Destiny 2 Season of the Chosen: the first few weeks of the game
Destiny 2 Season of the Chosen
The Season of the Chosen kicked off on February 9 and will entertain all Destiny 2 players until May when the curtain also closes on the Guardians games, the event that pits the various classes in the game into competition. The new season has to do better than the previous one - hunting season - and it shouldn't be a particularly difficult task. As much as season 12 was really interesting in introducing us to the renewed character of the Raven and offering pleasant readings to all lovers of lore, the activity of Endofury hunting has not fully convinced in the long run. However, the Beyond the Light expansion, the big update that was launched 3 months ago together with the Season of the Hunt, was behind a not-so-excellent season. Those who wielded the Darkness already in November have now practically exhausted the main innovations introduced. The Season of the Chosen will therefore have to prove capable of being able to get by on its own and this in Destiny often translates into artificially lengthening the companies with repetitive mechanics to cover a longer period of time.Time is enough for a first analysis of what currently works in Destiny and what works less. What is certain is that the structure of this season will not bea> able to undergo major upheavals in progress and any negative aspects of the game will have to be taken into consideration by Bungie for the next seasons and future updates, especially since most of the complaints of the community are now chasing each other. for some time. In the last expansion we had already expressed our doubts regarding the state of PvP and the storage of destinations, activities and equipment with the Content Repository. The Season of the Chosen response to these problems is currently only half effective, as we shall see, but that does not mean that the future is black, indeed, Destiny is in excellent health and has important plans for its future.
The Season of the Chosen: Battlefields
The events at the center of the Season of the Chosen revolve again around the Cabal, in particular the figure of Caiatl, the new empress daughter of Calus who has succeeded Ghaul, who died at the end of the Red War campaign. The narration, as has been traditional for the seasons now, is mostly entrusted to short films, speeches and lore books that add depth to characters who otherwise would risk seeming just another penny to go into battle. As already happened for the Eliksni during Beyond the Light, also for the Cabal it is possible to go into more detail and understand the reasons for their choices, including that of proposing an alliance to the Vanguard to annihilate the Hive. The offer to join the Empire and also obtain a seat on the Cabal War Council, however, is declined by Zavala at Caiatl's request to bow. This triggers a conflict that finds expression in the Battlegrounds, the new symbolic activity of the Season.The new three-player cooperative activity with matchmaking - already a step up from the Endofury Hunts that required players to team up already formed - sees us arming ourselves to repel hordes of enemies on various destinations. The first two weeks we were able to put Nessus, Europa and the Cosmodrome on fire in a progressive advance towards the final boss. The battlefields do not differ much from each other for mechanics, in fact the structure is almost the same: kill the reinforcements, conquer orbs to be thrown at shield repeaters / recover keys, advance by killing anyone we find on the path and confront the boss. final which, based on the damage received, will activate a specific phase. Immediately a certain amount of damage will summon a protective bubble that you must first disable to move on to the next damage phase. The new Oracle battlefield, introduced with the weekly reset on February 23, tries to do something different but always taking a cue from the throwing of balls seen in the exotic quest for the Lunar Falcon. It must be said, however, that the boss "Ixel The Farsighted" makes a good impression with his spectacular attack that unleashes a lightning storm. All battleground destinations are accessible from a playlist that also features classic modifiers and Champions to beat by taking advantage of the changes in the new seasonal artifact.
The new mode lacks the variety that the Menagerie had, where different missions increased progress towards the final boss depending on the performance of the team, but overall it is an entertaining activity because there is a large density of enemies and you can have fun clearing the field with the super or blowing everything up with the rocket launcher. The problem is that this season we will be called to repeat this activity many times and it may not really be so much fun after the fifth attempt. After understanding the patterns and reaching a high Power level, both a greater degree of challenge and a diverse assortment of objectives are missing. Battlegrounds are also part of a gameplay loop that also includes a special artifact, seasonal challenges divided into weeks, and an upgrade system that reintroduces the Shady Engrams and Prism Converter that first appeared in the Season of Arrivals.
To face the Cabal threat, in fact, the Vanguard has set up a new command center called HELM, a large structure on the Tower accessible only by targeted transfer and therefore impossible to reach by landing at any of the transfer points already family members. The base houses the new Decoder, but above all it introduces the War Table where you can listen to messages on the progress of the conflict and where you can also upgrade the Hammer of Test, the Cabal artifact that allows us to destroy the special rewards boxes at the end of a Camp of Battaglia. The Hammer allows you to destroy chests only if a specific Medallion has been equipped. How to equip it? Obviously by spending another in-game currency: Cabal gold. The objective is therefore to complete the ritual activities - Assaults, Gambit and Crucible - to obtain Cabal gold, use it to forge a medallion and assign it to the Hammer, complete a battlefield and destroy one of the three chests that will be visible at the end of the activities. This procedure allows us to charge the Hammer, with whose charges we will be able to focus a shadowy engram to obtain a reward from a smaller pool.
