of Destiny 2: Curse of Osiris expansion!
Plot Synopsis: Having saved the world, yadda yadda, regained the powers of the Light “Yawn,” and completely forgotten about that other social space called the Farm we went to maybe a total of ten times, The Guardian is tasked by Ikora Rey to track down her lost mentor on Mercury. His name is Osiris and he was, supposedly, the greatest Guardian ever.
Plot: Frankly it’s pretty interesting until you get your ghost back, and for those who actually play this sorry excuse for an “Expansion” that’s about an hour into the at most hour and a half of gameplay in the “story” content. Up until that point I was actually looking forward to having two people speaking out of my annoying floating robotic slave master who just won’t let a guy or gal take a nap in the dirt.
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And then the story goes and finishes and it resolves or advances the plot not at all. In fact, it doesn’t affect the main storyline of Destiny 2 in any noticeable way. At least with The Dark Below in Destiny it advanced the story, you killed a “god” and people took notice. Oryx came to kick your butt and failed miserably. Curse of Osiris solves nothing, and only leaves players with more questions.
Gameplay: In case you couldn’t tell from my very exaggerated synopsis above I don’t hold a very high regard for Destiny 2. I gave it a good score that first week because I thought that while it was a step in the right direction Bungie hadn’t completely forgotten about why people played the game for more than a week or two before throwing it in the trash can in disgust. I was wrong, again. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Except this is the sixth formal review of Destiny’s various iterations I’ve done. I’ve done countless blog posts as well, frankly I’m considering renaming my Tuesday column to Bashing Bungie Tuesdays it’s gotten to be such a frequent topic on that column.
You’d think with my, and many, many other, critical reviews of their game Bungie would maybe listen to the fans and stop churning out stuff that while it is exciting, it’s also very manipulative of players. Coming up to Curse of Osiris’ launch there was a huge stink on the Internet about Bungie throttling experience gain in Destiny 2 and not tracking it properly.
Let me tell you a little thing, that was literally only half of the issue. For those who played during the first few weeks of Destiny 2, you would have noticed that upon reaching the level 20 cap, and then getting about 10 more levels worth of experience that your leveling slowed down considerably. It turns out that was Bungie having more and more experience required to “level” up.
Whether this was ever fixed prior to this other SNAFU of Bungie’s is unknown to me, and frankly I don’t care enough about their manipulative game to even bother further investigating that issue before reporting it to you faithful readers. Bungie has at this point forever changed my view of them for the worse and unless they seriously change their attitude, and most importantly actions, for their players, I’m probably going to stay that way. For the time being I’m just going to say to steer clear of Destiny in all its various forms.
Bungie has been tightlipped about Destiny since they left Microsoft way back in 2010 after launching Halo: Reach. They rarely tell players anything worthwhile or substantive in detail. Frankly it’s gotten to the point where I openly disparage them as much as I would EA, which is probably going to win 2017’s Worst Company in America award again this year if only because of angry Star Wars fans. Bungie could learn a thing or two dozen, about being open to their players from Fantasy XIV’s director Naoki Yoshida.
So again, I’ll say steer clear of Destiny 2 and Curse of Osiris. Where Destiny 1 was highly manipulative of players encouraging them to play ever more hours to earn the best weapons, Destiny 2 went completely the opposite way and has actively pushed those exact same players away by turning the harder and more challenging content into worthless pursuits not worth the time organizing to do, much less actually doing them.
Curse of Osiris solves nothing in this aspect at least not before this December 12th update and frankly unless Bungie is willing to directly pay me for my time to review it again, I’m going to let it sit on PlayStation 4’s HDD to collect dust if I don’t end up just deleting it completely to make room for something more worthwhile.
A word about the Music and Art: Nothing’s changed all that much, except for the voicework of the three “new” characters Sagira, Osiris and Brother Vance. Of those three Sagira was snarky enough to be likeable while she stuck around with you.
However, after that point it all just became boring like the rest of this pathetic excuse of an “expansion”. Mercury looked neat for about the first 10 minutes, and then I could’ve cared less about the scenery. There were no new enemies, except maybe the final “boss” of the expansion who you fight by killing waves of enemies you’ve fought since Destiny 1. Even then I could swear I saw similarities between that model and Oryx from Destiny 1. So even this is questionable if it is “new” assets or just retextured ones repurposed to look a little better and different.
