Destiny 2

[Mutazoia]

Again, you're assuming that "drop everything and assault the Dominus before it can steal the Light" was even an option. We have no way of knowing whether that was the case - what the standing garrison of the Vanguard was, how many Guardians were out on patrol when the attack started, what other firepower Ghaul brought that the Vanguard DID neutralize, how many Guardians were lost when Ghaul acquired the Speaker, etc.

Plus, I'm pretty sure nobody (other than the Red Legion) knew knew that the light could be stolen/blocked, so "kick the space-hippos out of the tower, and then attack their flagship" was a pretty sound strategy,according to the existing data. The fact that said data turned out to be wrong is the Guardians problem, not Gauls.

[Psyren]

Yeah, true. Agreed, Psyren.

Except! We CAN make similar assumptions within the story because of how bad Zavala beats himself up in the story over the battle and his decisions both therein and thereafter! He blames himself for every guardian lost! Which is ridiculous, and human. I'm just being petty now I know that one person blaming himself doesn't mean he's right the facts are how they are and it's just a way of setting up a game about shooting aliens.

(Also I'm not calling the LightClamp the Dominus, we never actually reached that in the prologue, the flagship was still a good distance away, I'm using Dominus Gaul's title because if the LightClamp hadn't worked right then we'd had a boss fight and I'm using LightClamp because we don't get a name for the LightClamp so LightClamp is as good as anything and this is what you get with vague descriptor title overload I suppose)

(LightClamp)

(it's fun to say)

Come on, this is Zavala we're talking about. I just met the guy and I know he'd beat himself up over a single death even if they had kicked Ghaul's ass immediately.

Plus, I'm pretty sure nobody (other than the Red Legion) knew knew that the light could be stolen/blocked, so "kick the space-hippos out of the tower, and then attack their flagship" was a pretty sound strategy,according to the existing data. The fact that said data turned out to be wrong is the Guardians problem, not Gauls.

Indeed, and also not Zavala's fault. Your Ghost seemed pretty shocked by it too.

Though I think there's some Sun Tzu quote about anticipating the worst possible thing your enemy can do and treating it as a certainty?

[Velaryon]

By doing what's necessary to win the battle first. As the safety demo from every airlline trip on the planet says, "Secure your own mask before helping others". How much easier is that fight if every Guardian on the planet still had retained superpowers and immortality? How many fewer civilians die as the Red Legion gets is rump kicked back to whatever low-rent hippo-preserve they escaped from? I promise you, in the real world, the United States Armed Forces are securing NORAD before they worry about the good people of Denver.

As Mutazoia pointed out, Zavala didn't have any reason to think that cutting off The Traveler's light was even a thing that could be done. It's a massive being of immense power that some characters seem to even consider might be a deity.

But let's say for a moment that they were able to recognize that Ghaul's true target was The Traveler, and instead focused on securing that while the attack on the city is left largely unchecked. Let's even say it works, and the Red Legion either turns tail and runs away, or is completely annihilated. The costs in civilian lives would be massive, and the survivors would have every reason to believe that Guardians care only about protecting their own power. No one who isn't a Guardian would ever trust them again.

I absolutely agree that the lack of early warning is a huge tactical blunder, because they either should have had more eyes further out in the system, or been roused immediately when what warning systems they did have started to go quiet. But I don't think they made the wrong choice in prioritizing civilians over The Traveler, especially given the information they had access to.

The whole story seems like a convoluted excuse for why you have to do everything while Zavala, Ikora, and Cayde cool their heels and wait for you. At least this time there's an actual explanation for that, no matter how contrived it may feel.

[The_Jackal]

As Mutazoia pointed out, Zavala didn't have any reason to think that cutting off The Traveler's light was even a thing that could be done. It's a massive being of immense power that some characters seem to even consider might be a deity.

Well, this may be my pre-existing biases conflicting with the as-written lore, but I don't believe in supernatural phenomena. In the Destiny setting, the Traveller is a real entity, and the powers of the Guardians are empirically measurable effects. The Doctor said it best: "To the rational mind nothing is inexplicable, only unexplained". Fundamentally, it's Zavala's sentimentality, irrational belief, and resulting lack of imagination which predicates his tactical failure.

