Ever since its divisive launch, Bungie has gradually built its Destiny series into a bankable brand. The exhilarating gameplay, extensive customization, and growing pool of content have all kept players coming back for each expansion...until now.
Destiny 2: Beyond Light has caused those players to take a step back and reevaluate their dedication to the franchise. They're repelled by problems that developers should have moved beyond (pun intended) by now. Furthermore, not all of these flaws are immediately noticeable. In fact, many of them only come into focus toward the end. It seems hindsight really is 20/20.
10 Few new weapons, armor, and other loot
An expansion pack like this is expected to come with a plethora of new items. It helps differentiate it from the main game and gives players an enticing incentive to keep supporting the title.
Bungie must have missed that memo when designing Beyond Light. This most recent taste of Destiny brings little in the way of weapons or armor. The few ones present are mainly reskinned versions of past items. This reeks of laziness and prevents the package from feeling as significant as it should.
9 The weapons aren't geared toward the big new ability
A big selling point for Beyond Lightis a new power called Stasis. It is indeed an intriguing ability that appropriately mixes up the established combat mechanics. The move even comes with a dedicated skill tree for players to fill in, personalizing the power to their liking.
The problem is that the weapons don't complement Stasis. Though one could make a case for the No Time to Explain pulse rifle, the only weapon built around the new power is the Salvation's Grip grenade launcher. The lack of support for Stasis in the player's arsenal is baffling. If the developers were only including one specialized gun, why have the ability in the first place?
8 Reskinned enemies
One would think a new planet would bring new inhabitants. This would have been a brilliant opportunity to design a fresh set of enemies that can only be dispatched by the novel abilities available. What Beyond Light offers instead are the same mooks that players have been dispatching for hours in prior Destiny titles.
Sure, they may have another coat of paint, but they nevertheless boil down to a similar band of faceless foes, amounting to little more than cannon fodder. Way to make a potentially vast galaxy feel smaller.
7 Level-based difficulty spikes
No gamer likes to halt their progress, but that's exactly what happens with level-based barriers. Whether a literal wall or a slew of enemies that dwarf your current level, these barriers are plentiful in Beyond Light, popping up at random throughout the campaign.
The fact that they're here is bad enough, but their sporadic placement kills whatever flow the game had built up to that point. Just when players are getting into a groove, they're forced to grind their levels through busywork simply for the privilege of progressing. It's an utterly artificial method of extending the playtime. A developer as experienced as Bungie should have known better.
6 Mundane quests
It's a tired complaint that, unfortunately, bears repeating. Far too many RPGs pepper their gameplay with tedious fetch quests. Go here, kill these enemies, and return for a reward. Missions like these are narratively thin and make the setting seem shallow.
Beyond Light sadly recycles these repetitive side quests. It does nothing to mix up the formula, so they're once again limited to blatant padding. In the end, players will be disgusted by how much of their time was spent on such menial tasks. Of course, the developers want to give gamers a chance to test their new weapons and abilities. However, is it too much to ask for something more fun to use them on?
5 Short campaign
One might think that the narrative is not important in a looter shooter or title that's meant as an ongoing online service. However, the developers still spent time on it, meaning that they expect players to do the same. It's a piece of content that they're paying for.
Imagine people's shock when they managed to complete this particular campaign in three to four hours. Yes, despite the busywork padding things out, the narrative is barely longer than a movie. The plot barely has time to register before it's over. Even yearly assembly line titles like Call of Duty give players eight to ten hours in a story mode. For perspective, Beyond Light costs nearly as much as one of those full-priced products. It doesn't take a genius to recognize the lack of value.
4 Disjointed story
Some people might find it weird to criticize the story in an expansion pack, but it was a major marketing point for Beyond Light. Unfortunately, it was executed with the grace of a first-year writing student. As padded as the quest structure is, the main narrative suffers from severe fragmentation.
The plot progresses at an uneven pace, plagued with cliched platitudes and dull presentation while letting none of it breathe. The characters involved are so bland and melodramatic that it's hard to care about anything they're doing. Suffice it to say, this forgettable tale goes in one ear and out the other.
3 No moral ambiguity
Talk about black and white. Despite all its grandeur, Beyond Light is no more complex than a Saturday morning cartoon. Whatever moral dilemmas or ethical debates were present in previous Destiny titles are completely gone here. The characters and conflicts in Beyond Light fall into clearly defined categories of "good" and "bad."
As a result, the game is less interesting from a narrative and thematic perspective. Sure, it makes the enemies easier to shoot without pesky personality getting in the way, but it also causes the story's self-serious tone to feel utterly misplaced. It's like a parody or ongoing joke with no punchline at the end.
2 An oversized, empty map
Europa is a sprawling new world, teeming with gorgeous vistas and dynamic weather. That being said, the novelty eventually wears off. Any game world can become boring after traveling across it for hours with nothing to do. Just ask Dragon's Dogma.
Beyond Light falls into this trap. Players spend most of their time driving from place to place, and the planet is largely devoid of the types of intriguing events and distractions that would normally spice up an open-world game. The tasks that it does have are rarely interesting enough to pursue. Nothing kills interest in a setting like...nothing.
1 Cut content
People were already apprehensive when they heard of the Destiny Content Vault. To save space, Bungie would pluck items from the existing game and place them in a virtual vault. Although they put it out of players' reach, it would be replaced by a slew of new content that the developer created. However, this still means that gamers pay to have their toys taken away.
After trudging through everything that Beyond Light has to offer, many discovered that the weapons and armor they'd accumulated were severely outweighed by the stuff that had previously. They had to fork over their time and money to realize that they paid cold, hard cash for a net loss of content. That's not only an annoyance; it dives headfirst into faux pas.