Then thoughts of what Bungie had envisioned for Guided Games began cropping up in my head. When Bungie announced Guided Games, it seemed exciting. Here was a feature that would ease the stress of finding a group and knowing that group could be handpicked by the seeker. It meant not having to sift through toxicity, feeling a bit closer to strangers and maybe making a friend or two along the way. Guided Games has a long way to go and needs some serious refinement. I was not about to spend another hour waiting for the next group, for fear of having the same thing happen all over again. Destiny 2’s Leviathan was proving to be more of a monster than first imagined.

Destiny is a game with strong lore that does a poor job of presenting it to players. Though Bungie vastly improved the game's story elements in The Taken King and Rise of Iron, it's with Destiny 2 where the developer is looking to make it's biggest strides yet. Featuring a full-fledged campaign, Adventures that tell their own sidestory and new lore items, the story team in Bellevue, Washington have had their hands busy. We got to sit down the Matthew Ward and Jason Harris, members of the Story and Cinematics team to discuss Destiny 2's plot.

Destiny 2 is headed in the right direction. Perhaps it's too little too late or maybe it could pull a healthy player base back in. For now, Destiny 2 is trying its best and is showing signs of quality of life for its future. Today it’s no surprise when buying a new game to be hit immediately by a patch, because what game makes it out of the door ever without having to go through a few updates and patches once it’s out the gate? Usually a major update will hit games freshly released within the first month followed by the steady stream of content and improvements. All of this is commonplace in the video game world and yet we as the audience still find time to get mad that games aren’t the perfect embodiment of what was envisioned. Developers do have a responsibility to be open with their audience and it does become a let down when certain things promised are nowhere to be seen or the game is more broken than let on. So let the saga of Destiny as it continues through the ages be a lesson, one that we are seeing more and more frequently – Anthem is on the horizon, after all. But it's our responsibility as players and developers to keep the dialogue going to get the best experience possible from all sides. Good luck out there, Guardian.

The campaign mission was the "Homecoming" mission from the gameplay reveal. It's the first mission of Destiny 2 and kicks things into action with a giant explosion. The Cabal’s Red Legion has launched a strike on the Last City in an attempt to steal the Traveler. Homecoming is the perfect opening mission for Destiny 2, illustrating just how much is changing between the new game and the old. There are epic moments, like helping Zavalla hold back waves of Cabal infantry, interactions with NPCs and actual set piece moments taking place.

That same week the raid dropped, I was able to pull a fireteam together for the weekend, landing epically on Leviathan's Golden walkway towards the gates of opulence we made our way in. Having watched and read up on what to do because we didn’t feel like messing around with figuring out mechanics, the Bath House was up first. We did not succeed on getting it that first night and spent a number of hours just trying to get coordination down, eventually calling it and deciding to try again the next day. Meeting up the next night we aced it no problem, coordination was up, fatigue was gone and we were on point. Next was the all too known (by now) Pleasure Gardens. Stealth isn’t Destiny 2 update 9.1.0.2’s strong point and that’s all that will be said on the matter. What did cause us grief was attempting this freaking room for the next four hours while the dog (bosses) continually got more glitchy. They would cut in and out, reset their paths, see one of us even though they were facing another direction and it lead to general frustration among the whole group. We had figured out what to do but the game mechanics weren’t helping, especially when they constantly kept breaking. At this point we had already spent nine hours banging our heads against just two rooms. The fireteam called it quits for the second night and a third night seemed less hopeful.

Fallout 4 and Dead Space 3 were both the standout best sellers of their respective series. More gamers are familiar with these series thanks to their widespread success. On it’s own, this success is a good thing. In the case of Fallout at least, it means that the series has a future. Just like with Destiny 2, however, that success came with a price. In the case of Fallout 4 , greater success and mainstream appeal came at the cost of its RPG depth. Instead of defining what kind of character they want to play at the outset of the game, players can instead develop them as they play. The Sole Survivor’s identity is fluid. They can be anything and everything given enough time. They’re basically competent in everything from the outset of the game and developing them is mostly just a matter of increasing their damage with/resistance to different types of weapons.