As if that were not enough, prismatic lenses have been introduced for new opportunities to further narrow the reward pool. Lenses can be obtained from battlefield chests or unlocked by completing certain requirements, usually requiring a considerable number of kills with a certain type of weapon. The new weekly challenges also try to keep the player in this constant cycle of actions by requiring an even higher number of resources from week to week such as gold or destruction of chests. Challenges serve to increase reputation and the higher the reputation, the more we have a chance to unlock upgrades at the war table. An intricate system that appears more like a very forced attempt to prevent the activities available this season from running out immediately. Bungie has taken some of the best of mechanical past - goblet of opulence, shadowy engrams, and bait loads - to create a multi-faceted system that risks being highly repetitive and feels more like a second job for those with less time. .
Loot richer despite content archiving
Weapons and perks introduced this season fortunately make this engram hunt more challenging especially when compared to the previous season which has suffered more than others the effects of content archiving. With more than 30 weapons, including some highly sought after by fans, players will be working hard to get the weapon with the best stats. What hasn't changed is the randomness factor, so it doesn't mean that you will immediately get the Palindrome from Nightfall or the Last Dollar from Gambit. There are weapons that are part of a weekly rotation and you will have to wait the right week to get them. However, we believe that the introduction of concentrated engrams and the ability to choose which archetype or feature to try to achieve are still a step in the right direction to reduce the uncertainty of the loot. What Bungie will have to further consider for the next few seasons is a more harmonious distribution of the guns. In season 13 there are more than ten legendary weapons that occupy the energy slot, which means that many of them cannot be equipped at the same time.But the exotic scout rifle is a positive surprise. Tale of the dead man. A precious piece of Tex Mechanica that is obtained from the exotic company Presagio. An even more surprising quest, in fact, the team has really surpassed itself to recreate an atmosphere with horror colors in which you can breathe the horrors of past events, the oppressive presence of the Darkness and sinister sounds that interrupt the silence of a Cabal vessel only apparently empty. Also in terms of mechanics we are faced with a quest that requires a good commitment, between puzzles and intense fighting, but it is at a more symbolic level that the undertaking requires careful reading. Any reference to its protagonists seems to resume the literary topos of the catabasis - the descent of the soul into the afterlife - which becomes the fitting description of our descent into Glycon, surrounded by Darkness and fallen undead. We invite you to complete it if you are passionate about lore to deepen the relationship between the Guardian Katabasi and his ghost Gilgamesh.
Apart from the new kinetic exotic, the number of kinetic weapons is significantly lower than the energetic ones and almost all of these weapons belong to PvP activities such as the Trials of Osiris and The Iron Banner. PvP in Destiny 2 is not having a good time: big updates haven't been seen for a long time and while we have had a new expansion and two Seasons with a focus on PvE, the competitive part of Destiny has been characterized by a strong stagnation. No new maps, no modes and a balance that does not seem to find the right balance after the introduction of the Stasi. The Trials of Osiris, which at the time of the first Destiny ferried the title towards the light in the most stingy periods of content, suffer above all from the absence of a fair matchmaking to the point that this season many teams are preferring a streak of 10 defeats - committing suicide in the first few seconds of the game - instead of competing in a full match for bounty rewards. Although this is a behavior that is not indicative of the whole community, it is still a sign that the fun is failing. A modernization of the Trials of Osiris and matchmaking reward systems is planned at the end of the year, while between seasons 13 and 14, stasis will see considerable changes and in season 15 it will be up to the subclasses of Light to receive a series of buffs.
What else does this Season offer?
If Stasis has become your nightmare in the Crucible, Season of the Chosen also introduces new Natures and Fragments. The Unknown Exo will have a new mission for us - attention, we must first complete the Dark Birth mission available in Beyond the Light to access this new content - which will lead us to investigate the strange phenomenon of entropic fragments in the Well of Infinity. Finally, again for PvE, Bungie has added two classic assaults from Destiny 1: The Devil's Den with bosses Sepiks Primo and D.A.G.A. Fall, also on the Cosmodrome as part of an update that over time should have led to the opening of other areas by re-inserting portions of the map already present in the original title, however the amount of work required was underestimated and in addition to the two assaults did not further additions to the Cosmodrome are planned. D.A.G.A. fall was temporarily disabled and returned to availability on February 23.We didn't expect these new assaults to be completely revised, in fact a good indicator of what to expect from old Assaults was given by the introduction of the “Dishonored ”That all in all resumes the assault of Omnigul without being out of place. The addition of some small new mechanics is welcome, but where the biggest problems emerge in the last two assaults on the Cosmodrome is in the now obsolete dialogue lines. In particular, La Tana dei Diavoli is as if it practically does not take into account the Beyond the Light campaign, but also D.A.G.A. Fall has some problems justifying Rasputin's presence after the events that led to the destruction of the Almighty and the entrance of the pyramidal ships. In short, these are the same contents of Destiny 1 but with new mechanics or some new enemies such as the fallen bipods.
Maybe many people will get over it without too many problems, after all we have continued to listen to the voice for a long time of Cayde despite his death in many other contents and to repeat events already resolved, however some concern and skepticism remain towards an insertion of old contents without an adequate update or adequate contextualization for those who have never tried the original game . Plans to bring the Vault of Glass Incursion back to life have not yet been fully pitted by Bungie, which will have to pay close attention because it is a content that Destiny veterans are very attached to. The experience will remain essentially the same, it has already been confirmed, but it will receive updates to be adapted to the new raid standards and difficulty levels of Destiny 2.