But let's say for a moment that they were able to recognize that Ghaul's true target was The Traveler, and instead focused on securing that while the attack on the city is left largely unchecked. Let's even say it works, and the Red Legion either turns tail and runs away, or is completely annihilated. The costs in civilian lives would be massive, and the survivors would have every reason to believe that Guardians care only about protecting their own power. No one who isn't a Guardian would ever trust them again.

And having your army eliminated nearly to a man, and then subjecting your civilians to the Red Legion's tender mercies because you lacked the ability to fight them was a better outcome? I can't see any reason why the Red Legion would have been any better able to brutalize the people of Earth than when they enjoyed uncontested control of the planet, by virtue of all opposition being deprived of the their most effective weaponry. If the Red Legion chose to attack the civilians in lieu of targets of strategic or tactical importance, I refer you to Napoleon: "Never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake."

I absolutely agree that the lack of early warning is a huge tactical blunder, because they either should have had more eyes further out in the system, or been roused immediately when what warning systems they did have started to go quiet. But I don't think they made the wrong choice in prioritizing civilians over The Traveler, especially given the information they had access to.

The whole story seems like a convoluted excuse for why you have to do everything while Zavala, Ikora, and Cayde cool their heels and wait for you. At least this time there's an actual explanation for that, no matter how contrived it may feel.

My motto is, and has always been: Bad story + Good gameplay = Good game; Good story and Bad gameplay = Bad game. Yes, the plot is there to lampshade that you're the player and these other super-humans have to sit and wait for you to do stuff, which is fine by me, at the end of the day.

[Psyren]

Well, this may be my pre-existing biases conflicting with the as-written lore, but I don't believe in supernatural phenomena. In the Destiny setting, the Traveller is a real entity, and the powers of the Guardians are empirically measurable effects. The Doctor said it best: "To the rational mind nothing is inexplicable, only unexplained". Fundamentally, it's Zavala's sentimentality, irrational belief, and resulting lack of imagination which predicates his tactical failure.

No one is disputing that Zavala failed. What we're disputing is whether he could have prevented that failure. You think he could have (and therefore concluding that he is incompetent/culpable), but not everyone agrees.

As for the status of the supernatural/spiritual in Destiny's world, not sure what to say to that. There are explicitly things like prophecies and visions, in addition to the more "scientific" magic of healing factors and shooting lightning. One such vision leads to us getting our Light back.

And having your army eliminated nearly to a man, and then subjecting your civilians to the Red Legion's tender mercies because you lacked the ability to fight them was a better outcome?

Better than beating the RL and having them immediately blow up the sun because nobody had time to learn about the Almighty or sneak attack it first.

My motto is, and has always been: Bad story + Good gameplay = Good game; Good story and Bad gameplay = Bad game. Yes, the plot is there to lampshade that you're the player and these other super-humans have to sit and wait for you to do stuff, which is fine by me, at the end of the day.

I disagree with this too. Dragon Age has pretty abysmal gameplay, but the story is good enough that I put up with it. Similarly, Final Fantasy's gameplay (7 and earlier) is a complete snore/grindfest for me, but the narrative easily compensates. I view games as a whole package. Would I prefer games with top marks in both, absolutely (I think Mass Effect, especially 2, qualifies) but even when one falters I can still think of examples of good games on both sides.

[Vitruviansquid]

Spoiler

Show

I just beat the campaign, and the story was weak.

Nothing seemed earned, no sacrifices are ever made. The guardians lose the Light and you get a tragic scene in the beginning of the game where you flee the City, find the corpses of your newly mortal fellows, and it looks like all have been lost for the Guardians. The age of heroic adventures is over as the Guardians can now die... except not really, because one of them gets the Light back and does all the heroic adventures. The guardians resolve to fight the legion at the end even without the Light... and none of the important ones die in the battle. Even with Hawthorne and the other people who never had the Light, nobody important dies in a story that begins with everyone's sudden exposure to mortality. The abstract background deaths of a whole pile of guardians and civilians just don't do it for me.

