Destiny 2 is Broken, But It Can Be Fixed | Part 2 | The Challenge
Part two of the It can be fixed series. Part one can be found by clicking here
Destiny 2 is a follow-up to 2015’s Destiny, a game that everybody thought was slated for 10 years of updates after it’s initial release.
Oops! Guess Bungie forgot that companies have to make money to sustain themselves, and decided to pretend that they weren’t actually going to do that in the first place. Did you really think that a company would support the same game for 10 years with regular updates? Literally nobody in the history of video game development has ever done that.
“That’s stupid! You’re stupid!” said Bungie.
Eventually they decided that it was time to make Destiny 2. This is a $60 game that comes with enough content to keep you busy for hours on end, until you realize that 99% of the objectives consist of going to a specific location, and shooting a specific alien/robot/thing. Sometimes you’ll go to a different planet with incredibly designed environments and visuals, where you’ll be shooting about 500 of the same thing, but this time in a different place.
Well, I say shooting, but if you’re like me, that’s probably not going to happen for a majority of your time. With a game that places such a heavy emphasis on regularly giving you new weapons load-outs, it’s genuinely surprising how much easier, and honestly more entertaining it is, to just punch everything.
And I’m not exaggerating for the sake of comedy either. It’s significantly easier to punch a baddie a couple times than it is to shoot it. In fact, 90% of the enemies I encountered took about 5 to 10 bullets–or 3 if you precisely aim for their heads–but one, singular punch to take them out. Why very carefully aim for the enemy’s very specific hitboxes, when you can just walk up, take a few bullets to the face on the way there, and punch them to death? It doesn’t really matter how much damage you take, because if you manage to not get hit for a little bit, you’ll recover 100% of your health in about 10 seconds.
It’s worth noting that some enemies have shields which block you from punching them, which could actually be interesting and fun if removing their shields required a specific technique, but you shoot it a few times until it breaks. Once it’s gone, you just walk up and punch them.
Are you not very good at video games? Do you die a lot? Well that’s a-okay, because Destiny 2 doesn’t really provide any legitimate consequences for failure. In one of the opening sections of the game, your companion character specifically says “If you die, I can’t resurrect you,” as dramatic music plays in the background. It’s supposed to be a tense and poignant moment, as you walk over the corpses of your fellow Guardians, but once you realize what actually happens, it completely falls flat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xat1xPW0abI
When I heard him say that initially, I was actually concerned that I’d have to restart a massive chunk of the game as punishment for dying, so I was very careful during this segment. When I restarted the game with a new character, after I had reached that part a second time, I decided, what the heck? Might as well die to see what happens. And hey, surprise, nothing of consequence happens. I restarted about 10 feet away from the part where my Ghost said “I won’t be able to resurrect you.” Sure, Ghost. Maybe YOU won’t be able to, but the game will, so ultimately, I don’t really care.
Sidenote, in that same starting area, you’re “defenseless” until they ceremoniously give you a gun (!!!). It’s supposed to seem like it’s gonna be the thing that saves you, when really, the enemy horde you’re supposed to fight off can just be punched to death. I understand it’s still the tutorial, but it’s completely devoid of any tension.
You play as one of the Guardians, a character imbued with what they call “The Traveller’s Light,” which gives you unspecified powers. From what I can tell, it’s the ability for your companion character (the aforementioned Ghost) to resurrect you in battle, and double jump using a jetpack. It doesn’t really specify why you need to have special powers to use that jetpack, but apparently you do.
When your character is successfully resurrected, the game basically just moves you 20 feet backwards, but all of your progress in the mission is retained. There are certain areas in which your Ghost can’t resurrect you, like in the video above, but the only difference is that your progress is not retained. You’re given a very liberal amount of automatically placed checkpoints however, so the stakes for death couldn’t be more lenient, and that makes it feel like it never truly gets difficult. And in a game like Destiny 2, there isn’t that much variation in gameplay outside of going around and killing stuff, so upping the difficulty and providing a legitimate challenge would really do a lot to entice players to continue.
So, how do we add consequences for failure?
Destiny 2 handles death like Super Mario Odyssey, and that doesn’t work.
Super Mario Odyssey came out a month after Destiny 2, and it handles failure excellently. Your death isn’t designed to be a punishment, it just resets your progress to the previous checkpoint. And yes, I’m fully aware that I just criticized Destiny 2 for doing that exact same thing, but to the four of you that are reading this, shut up for a sec.
