After the end of a 10-year saga in 2024’s The Final Shape, Bungie had its most die-hard fans waiting with bated breath on what the future of the franchise would be. After a year of missteps and steps forward, which included epilogue episodes setting up new threats and wrapping up the stories of old ones, as well as the layoffs and controversial in-game decisions made by the studio, many were cautiously optimistic to see what was in store. Now that we are a few weeks into the beginning of a new chapter, does Edge of Fate kick off this new saga with a bang, or does it fail to meet players’ expectations? Well, much like Nine, it’s complicated…Let’s dive in.

The Narrative

Edge of Fate crafts a story that finally starts to peel the onion that a lot of players have been wanting to take out of the Bungie grocery store for a while now and devour. The question of the Nine. Omnipresent beings that have been in the background of the game’s lore for some time. For years, we’ve only been given small pieces of information about them. Now that we’re finally starting to peel that onion, it feels as if we’ve barely begun as the campaign ends. From the minute we’re almost run over by a train, no, really, that happens, we find several different plotlines interweaving in one of Destiny’s most concise stories in some time. From the entrance of new character Lodi and the mysteries surrounding him, the emissary of the Nine quitting her job, which we didn’t know was possible, the Aionian people and how they ended up here, to the Eliskni and Vex somehow being involved and a returning threat that performs what thought was impossible just to achieve their ultimate goal. You reach the end of the 14-mission campaign hungry for more, yet satisfied with the story told.

What’s so frustrating is that it feels as if the narrative is the best part of the expansion, and the only portion of the meal at our favorite restaurant is the fries that are cooked to perfection, but the rest of the meal feels cold, over-processed, and not meeting expectations. Regardless of what is said next, applause is due to narrative director Alison Lührs and her team for carrying this DLC on their backs because, without it, the future would look grim for this game.

Gameplay

Over the past 2 weeks, I’ve been trying to find the best way to explain my feelings about the new Dark Matter abilities given to us in Edge of Fate. The best way I could describe it, time and time again, while I was on stream, was “We should have just gotten a new subclass”. That is the best way to describe the matterspark, relocator, and mattermorph abilities. They don’t fit as simply into the narrative like the DeepSight ability in Witch Queen. These newfound powers feel similar to the gameplay of previous expansions like Beyond Light, Lightfall, and Final Shape, where we were given the Stasis, Strand, and Prismatic subclasses, respectively, but without the actual application of them like a subclass in the overarching game.

Many have complained about Matterspark consuming the campaign, and justifiably so. It feels as if every encounter and puzzle has you as a knockoff Metroid morph ball rather than enjoying the new weapons at your disposal, especially since there’s an entirely new weapon and armor system as well as a new stat system to become accustomed to. And while yes, some of the puzzles are fun, it bogs down the gameplay and the encounters that are supposed to be challenging from a fighting perspective, especially when you have such a differing power delta in the legendary difficulty of the campaign, which Bungie unintentionally pushes players to go through rather than normal mode.

Quality life changes

“What happened to this game?” is the question a lot of players are asking themselves at the current moment. First, the good. The new weapons and armor, both legendary and exotic, are enjoyable, the portal playlists can be challenging and fun to engage with, and the raid, despite its enyeilding difficulty even on normal mode, has some of the best encounters of any raid since the Witch Queen raid, Vow of the Disciple.

THAT’S IT!

The new weapon and armor tier system, while amazing once you gain the highest rewards, is so anti-casual/new player friendly that, despite Bungie saying they want to streamline the game for those individuals. That was the motto we heard from the developer leading up to the release of the expansion. “We want to make this game more approachable. But still offer a challenge to our hardcore players.” The result, however, is that they have failed both camps rather spectacularly. In terms of the hardcore players, the majority of their old weapons and armor that they grinded for have been effectively sunset despite Bungie’s attempts to avoid that, making the grind for new loot even harder due to bonuses for using new loot. Then, from the casual perspective, you can’t upgrade the tiers of loot, and if you want even marginally good stat distribution, you have to run the hardest content, which is alienating to the player base.

From the newcomer’s perspective, Bungie has yet to revamp their onboarding process, but instead, sunset their directory, a world map that guided you to each destination, in favor of “the portal.” Nicknamed the “Fortnitification of Destiny”, the portal is Bungie’s attempt to lead players in the right direction when it comes to the campaign, as well as solo and fireteam activities. While to their credit this has achieved its goal with this NEW content, Bungie has again sunset the old content while saying theyre not, leaving all old campaigns, dungeons, and raids in the world directory off to the side and separate from the portal but placing a grey filter over the tab to deter players from even bothering with the content. Bungie has said they rolled out this portal because they believed it was the best course of action, despite feedback saying to the contrary. So with the official release now live and now the consensus is that the loss of the world tab has killed exploration and taken away a staple of the game that has existed since its original release, Bungie has said in an update they will bring the worlds tab back in line and live in unison with the portal, but why did it come to mass backlash and not initial feedback for this to occur?

At the end of the day

It feels as if 20% of the team is pulling the weight of 80% of the game at this point. The narrative, the new weapons, and armor are shining beacons in what is just a saddening display from a studio that claims to want to push this game into the future. There’s potential in the next few months to fix the mistakes the game has. The amount of bugs and glitches that plague it didn’t even factor into the scoring here because they’ve become routine. However, the tiering system, the unruly difficulty that is so anti-casual gamer, and even in some cases anti hardcore gamer, and the lack of respect for what’s come before as well as what’s down the road need to change if the Destiny we know and love can continue.

Thanks so much for checking out this review. I stream Destiny 2 content throughout the week as well as other games, so come by and see me at twitch.tv/jpenumbra.