Halfway through the campaign, I would've sworn that Zavala will die in a heroic sacrifice, causing Ikora to understand how to overcome her fear of death and pony up to become the new leader.

[spectralphoenix]

So are we just inventing fancruft that's less likely to produce cognitive dissonance when compared with the game mechanics? Because the mechanic is pretty straightforward: Power (light) level is exclusively a gating mechanism to induce the player to repeat content. Against a level 2 Fallen Dreg, your bog standard level 21 Pariah is going to do basically the same damage as a power 350 Uriel's Gift (yes, the perks and passives may tweak the secondary effects, but at day's end, power is just an integer).

I was actually wondering about this - how much content is there where having equipment above 265 actually affects your numbers? Yesterday I picked up flash point and pvp engrams, blasting past the plateau and causing vendors to start offering level 266 engrams. I'm wondering if that actually changed anything.

In a related note, is anyone on the thread interested in joining my Clan? Everyone from the GitP boards is welcome (especially my arch-nemesis Psyren , just send a friend request to Ozryk#11320 via the Blizzard app.

I should probably join one, sure. I'll send you a request later tonight (my tag is Doriarde#1194)

[Lord Fullbladder, Master of Goblins]

I was actually wondering about this - how much content is there where having equipment above 265 actually affects your numbers? Yesterday I picked up flash point and pvp engrams, blasting past the plateau and causing vendors to start offering level 266 engrams. I'm wondering if that actually changed anything.

Uh... the Nightfall and the Raid, which have higher power level entry points. Once you get to a certain point with them the numbers level off again.

It used to be important for Trials and Iron Banner, too, but power level is balanced out there in D2.

[The_Jackal]

I was actually wondering about this - how much content is there where having equipment above 265 actually affects your numbers? Yesterday I picked up flash point and pvp engrams, blasting past the plateau and causing vendors to start offering level 266 engrams. I'm wondering if that actually changed anything.

Here's a video on the topic:



His testing isn't necessarily great, since he's using his level 265 and 289 weapon with no other gear altered (there's reason to believe that your damage is weighed by your average power level), and he's testing in areas where the recommend power level is way below his gear. I also wildy disagree with his opinions and conclusions as to the implications and virtue of this power capping system. I love that they've given us a way to keep all content relevant, and you can team up with lower level buddies with no danger of trivializing their play. He also disregards the secondary power gain system, namely, item perks and mods which change the characteristics of the weapon and your abilities. Origin Story, the legendary auto rifle you can claim from completing a one-time milestone from Zavala for doing some strikes, has the Rampage perk, which offers a stacking damage buff as you get more kills, increasing your damage by up to 30%. So that Pariah AK may have the same base power when you're fighting level 4 content, but the perks on your Origin Story make it still measurably better.

So if you're 265, I believe adding power will only affect your damage output in the Leviathan raid, and, of course, future content if they add more planets, strikes, missions, etc. And why wouldn't they?

I should probably join one, sure. I'll send you a request later tonight (my tag is Doriarde#1194)

Cool. I should have said, I'm in PST, and my active time is the evenings after work, and some time on the weekends.

[warty goblin]

Still chugging through the campaign, which is, I donno, fine? I mean it's definitely well above not bad, because the basic shooting mechanics are really, really good. But the combination of the level design and the totally gormless AI make it really unnecessarily dull. Oh look, a pack of melee enemies down a long corridor, I think I'll point my gun that way and press fire until everything is dead.

Some of this is because the game is built around finding loot instead of usual shooter level design. You can't have a long ranged segment or a close ranged corridor crawl, because the player might have crappy long ranged guns, or not have the shotgun that makes corridor crawling fun. Everything has to be easily doable with every loadout, which in turn makes the guns one carries feel a lot less important. Carrying a SMG isn't a choice about having a lot of close range firepower at the expense of range and precision, but about which gun has the biggest number. And the numbers seem like a really irrelevant treadmill here, as long as I keep swapping in the guns with the biggest numbers, I keep killing things exactly as fast. I'm just swapping stuff all the time, in order to find a new version of a gun I already have. This means I have *fewer* viable weapon choices, since I can't switch out a full auto rifle for a burst firing one unless the burst gun is at least comparable.

