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. It feels like Destiny is in a bit of a shambles, similar to where the MCU was after Endgame, scrambling for what comes next after a finale that felt quite, well, conclusive. To top it all off, the raid was mediocre and by the numbers.
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 be off to a rough start if you haven’t been playing every available 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 roughly 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. This edifice resembles a metroidvania in the most hazy way conceivable.
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 instance, it’s somewhat strange that you have to transform into a tiny ball of light and roll around gathering stuff as adversaries completely saturate you with gunfire that you have no chance of avoiding to kill specific foes or advance a boss to its next DPS phase. 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 more persons conversing over communications before abruptly confirming that you have finished the task 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.
The Desert Perpetual, another of Destiny’s six-player raids included with The Edge of Fate, pits us against the literally and figuratively robotic Vex once more. Destiny’s raids have always been fun for me, and this one is no different. However, it’s also very familiar because you have to blast nodes in a certain order, stand on platforms in unison, and even leap through actual hoops to defeat all four bosses.
Regular mode largely occupies the same “harsh but fair” zone that is now essentially tradition, despite an incredibly unbalanced and comically obtuse “contest mode” launch that made every encounter a painful DPS check. The final boss has a distinctive appearance that is usually a surprise, but it doesn’t stand out in many other ways. The first three encounters are non-linear and can be completed in the order of your choosing, which is a nice little trick.
Many of the mechanics involved in overcoming each encounter feel fairly formulaic; they don’t even attempt to use any of the new powers we were granted in the campaign, which is pretty surprising (though perhaps a good thing, given how they feel in the main missions). Three of the bosses are exact replicas of existing Vex baddies, and the environments are repurposed assets we’ve seen in Nine-adjacent areas before. Overall, it ranks in the center among Destiny raids, but it’s still unquestionably one of the expansion’s highlights.
Guns and armor have undergone yet another overhaul, which is the largest change to Destiny 2 since The Final Shape. I don’t mind most of the changes here because I’m not the type of player who gets upset when patches and power creep render my hard-earned loadout useless. The addition of set bonuses to armor is a feature I’ve yearned for in Destiny for years, and it finally gives me a legitimate reason to hunt for various armor sets rather than finding one good set and never taking it off. A new tier system also gives very clear labels to just how good your loot is, so you can spend less time worrying about things you should just dismantle.
I didn’t feel particularly motivated to tear and replace my existing loadout because, at least at this time, there isn’t enough loot to chase—just a few armor sets and a little over 30 weapons have been added to the pool. The true problem is that even if I were driven to find the latest equipment that was on the market, the crazy, agonizing process of doing so would not be worth the effort.
Verdict
Although it’s hardly the worst expansion for the looter shooter, Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate is a significant step backward from The Final Shape in practically every way, combining content that is essentially more of the same with a few experiments that don’t always work out. Though it’s undoubtedly a bit of a slog to get through the campaign to see it all, and a mediocre raid doesn’t do much to salvage it, I liked the story’s unexpected new direction. Though the bland and cramped spaces don’t provide many reasons to stay, the new capabilities on Kepler are at least intriguing concepts.
The true poison pill, however, is the modifications to endgame progression, which make an already tedious game into a ridiculously repetitious death march into the depths of Destiny hell that will test the devotion of even die-hard fans like me. While playing The Edge of Fate isn’t the only bad thing you can do with your time, it’s easy to find better alternatives.