Odyssey integrates that mechanic into the design of the levels, and it’s actually one of the reasons the game is so inviting and enjoyable. A majority of the game’s kingdoms are completely open to explore from the very beginning. Players aren’t given a direction that they have to head in, and there isn’t a specific objective they’re trying to complete, outside of finding more Moons (which are pretty generously sprinkled throughout the world). There are checkpoints in all of the most important sections of the map, so if you die, you can just go back to the last one you passed.
Here’s what I mean.
Every single checkmark you see is one of the 89 collectible Power Moons in the game’s Sand Kingdom level.
That’s not to say Odyssey isn’t challenging–far from it in fact–it just places a more heavy emphasis on rewarding the players for success, instead of punishing them for failure. In a game where the primary mechanic is collection, it only makes sense to keep the whole affair relatively forgiving. The same mechanic of dying and respawning is integrated into Destiny 2, but it doesn’t work very well with the very linear way the world is laid out.
Odyssey isn’t exactly open world, but each level acts like a mini world to explore. It’s a game about exploration, so you shouldn’t punish players for exploring badly. Destiny 2 is also mostly-open world where exploration is encouraged, but it takes up such a small portion of the game, that it might as well not even be there. And from my experience, the parts of the map that I did explore ended up being used in a later mission that I just hadn’t initiated yet, which discouraged me from exploring anywhere else throughout the rest of the game.
Bethesda’s reboot of the Doom franchise that came out in 2016 does everything correctly that Destiny 2 does not.
Doom, as a game, is entirely linear, but the maps are designed to encourage exploration on the way to your objective. There are a lot of secret areas with hidden goodies inside of them, and it does a good job of encouraging you to go poking your nose where it feels like you’re not supposed to. You’re rewarded heavily for doing that, but it isn’t where the game places its emphasis. You go where the game tells you go, and you kill all the things the game tells you to kill, just like in Destiny 2. You’re constantly trying to push through to the end of the level, and the hundreds of enemies you fight are pushing back even harder.
Doom’s map is far from linear, but your objectives are still to get from point A to point B, just like in Destiny 2
It’s interesting, because my biggest criticism of Destiny 2 is my favorite mechanic of Doom. The main difference is simply in implementation, which I honestly think could be changed up just a little bit to amazing effect.
Most of the story missions in Destiny 2 have you travel to a specific location, and kill a bunch of dudes on the way, much like Doom. The maps for these sections have a pretty definitive beginning and end, with multiple enemy encounters on the way, but there is still a physical destination that you’re trying to reach. Doom is structured in the exact same way, albeit much more creatively and tactfully.
The map here is basically a linear tunnel, where there’s only one real direction to head. This map is significantly larger than Doom’s, but there’s somehow less diversity in exploration.
These sections in both games are built with the traditional level-based design philosophy of older first person shooters, but the main difference between the two stems from the difficulty of enemies, the scarcity of checkpoints, and the secrets sprinkled without.
Part of what made Doom so fun is that the enemies are BRUTAL, and taking them out is so, so much more satisfying than the unceremonious “poof” in Destiny 2. You can’t just punch them all to death, not even the weakest grunts allow you to do that, they need to be staggered first, which requires knocking off enough of their health.
Once an enemy has been staggered, no matter its size, you get to finish it off with the amazingly cathartic Glory Kill mechanic. And oh, how satisfying it is to pull that off. It makes the game more fun, sure, but it’s also a useful design tool, because it provides one of the only options to restore your character’s health, which you will constantly be losing. If your health is at 10 percent, Doom encourages you to go in guns blazing, because the more stuff you kill (and the more creative you can get with it), the more health you’re able to restore. Throughout the game, you’ll be doing hundreds of these Glory Kills, but there are so many different animations and ways to approach it, that even after 12 hours of repeating this action, it doesn’t get old.
Destiny 2 could feel like a completely different game if they just added a bit of spice to these encounters, even if it’s just as simple as two or three new animations. Punching hundreds of enemies in Destiny 2 feels almost entirely devoid of satisfaction. The animation is exactly the same each time, and it’s way too easy to take dozens of them out. Not to mention the fact that your health will be fully replenished in about 10 seconds, if you can just avoid taking damage.
In Doom, if you spent time hiding from enemies to recover, that wouldn’t work, because your health doesn’t automatically restore. Enemies have excellent AI, and they will look for you. The levels in Doom are designed so that there’s basically nowhere to hide. Make the encounters longer, more unforgiving, and for crying out loud, please make them more satisfying.