So like I said before. There's a really good shooter here, it's just stuck in a bunch of RPG nonsense. Which still puts it a solid one up on Borderlands, which was a mediocre shooter with a bunch of RPG nonsense making it seem more interesting.


Also, this somehow managed to have a tank section where the tank doesn't shoot. Huh?

[The_Jackal]

Still chugging through the campaign, which is, I donno, fine? I mean it's definitely well above not bad, because the basic shooting mechanics are really, really good. But the combination of the level design and the totally gormless AI make it really unnecessarily dull. Oh look, a pack of melee enemies down a long corridor, I think I'll point my gun that way and press fire until everything is dead.

It gets better when you start doing multiplayer content. Yes, if you play the typical 'steady tactical' approach, you're going to destroy the enemy Ai for the most part. Some of the set piece battles are pretty good, though, but you have to get pretty far in before you're really challenged. I died far more to jump puzzles than I ever died to enemy action, and I've leveled all 3 classes to 265 power now. But really, the heart of the game is in strikes and group events, in particular triggering the Heroic condition for them. These are a BIG challenge solo, and pretty interesting even in a group. Plus, because of the non-scaling past the power cap, they never stop being challenging if you keep powering up your gear.

Some of this is because the game is built around finding loot instead of usual shooter level design. You can't have a long ranged segment or a close ranged corridor crawl, because the player might have crappy long ranged guns, or not have the shotgun that makes corridor crawling fun. Everything has to be easily doable with every loadout, which in turn makes the guns one carries feel a lot less important. Carrying a SMG isn't a choice about having a lot of close range firepower at the expense of range and precision, but about which gun has the biggest number. And the numbers seem like a really irrelevant treadmill here, as long as I keep swapping in the guns with the biggest numbers, I keep killing things exactly as fast. I'm just swapping stuff all the time, in order to find a new version of a gun I already have. This means I have *fewer* viable weapon choices, since I can't switch out a full auto rifle for a burst firing one unless the burst gun is at least comparable.

Eh, the single player campaign is basically a lore dump and tutorial. In many ways, the game starts when you finish the campaign. The power number stops meaning anything once you gear up, save for gating raid access and progression, and the real ways to improve your character is to create a synergistic build with the right exotics, perks, weapons and mods. Having a good weapon that suits your playstyle, and setting up your gear to support that playstyle is far, far, FAR more important than the magic 'power' number.

So like I said before. There's a really good shooter here, it's just stuck in a bunch of RPG nonsense. Which still puts it a solid one up on Borderlands, which was a mediocre shooter with a bunch of RPG nonsense making it seem more interesting.

I agree. So get the single player campaign over with ASAP, and start doing group events and strikes ASAP. That's where the fun is to be found. You can get to 265 power just doing any random content, and at that point, the only content where increasing your power makes any difference is the Nightfall strike and Leviathan raid, and prestige content. Your assessment on Borderlands 2 is more or less dead on: Destiny 2 is a better shooter with a worse story, and much, much prettier graphics.

Also, this somehow managed to have a tank section where the tank doesn't shoot. Huh?

Oh, don't worry, you'll get the tank with the gun later on. Push on through.

And to all and sundry, add me! Ozryk#11320.

[Velaryon]

One thing I haven't noticed anyone comment on is the music. I actually really like the music in Destiny 2. It's not often I notice music in games anymore, since it's more for subtle emphasis here and there than something I can just sit and listen to like older games. There are a lot of musical moments in this game that just really jump out at me, though.

[chainer1216]

I agree, the music is quite good, though part of the Cabal theme sounds way to much like a slowed down version of the Baby Elephant Walk.

[Strigon]

Snip

Seconded regarding the group activities.

This clan of yours have enough active people? I need a fireteam for the Nightfall strikes and the raid.

