 Okay, so I'm late getting my new video up because my wife and I went on vacation last week. We went to Dallas, Texas to attend the Con of Thrones because we're both huge fans of the books, had a great time, was awesome, but now I'm back and ready to start making videos again. I'm working my way through to finishing my video on the importance of difficulty and game design, and I'm tinkering with my Dead Space 2 analysis. I'm also going to do a quick video on the Dark Souls remaster, and I'm playing Borderlands 2 again. But today, I wanted to get a super fast reaction video about the Destiny 2 September expansion reveal. There's a few key things I want to talk about, so let's just hop right to it. So as any viewer will know, I'm a cranky guy, and in general, I'm impervious to hype. But the intro commercial to this was really cool. A crisis bow and arrow will be coming. A new weapon slot system. Random rolls, armor perks, collections, bounties, finally a warcraft-like end game zone, which the game desperately needed. A whole bunch of other cool things that they inexplicably broke in Destiny 2 seem to be changing back for this expansion. So there's an awful lot of promising things in there. Like a lot, legitimately a lot of cool things. However, the further I got away from that initial 3 minutes, the less comfortable I got. Destiny 2 is in such a disastrous state that Bungie needs to fundamentally alter everything they think they know about public relations, and that means no more of their bullshit vague language, or we'll talk about it later. No more of the that's kinda super secret, but we'll have this conversation as time goes on. They really needed to come and explain things here, so in that vein, let's get to some of the things that still concern me after the reveal. First of all, this DLC does not contain a new enemy race. And while it has new supers that look really cool, it does not contain a new class. Which means that we will almost certainly go through 5 years of Destiny with no new races and no new classes. I want people to try and imagine Warcraft going 5 years without a single new enemy or class for the player to use. Imagine Borderlands launching a sequel without any new classes to play. This is completely unacceptable. Bungie really needs to stop with the reskinning of enemies. They desperately needed to pull people from Destiny 3 to make certain this expansion knocks it out of the park. And while many of these changes, including finally a PvE and PvE blended mode, seem really cool, I don't think it's too much to have hoped for for an actual new enemy race. I admit that it remains possible that these new enemy reskins can be different enough in behavior to finally add some spice back to the combat, but even so, a reskin is highly disappointing. We'll have to wait and see on this, but all we can go on is history and Bungie's history on reskinning doesn't inspire too much confidence. The Taken were just different enough to not be completely boring, but it was still pretty damn disappointing. I know I shouldn't be amazed at Bungie's reuse of assets anymore, but I really was expecting an entirely new enemy race. Again, we'll have to see how these enemies play out, but as of now, this is pretty underwhelming. On that disappointing note, I don't understand Bungie's refusal to simply explain what they're doing. I don't understand why this stream wasn't the time to really dig into the changes to the weapon system and explain it to us. Let's start with the big one, okay? We're going back to random roles, so I guess the answer to this is you didn't. There was no answer to that, as anyone could have easily foreseen. You know how I know that? Because no other loot-based game has static roles on gear. And you know why that is? Because it simply can't work. It was crazy to think that this would work at all. I can't imagine the conversations that led to this change. So while I still embaffled at why they did this in the first place, this is unequivocally a good change. But it's also a change that we already knew was coming, because there was simply no other option. Still, they needed to go into more detail about this before they had the gall to try and sell me a season pass. A quite expensive season pass, by the way. For instance, if we're going back to random roles on guns as they are now, don't even bother. We need to go back to the old system, meaning bringing back all of the old perks and having more, better perks on the weapons. If we're going to get the random roles back, but it's only these tiny, insignificant perks, that won't bring enough back to the game. So random roles are coming back, but we still don't know if that will be the pretty good system of the first game, or what the first game actually needed, which was even more wild perks and combinations, or if we're just taking the existing perks and mods and making them random. Could be good, could be amazing, could be shit. I don't know, because they didn't tell me. Moving on, armor perks are coming back. Could be good, amazing, or shit. I have no way of knowing, because they didn't tell me. Okay, the weapon slot changes seems intriguing. The idea of being able to equip any three weapons you want seems like exactly