Dark Souls has some of the best level design in gaming, and Destiny 2 could definitely take a page out of its book.
Dark Souls is so enjoyable because the game is constantly trying to prevent you from progressing. Nothing feels better than when you finally make it to that next bonfire, as if to prove the game wrong. The scarcity of checkpoints adds a sense of fear, in a way. You know that failure means restarting a huge chunk of the level, so you go out of your way to ensure that every enemy you encounter is fought strategically.
Even the weakest baddies can easily kill you if you’re not careful, which requires players to study its moves, and time their attacks precisely. Damage isn’t permanent, but there’s a limited amount of times you’re able to replenish your health, so you do everything in your power to avoid taking it. Players who mindlessly walk into an encounter, haphazardly mashing buttons (the way you are practically encouraged to with Destiny 2) will be swiftly punished. A lot of enemies can kill you in one hit, so carelessness is not an option.
Destiny 2 doesn’t have a difficulty option, and because of the liberal use of resurrection, there was no point during the game’s campaign that I ever truly felt like I was presented with a challenge. Sure, I died a lot, but those deaths didn’t really mean anything.
In my opinion, the largest contributing factor to the difficulty of Dark Souls is the fact that progress within the game is given very conservatively. When you die, you go back to the last bonfire, which there are very little of. You are acutely aware of how far you’ve traveled from your safety net, and your anxiety climbs proportionate to your distance. Seeing that checkpoint in front of you doesn’t guarantee success however. Even with it so tantalizingly close, you can’t use the bonfire until you’ve cleared the enemies in the area before it becomes accessible.
Dark Souls 3’s Irithyll Dungeon map is the smallest in the entire game, but it took me about 2 hours to complete it from start to finish. The game very intelligently provides one, single bonfire where you respawn from, but it constantly loops back on itself, providing shorter, more efficient ways to reach that bonfire again, changing up the dynamic of the game up to this point. You’re not trying to reach the next bonfire, you’re really trying to reach the next shortcut, to decrease the distance between you, and the next level.
Credit to http://darksouls3.wiki.fextralife.com
Losing your progression in the level is one thing, but losing all of the souls you’ve collected is even worse. Souls act as the game’s currency and XP, which allows you to purchase better armor, or upgrade your character’s stats. Once you die, you drop 100% of the souls you have collected. You can get them back if you’re able to make it to the spot where you died originally, but if you fail to collect them and you die again, they’re gone forever.
Imagine if Dark Souls worked the same way as Destiny 2. There’s a huge horde of difficult enemies, and you’re not sure you’ll be able to take them all out on your first try. But since you had little to no trouble getting yourself here, and you know that you’ll just restart exactly where you are, there’s no reason to apply any strategy, so just go in hacking and slashing until you beat the segment. Precision isn’t required when you can just restart a few feet away from where you are, over and over, with all of your loot intact.
On the flipside, imagine if Destiny 2 was more like Dark Souls in that regard. Place a checkpoint at the very beginning of the area, and maybe one or two sprinkled in between, but that’s it. Instead of the game automatically placing respawn points every 20 feet, make the checkpoint an event. Make it feel awesome to encounter one of them. Nothing gives players a better sense of accomplishment than progressing past that segment they’ve been stuck on, and it’s that sense of accomplishment that keeps most players returning to the Dark Souls games.
Destiny 2 doesn’t have the equivalent of souls, but they do frequently reward you with new weapons. Imagine how much more scary it would be if your death meant you lose the weapon you currently have equipped, and the only way to get it back, is you make it to the section you died at, and let’s say 25% of your in-game currency. Not only would that make death more terrifying, success would be so much more rewarding.
Taking what we know about Mario Odyssey, Doom, and Dark Souls, how do we finally fix Destiny 2‘s difficulty?
As it is currently, the respawn points don’t mean anything, and they’re placed too close to the action. Without retooling the entire game, the quickest, and easiest way to increase the game’s difficulty would be to employ the following (which really, wouldn’t be that hard to do from a development standpoint):
-Selectively cut the number of checkpoints in the story missions in half
-Remove automatically regenerating health, and make enemies drop items that restore it
–Give death some consequences by making players drop their most recently equipped weapon, requiring them to make it back to the point they died in order to pick it back up
If you’ve played Super Mario Odyssey, Doom (2016), or any of the Dark Souls entries, you’d know that taking those elements and adding them to Destiny 2 would change it from a pretty generic shooter, to a slightly less generic shooter with a little bit more diversity. But there’s a lot more we can do to make things even better.