[GloatingSwine]

Spoiler

Show

Nothing seemed earned, no sacrifices are ever made. The guardians lose the Light and you get a tragic scene in the beginning of the game where you flee the City, find the corpses of your newly mortal fellows, and it looks like all have been lost for the Guardians. The age of heroic adventures is over as the Guardians can now die... except not really, because one of them gets the Light back and does all the heroic adventures. The guardians resolve to fight the legion at the end even without the Light... and none of the important ones die in the battle. Even with Hawthorne and the other people who never had the Light, nobody important dies in a story that begins with everyone's sudden exposure to mortality. The abstract background deaths of a whole pile of guardians and civilians just don't do it for me.

I mean the fact that something was obviously happening and you could tell what it was is a massive step up from the first game, where frankly nothing made any sense at all.

[The_Jackal]

Seconded regarding the group activities.

This clan of yours have enough active people? I need a fireteam for the Nightfall strikes and the raid.

Add me if you haven't already, and I'll join you. No, my clan isn't very active, though that's a bootstrapping issue more than anything. I'm active, 3 weeknights and a good amount of weekend time, evenings Pacific time.

[chainer1216]

I mean the fact that something was obviously happening and you could tell what it was is a massive step up from the first game, where frankly nothing made any sense at all.

To paraphrase the Speaker 'i could tell you of the conflicts that we've lived through, i could tell you of the gods we've fought...but i wont!'

[GloatingSwine]

If only they'd had time to explain why they didn't have time to explain.

[Velaryon]

I mean the fact that something was obviously happening and you could tell what it was is a massive step up from the first game, where frankly nothing made any sense at all.

Agreed. It probably doesn't help that I started the first game after The Taken King expansion was already out, and that I'm not sure I played missions in any particular order, but I could barely make any sense of what was supposed to be going on in the game's world. It took me awhile to suss out that all the different kinds of enemies weren't all on the same side and weren't all opposing the humans together. It took me even longer to figure out which group was which (other than the Taken, since they're much more visually distinct than the rest). Even now I still get the Fallen and the Hive mixed up sometimes.

[Psyren]

Aren't the Taken just Fallen/Hive/Vex with a gooey filter attached?

And yeah, it's an excuse plot I agree. Borderlands 1 was literally "Hey there's a cool vault over there somewhere, go get it!" In games like these, the narrative is supported by the setting and characters, not the plot. No amount of plot can sustain the loot treadmill these games require.

[Lord Fullbladder, Master of Goblins]

Aren't the Taken just Fallen/Hive/Vex with a gooey filter attached?

And yeah, it's an excuse plot I agree. Borderlands 1 was literally "Hey there's a cool vault over there somewhere, go get it!" In games like these, the narrative is supported by the setting and characters, not the plot. No amount of plot can sustain the loot treadmill these games require.

To be fair, "hey there's a cool vault over there go get it!" is actually the story behind going to the original raid, the Vault of Glass. Sure, it's got some story within, the tragedy of the fireteam before you, told through the gear, about lost Praedyth and consumed Kabr and haunted Pahanin, but all you get before you go is a single line mentioning the name and an enormous door sitting in the patrol space of Venus.

Taken Vex aren't a spoiler, they've always been part of the faction. Destiny 2 has more story for the Vex-specific Taken, but they've been around since Taken King. You just don't get the Goblins daisy chaining their shields together as often. Every Taken unit is recycled directly from D1, with the exception of the spikes on the majors and the singular Taken Red Legion Centurion boss in the Lake of Shadows strike.

Actually when the Taken were introduced to Destiny 1, crawling around on every planet one week in advance of the one year anniversary and the Taken King expansion, they were a heck of a thing.

[Vitruviansquid]

I dunno if the story in Destiny 2 is better than in Destiny 1. I never played Destiny 1.

But I'm just saying, they had cinematics, they have a story-driven campaign, they have very excellent voice acting... so they should not have such a bad story. Maybe I'm just being a backseat writer, but from my perspective, if the topic of mortality is such a big deal in your story, you gotta make an important character die. From my perspective, pretty much anyone at Bungie who was told about the story's plot should've been like "why not kill off Zavala?"