what the game needs, which is vastly more variety and build diversity. However, if we're keeping the same ammo types, then I'm actually kind of skeptical. If my fusion rifle is still classified as a power weapon, that means an ammo will still be scarce, meaning I can't use it as often as I did in Destiny 1, meaning the combat variety that was Destiny 1's bread and butter will still be lacking. So while this initially seems really great, the truth is we have no idea if this will really change things until we understand how the ammo economy will work. So I just don't know how it will impact the game, because they didn't tell me. Especially if fusion snipers and shotguns remain classified as a heavy weapon. In many ways, I just wish they had simply reverted to the old system because that system worked. People complained that too much special ammo was in the crucible, but they didn't want this system. So while my initial reaction was positive during the video, the more I think on this, the less certain I am. And again, we have to remember that as much as we want to believe, they'll get this right. This is still the same company that made and sold Destiny 2. It's the same company that just made Hive Escalation Protocol and implemented it disastrously badly. Bungie has tons of good ideas that they mangle when they implement. So I really actually can't be excited for this change. If they'd said, hey, we're going back to the old system, period. I'd have been excited for that change. Or if they'd said, hey, we're going to four slots, we're moving special weapons back to their own slot, I could have gotten excited for that too. But this change has too many ways it can go wrong for me to be completely comfortable. It could be amazing and just what the game needs, or it could be shit and completely not viable to run a sniper in a rocket launcher. They really needed to explain this, but they can't get away from their default position of being as vague as possible. I am sick of feeling like you're keeping secrets just to build hype, Bungie. You suck at it, actually. So just tell me what the fuck you're doing. So who knows? Could be great, could be terrible. I don't know because they didn't tell me. Moving on. Now, record books, collections, mass shader delete, more vault space, secrets, an end game area, the new mode, all that shit is excellent. The area is new and looks really, really good. The end game raid area is extremely intriguing. They basically said that the raid and end game will have an actual story and tie into the campaign. Crazy, right? Isn't that amazing? I don't want to be the dead horse, but who the fuck thought that having three raids with basically no story or tie into the world was a good idea? It was just a ridiculous change. So going back to the way everyone else in the world, including Destiny 1 does it, is hugely appreciated. I'm also highly pleased that they're deciding to tell a grittier, less funny story this time. That's another change that was disastrous for the game. Deciding they were going to be Borderlands, but without any of the grim violence, a Borderlands made by Disney, that was a terrible idea. The tone of the game shifted dramatically in Destiny 2 and it was a narrative disaster. So that's another thing that's good to hear. We can't get too excited because Destiny is the worst storytelling I've ever seen in a game and even at their very best in The Taken King, it topped out at competent in the actual game. The lore is excellent and always has been excellent, but the end game story has always been utter dog shit. So fingers crossed, I guess. At least they listened to feedback and are moving to a grittier story. Your game is set in a post-apocalyptic universe where almost all of humanity is dead and the tiny remnant is protected by space zombies raised from the dead by an unknowable and mysterious force. That's not the setting of a comedy, Bungie. Alright, let's move on to the final, hugely important thing I wanted to talk about about the stream here. In my last video, I finished up with a section called, It's Time for a New Model. In that section, I talked about how Destiny's monetization model is an unsatisfying mess. For Destiny 2 Season Pass, I got two quote-unquote expansions that barely qualify for that word. No new enemies, really no new weapons or armor. The vast majority of the content was reskins or reused assets. With tiny little stories that had almost no time to actually be interesting, these DLCs provided dismal value to the customer. In that video, I argued that Destiny needed to move away from the two tiny, useless DLCs and move to one large DLC a year. This is the part where I remind everyone, by the way, that Year 2 of Destiny 1 featured no extra DLC to buy. In fact, the ever-versed microtransaction store was supposedly implemented in order to fund continuing live events in the game. These ranged from the crappy seasonal events that were ultimately nothing, to the April update that was actually quite good. Everyone knew that Destiny 2 couldn't follow the same content drought model as the first game. The time from Taking King to Rise of Iron was long and boring, and Bungie needed to figure out a way to do better this time around. With