IS WARMIND ENOUGH? (THE DESTINY 2 REVEAL)

You know, I thought long and hard about an interesting title for this article. Something click worthy. Some kind of pun or play on words...and I just couldn't. I sat and I watched the reveal of Destiny 2's second paid expansion, Warmind. And though I was left hopeful, I was left unimpressed. I sat and I watched developers fumble over words. I watched a nervous Deej do his best to pander to a frustrated community. I sat and I watched game play about "new" activities, in a "new" location, with "new" exotics. And all of this brings me to this article. I'm not going to sit here and do a break down of what I saw because you can A) watch it for yourself in the video below & B) I'll leave that to the professionals like Kackis, Datto, and Console. What I do intend on doing is talking about some points that stood out to me and give my feelings on the content as it was presented. So let's talk the destiny of Destiny and it's Warmind expansion. But first, the live stream!

I first and foremost want to talk about Bungie developers and their usage of the word "NEW". So the definition of new is: "Not existing before; made, introduced, or discovered recently or now for the first time." So if we look it like that: Sure, we've never seen hive with ice on them. However, we have seen hive. Both normal and taken. You're right we haven't seen ice on Mars before, and those who never played D1 may in fact be getting a "new" location. However, we HAVE seen mars before. And I'm not even going to talk about exotics, because I've said it before and I'll say it again. You stripped my guardian of all of the gear we acquired under the promise that we'd see ALL NEW weapons in D2 and so far we've not only seen a lot of the old, but a subpar new. I just really need Bungie to stop using the word new. In TTK we saw reimagined Hive, not new. In ROI we saw reimagined fallen...NOT NEW. And now with this we get (again) reimagined Hive. On a barely reimagined Mars. At least Ana Bray is new, and I can only hope her goods are worth buying.

Next up we got some information about Escalation Protocol. And this was admittedly the highlight of the stream for me. I love a good horde mode and though no one has quite done it the way Gears does. Sunset Overdrive came close. I am excited for what this means for Destiny. Or at least I was...then I remembered Prison of Elders. Then I remembered the TTK's version. THEN I remembered the ROI version. Then I realized this just another "new" mode that we've already seen just not in this context. It really got me wondering if Bungie even has the ability to create something new anymore. That being said, Escalation Protocol (EP) looks to be promising, showcasing mechanics that I don't believe we've seen before. It also looks to be more difficult than events of it's kind from the past which is a huge plus for me. Another benefit of playing this is the "unique" gear that you can receive from defeating the 7th level boss. And with a variation of 5 different bosses from one week to another, with drops unique to each of them. This mode looks to offer a ton of replayability and that can never be a bad thing. That is something that the community has said was lacking and it looks like Bungie IS listening and trying to fix.

Moving forward I'm not going to talk about weapons. How some exotics have been recalibrated, and changed, and blah, blah, blah. I will drop a link to a more console video where, I believe he goes over a little bit of that. I don't pay attention to time to kill all that much and I don't utilize the meta. I play how I play and run what I will. I do want to talk about Emote Wheels, Crucible, and Private Matches. BUNGIE! You should never drop something that should have dropped with the launch of the game as some awesome bonus to your DLC. We left D1 with private matches and we should have started D2 with them. And though you're making it free for everyone to utilize, it shouldn't have taken this long and backlash for you to bring it to D2. As for the emote wheel...you clowns should have dropped D1 with this option. At the very least you should have introduced emote wheels when you introduced the ability to purchase emotes. Like are you living in the fucking past? Because ESO had emote wheels, Overwatch has emote wheels, and I believe Fortnite had emote wheels. And D2 is finally getting them in May like it's this BIG drop. Like you literally had the audacity to put it on your roadmap. Both of those things should have been an unspoken drop. Like: "oh here are these things we fucked up on. our bad." Just ridiculous that you would spend ANY time on the stream talking about what should have always been. That being said. Here's that MoreConsole video I was talking about.

What did make me a bit hype was Crucible ranks. Brave and Glory. This allows for casual crucible players to do what they do with Brave and for competitive crucible players to have their wins and losses tracked with Glory. With win streaks allowing for bonus rewards and lose streaks bring more rapid drops in rank. This is just great to me. I loved Crucible in D1 and wished for some kind of tracking system. And this is just that. So kudos to Bungie for this.

So! Is this enough to bring players back? Is it enough to bring me back? I don't know about you but I walked away from D2 before I even finished the story. Something about how lack luster TOO was when it was debuted. And I'm not some casual player. I defended and bought the collector's edition of TTK. I was all about ROI. I purchased to $250 collectors edition of D2. I'm a fan of the game...and I wanted this stream to get me hyped. And it didn't It's a lot of the same. I mean the weapons that drop from EP does get me a little excited, however I don't know if it's enough to keep me going. I will say this. Now that the last expansion is on route and I still haven't even finished the main story line, there is a lot of content for me to play. And if this can keep me satisfied until September, when they announce they're 3rd expansion, codename: Comet. Then Destiny might have won me back. So is it enough to make me play again? Not really, but I'll dust off my disc, get myself to Warmind level, and see what comes of the experience.

How about you? If you left Destiny 2 is Warmind doing enough to bring you back? Or has it solidified your walking away from it forever? Let us know in the comments.