[Psyren]

To be fair, "hey there's a cool vault over there go get it!" is actually the story behind going to the original raid, the Vault of Glass. Sure, it's got some story within, the tragedy of the fireteam before you, told through the gear, about lost Praedyth and consumed Kabr and haunted Pahanin, but all you get before you go is a single line mentioning the name and an enormous door sitting in the patrol space of Venus.

I guess? Doesn't change my point - that's not a plot. As a justification/excuse for a single raid, it's fine, sure.

Taken Vex aren't a spoiler, they've always been part of the faction. Destiny 2 has more story for the Vex-specific Taken, but they've been around since Taken King. You just don't get the Goblins daisy chaining their shields together as often. Every Taken unit is recycled directly from D1, with the exception of the spikes on the majors and the singular Taken Red Legion Centurion boss in the Lake of Shadows strike.

Actually when the Taken were introduced to Destiny 1, crawling around on every planet one week in advance of the one year anniversary and the Taken King expansion, they were a heck of a thing.

I figured they were but my point was, if you scrape all the black gunk off of them you'll pretty much see units from the other factions, maybe with a new animation or two. Which is totally fine, palette-swaps are a time-honored gaming tradition, I just didn't see them as being any more special than the others.

[Lord Fullbladder, Master of Goblins]

I believe Velaryon's initial point is that, because of the special glowy black palette swap, they find the Taken more easily differentiated from the original races. Which I can understand. Especially in D1, where each race had palette swaps within themselves.

Fallen from the House of Devils were red and grey, but House of Kings on the same world were yellow and blue, Hive broods had differently coloured chitin, Cabal legion iconography and what have you. Add that to confusion about who worked with who and the way TTK's new story made it abundantly clear that the Taken were Different while just sort of saying 'yeah those other guys are there.'

[Velaryon]

I dunno if the story in Destiny 2 is better than in Destiny 1. I never played Destiny 1.

But I'm just saying, they had cinematics, they have a story-driven campaign, they have very excellent voice acting... so they should not have such a bad story. Maybe I'm just being a backseat writer, but from my perspective, if the topic of mortality is such a big deal in your story, you gotta make an important character die. From my perspective, pretty much anyone at Bungie who was told about the story's plot should've been like "why not kill off Zavala?"

If we're nominating characters to die, can I put Lord Shaxx forward as an option? He's certainly not important to the story like Zavala is, but I really, really hate Shaxx's voice.

I believe Velaryon's initial point is that, because of the special glowy black palette swap, they find the Taken more easily differentiated from the original races. Which I can understand. Especially in D1, where each race had palette swaps within themselves.

Fallen from the House of Devils were red and grey, but House of Kings on the same world were yellow and blue, Hive broods had differently coloured chitin, Cabal legion iconography and what have you. Add that to confusion about who worked with who and the way TTK's new story made it abundantly clear that the Taken were Different while just sort of saying 'yeah those other guys are there.'

Yes, that was my point. The neat glow, combined with the blights popping up everywhere, makes the Taken more obviously visually distinct from the other enemy groups, even if their forces are made up of possessed members of those other factions.

I figured out without too much difficulty that the big beefy guys were the Cabal and most of the robots were the Vex. I still don't really understand the different motivations and such of most of the factions because the first game didn't do a good job (or any kind of a job at all, really). What they did give us in the game in terms of world-building and story didn't grab me enough to motivate me to seek out more information.

[warty goblin]

Finished up the campaign this afternoon. The last few missions were definitely the highlight. I mean it pretty much sci-fi shooter campaign 101, but nicely done, with some definite variety in locations and with more interesting things to fight. The last boss fight was a drag though.

Now, on with shooting dudes and grinding lootz I suppose. The legendary/exotic guns seem way cooler in both form and function, so getting them is actually fun. And somewhere around level 20 or 200 light, the costume options have gone from ok to seriously badass.

[Vitruviansquid]

I guess the other thing about Destiny 2 is, you can really just sit down and shoot these same Fallen/Hive/Vex/Cabal/Taken guys all day.