a suddenly, right-in-your-face microtransaction store, one could be forgiven for assuming that the suddenly much more robust microtransactions would be sufficient enough to fund content updates to keep people happy. Kinda like how a game like Warframe manages to do just that. Or Fortnite. Or whatever, you know what I mean. Well, Bungie is in fact changing the model for Year 2 of Destiny 2. But instead of no DLCs like Year 2 of Destiny 1 or two DLCs with terrible value like Destiny 2, Year 1, Bungie is going all in by forcing you to buy the entire package as an annual pass. In the stream, Bungie's PR voice gave a very brief explanation of what we can expect. Notably, far less in the way of cinematic story. Now, one could argue that for 35 bucks, players are entitled to a bit of story, but to be honest, I am fine with this. Why? Because it is now beyond doubt that Bungie is simply incapable of producing a quality story. The cinematics range from fine to cringe-inducing and if Bungie wants to take all of those resources and move them over to missions and strikes in gameplay, yeah, that is a huge improvement. There's no law that an expansion has to be heavily narratively focused. And seeing as how Bungie is fucking terrible at narrative and good at gameplay, they should skip the insulting garbage stories and deliver more missions and strikes in game modes. So on that front, this is a positive change in the model. However, if Bungie is going to move from two $20 DLCs that players can choose to buy a la carte based upon reviews to one large fee that players have to pay up front and hope they get value, they need to really provide value. And at the same time, I would hope to see a corresponding de-emphasis on the ever-estore. Destiny Year 2 featured no season pass and a bunch of microtransactions. Destiny 2 features a season pass and a shitload of microtransactions. And now Destiny 2 Year 2 is going to have one expensive all-or-nothing season pass. So they better not sell players a season pass that has to be bought as one item and then lock a huge amount of the content delivered during that pass behind a paywall. It's shitty. And it makes me, and people like me, sick. Sick to the point where I will never buy a fucking thing from Eververse, whereas in Destiny 1, I did buy several emotes because I didn't feel ripped off. So, I'm skeptical and annoyed about this. And I find the move to one price for the year to be fairly sleazy. I expect this expansion in September to be quite good. And right afterwards, while feelings are high, I expect many players will buy the annual pass. And as opposed to Year 1, where players could realize they were robbed for Curse of Osiris and then refused to buy Warmind, this time, Bungie will have all of the money up front and therefore much less pressure to actually produce quality content for the price. Imagine Bungie unshackled from financial pressure. Because this season pass was a steaming pile of dog shit. Even when they knew people were pissed about the base game and Curse of Osiris. What will the next one look like when they already have the money and see everyone happy about the expansion? Okay, so that's about it for now, man. Sorry if it rambled, I just went off the cuff on this one. Once again, Bungie managed to have a huge event without telling players any of the details that are necessary to form an opinion about these changes. Does it all look very promising? Yeah, sure, it actually does. But step back for a minute and remember the history here. Hive escalation protocol looked very promising. The story in Curse of Osiris looked really actually very promising. Heroic strike modifiers returning looked very promising. Getting a DLC about Zoll and Rasputin was about as promising as can be imagined. And how do those things turn out? Very often, Bungie understands the problems and instead of giving players exactly what they asked for, they try to get cute and decide that they know better. Players wanted Destiny 1 Heroic Strike modifiers back. Period. Instead, Bungie decided to implement the fucking awful modifiers that Warmind has delivered. Players begged for a horde mode. Instead, Bungie delivered a pseudo horde mode that has already basically run its course. Bungie has a history of thinking far too highly of itself. Of refusing to do what players want and what other games have already shown works. I say it every time, I know, but matchmaking, instead of the somehow still eight months long beta that is the failed guided games. Bungie has a long history now of failing at implementing good ideas. Because instead of just delivering those good ideas, they think they need to make Rube Goldberg contraptions to implement these ideas. So yeah, it does, it looks promising. And I wish that this hour had told me enough to be truly confident about anything. But in many ways, it was just classic Bungie being Bungie. Telling us just enough so that we can imagine how well it might work, but not enough to actually leave us knowing that it will work. And ultimately, that means it's still the same old Bungie. I want to be pleased. I desperately want to love the game, Bungie. But once again, all we can do is wait and hope. All right, bye, I'll see you soon. Thanks.