For a game built around a sword that has been refined over years of iteration but has also become stale over time, The Edge of Fate is a title that may be a little too obvious. After finally feeling like it could have found its feet, this most recent expansion takes a few significant steps back in the illustrious and rich history of Destiny 2.
Despite having an occasionally engaging plot, the 14-mission campaign is tedious and overstuffed with busywork; the RPG and buildcrafting revamp is trapped behind one of the worst grinds Destiny has ever seen; and the new planetoid of Kepler falls short of Bungie’s customary standards. Even so, I do respect the risks that The Edge of Fate takes, both in the daring new direction of its plot and the unexpected mechanics it tries throughout its experimental campaign, even though it fails miserably in its attempt to reinvent itself following the fantastic conclusion to its original story in The Final Shape last year.
I still have to finish the raid before I write my final evaluation, but the 20 hours I’ve spent with it so far make it feel like the MCU was in that sloppy place just after Endgame, trying to figure out what to do next after a pretty, well, definitive ending. Both of those statements are utterly untrue. I wish I could say that The Edge of Fate continues where The Final Shape left off or that it is easily enjoyable on its own. You will undoubtedly have a rough start if you haven’t been playing every bit of seasonal content over the past year.
There is a new antagonist who mimics the voice and appearance of an old character, godlike creatures that were previously relegated to vendors and silly gameshow hosts who have been repositioned as omniscient puppetmasters that we are now expected to take seriously, and approximately thirty minutes of almost nonstop information dumping that sounds like something from a pulp sci-fi novel as voices explain how “dark matter” is completely different from “the darkness” and other such jargon. It’s such a bad start that I was afraid the worst for a show that has missed the storytelling mark far more frequently than it has hit.
However, a lackluster first few hours give way to a story that was far better than I had anticipated, thanks to a completely unexpected backstory that was finally revealed to one of Destiny’s longstanding cast members and a very strong new supporting character in Lodi, who is enmeshed in a time travel mystery.
Across more than ten years of content, there is still a lot of awkward dialogue, uninteresting characters like Orin who primarily serve as filler, and an excessive reliance on established lore that can leave even die-hard fans perplexed. In addition, they do one of my biggest story annoyances, which is to retcon it so that everything that has ever happened was part of their master plan, in an attempt to make the new villain seem intimidating (insert huge eyeroll here).
Overall, though, this is one of Destiny’s stronger novels, and I’m particularly amazed by how many huge leaps are made to pique my interest in the following saga in this strange universe. Perhaps the biggest example of this is Lodi, who, despite appearing out of nowhere, effortlessly makes herself feel like a vital member of the cast.
However, the campaign itself, and particularly the planet on which it is set, performs worse. The setting of Kepler is too familiar, reusing elements we’ve seen a hundred times and slapping them onto a ton of rocky cliffs and caves full of large yellow warts. This is because it’s Destiny’s first venture outside of the celestial bodies in our immediate solar system, so one might expect to be amazed by places that feel fresh and alien.
To the extent that I occasionally forgot The Edge of Fate was set on a new planetoid, this is undoubtedly one of the most unimpressive settings they’ve added for an adventure that’s meant to be a daring frontier that symbolizes the shooter’s future. You aren’t permitted to call forth your sparrow, which is presumably done to hide how small the new area is. Instead, you must use a variety of gimmicky abilities to get to specific areas of the map, such as the ability to transform into a tiny ball and squeeze through tight spaces like Samus.
The new skills have the potential to strangely disrupt the flow of battle.
In the context of solving puzzles during story missions, these new abilities are much more welcome, even though they are typically annoying when they are necessary for movement. One such ability allows you to travel to previously unreachable locations by picking up a portal pistol, and another allows you to move objects around the environment to clear obstacles or create platforms. It can be really interesting when you uncover some loot that is just out of reach, and you have to use the Samus-ball along with the other two to get it.
Since you can only use these abilities by finding specific nodes that grant you their power for a short time, I spent about 95% of my time running around looking for the tools needed to complete puzzles, and only 5% solving them. Unfortunately, these puzzles are so easy to solve that they often feel more like busywork to artificially extend the adventure’s 8-hour runtime than anything noteworthy.
Furthermore, while I respect Bungie’s attempt to use these similar tools in battle, they typically just function as strange flow-breaking devices. For example, it’s incredibly bizarre that to defeat specific foes or progress a boss to its next DPS phase, you’ve to convert yourself into a small ball of light and roll around gathering objects as enemies shower you in bullets you’ve little hope of dodging.
In addition to making this discomfort even more noticeable, they use these three methods repeatedly during the Kepler journey, which quickly becomes monotonous. Even though the execution isn’t always flawless, these puzzle-forward abilities are at least an intriguing attempt to keep my attention, as I’ve been saying for a while now that Destiny has been resting on the laurels of its fantastic gunplay for far too long and needs a little boost. Hopefully, this serves as the model for something more interesting and developed in upcoming updates.
The 14 primary missions in The Edge of Fate’s plot are unimpressive, though, for reasons other than just its clumsy abilities and forgettable setting. Characters fill in the blanks with exposition as you battle bosses that are exact replicas of the villains we’ve defeated time and time again over the years. Although there are a few new enemies scattered throughout the game, such as flying aliens known as corsairs and tiny robot bees that swarm you, they have very little effect on the gameplay at any given time when you spend 90% of the time shooting the same Fallen and Vex that we have been killing for more than ten years.
However, the few side quests that require you to practically re-enter the locations you visited in plot missions to scan objects and listen to additional persons conversing via communications before discovering you’ve finished the objective without any fanfare are even worse than the main missions. These are among the most tedious extras we’ve encountered, even for a game that has had trouble creating engaging content, and there’s hardly any incentive to finish them.