That's the thing that separates this game from the Borderlands games for me. Borderlands might have more colorful characters and locations, and if I had to give one game the accolade of having a better story, it'd have to be Borderlands (narrowly). But in Borderlands, I was playing to finish the missions and make progress. In Destiny 2, I'm playing because I just like shooting things in this game. The weapons just feel so good.

[Mutazoia]

I figured out without too much difficulty that the big beefy guys were the Cabal and most of the robots were the Vex. I still don't really understand the different motivations and such of most of the factions because the first game didn't do a good job (or any kind of a job at all, really). What they did give us in the game in terms of world-building and story didn't grab me enough to motivate me to seek out more information.

I can kind of see the logic behind this in D1. You are revived by your ghost in the very beginning of the game, having been dead, apparently, long before the "Golden Age", so you know **** all about what has gone on since you kicked the bucket. After that, you spend all of your time running and gunning, with out much time to get a library card and brush up on ancient history.

All the background info you pick up on the ways is basically:

• The Traveler showed up and handed out technology like candy
• Bad, jealous aliens chased the Traveler to Earth and ****ed **** up for everybody.
• The Traveler blew it self up in a hail-mary play to stop the bad, jealous aliens, and has been in a coma ever since.
• The bad, jealous aliens moved in and hung up curtains, while they attempt to put the last nail in the Traveler's coffin.
• Your job is to make their lives as painful as possible, while protecting the last city from all comers.

Do you really need much more info than that to put a bullet into someone's brain-pan?

[The_Jackal]

I laid my grubby mitts on Frontier Justice, and I do love this gun. I'm generally a sucker for Scout Rifles, and this one hits all the buttons: Hits hard, great range, vertical recoil, and a nice perk. Hit that first shot, and suddenly your recoil gets a lot more controllable, and you're just mag-dumping precision hits.

I guess the other thing about Destiny 2 is, you can really just sit down and shoot these same Fallen/Hive/Vex/Cabal/Taken guys all day.

That's the thing that separates this game from the Borderlands games for me. Borderlands might have more colorful characters and locations, and if I had to give one game the accolade of having a better story, it'd have to be Borderlands (narrowly). But in Borderlands, I was playing to finish the missions and make progress. In Destiny 2, I'm playing because I just like shooting things in this game. The weapons just feel so good.

Exactly. Borderlands has a fun story, but their 10 bajillion guns shtick can't seem to do without having 99% of them being complete garbage. Destiny 2's gunplay feels so smooth and crisp, I'm just killing stuff for the sheer fun of it. Plus Bungie actually does scaling brilliantly. Rather than faff around with slag and overpowered gear synergies, they just make your power level a gating system only. The beauty there being that you can keep progression going indefinitely, without ever making any zone or content obsolete.

[warty goblin]

I guess the other thing about Destiny 2 is, you can really just sit down and shoot these same Fallen/Hive/Vex/Cabal/Taken guys all day.

That's the thing that separates this game from the Borderlands games for me. Borderlands might have more colorful characters and locations, and if I had to give one game the accolade of having a better story, it'd have to be Borderlands (narrowly). But in Borderlands, I was playing to finish the missions and make progress. In Destiny 2, I'm playing because I just like shooting things in this game. The weapons just feel so good.

Very much so. I can be all 'eh, should go do something else' and then I find a new gun and it can one-shot headshot legionaries and I need to go shoot all the things with it.

By Borderlands I assume you mean Borderlands 2? I found Borderlands the first to be excessively mediocre in all possible ways, except for graphically where the cell shading was nearly painfully ugly. Borderlands 2 was a good time, and actually rather well written, but I found it lacked a compelling reason to keep playing, because the looting became tedious fairly quickly, the humor wore out, and the level design, enemy variety and basic shooting were often not all that great. After a while I realized I'd really rather go play RAGE, because the corridors looked a lot better, and I'd rather have a half dozen or so really well designed guns that are fun to use than a bazillion options ranging from 'oh hell no' to 'eh.' I mean sure it's funny the first time you find a two-shot revolver sniper rifle that's utterly useless, but that joke wears out by the third time. Which probably happens inside the first half hour.