10 years after the Light and Dark saga, we see The Edge of Fate ushering in a new one—one that is supposed to create a foundation from learned experiences while keeping the experience fresh for players. On paper, this means having our earned gear feel viable while navigating an entirely new build crafting system—all in a new frontier for the Destiny universe. We were promised Rise of Iron scale content yet was delivered a much bigger one. It doesn’t always hit the mark, but from my 50+ hours of grinding Pinnacle Ops, exploring Kepler and building through the new Gear 3.0—I found that The Edge of Fate has titled itself appropriately, utilizing years of iteration and improvement, worn by time.
The New Frontier
The Edge of Fate doesn’t heavily rely on the knowledge of The Light and Dark saga—it is telling a story with characters that has lived through it, but with a new threat outside of known history. We are faced with a new dilemma against the IX—omniscient beings transcending time, that were once retrofitted for a competitive mode called Trials of the Nine and a silly-themed Dares of Eternity. There are expositions regarding the Golden Age and the Collapse, which is needed for new players, but nothing that is too distracting from the core focus of the plot. Can it still be a bit convoluted for returning players? Mostly—yeah. I’ve been tackling this expansion with a bunch of casuals, and they tend to skip the dialogue and avoid retaining anything story related given how lost they are with the overarching universe; the same effect Marvel is facing after Endgame. It was mitigated a bit once I told them this is a new saga, but it wasn’t enough to hook them back in—I tried only because the story here is genuinely the best told in Destiny’s history, even better than The Witch Queen, Forsaken and The Final Shape; we wondered how Bungie would tackle ahead with the weight of the Light and Dark saga, they figured it out in spades here.
A bit of retcon here and there, some explanation as to why we can see Dark Matter and we have a solid understanding of what’s to come. We are introduced a new character called Lodi, an excellently written one with great characteristics; you would think that Orin would be the focus of the plot given that she was the Emissary of the Nine who broke free of their will, but no—it’s Lodi, the man that literally came out of nowhere. They work in conjunction with each other that also ties us all in the mix—a well put together web of stories that supports the core theme of this new Saga, one that I am eager to see where it goes next.
The cadence of the actual mission structure, not entirely the best though—the most important element is the navigation HUD; if that’s gone, or often glitched, players are going to have a bad time. I personally love not being guided—it was relatively easily to find where to go next, but with this expansion focusing on exploration and new actuation mechanics, there should have been an accessibility option for players. Kepler is a fun planetoid to shoot in, but it’s hardly the frontier that was promised. While there are some used assets like wall panels, fallen computers and rock textures, the aesthetics here are mostly fresh. It doesn’t really mean much if the first thing people compare this to is the Tangled Shore.
I tend to agree, though that’s not entirely a bad thing—however, it is just a bunch of rocks connected together with Fallen and Vex roaming to kill you. Thankfully there are 1 new enemy type for each faction, a flying Fallen dude and swarm of Vex Bees, but it doesn’t really change the flow of combat. The biggest addition is the Samus-like ball mechanic called Matterspark. It’s a gift made possible by Dark Matter, thanks to the Nine. You combine your Light with Dark Matter to navigate and solve puzzles. For the most part it works, but not as deeply as I hoped. I mentioned navigation HUD, it’s absent during campaign missions, by design—players are left to figure out where to go next; you’re often searching the next hole to roll in, which can interrupt the flow of gameplay for a lot of players. There’s Mattermorph as well, which serves to make otherwise inaccessible locations, accessible by shooting Strand onto specific glowing objects. Then there’s the Relocator, a jimmy-rigged Fallen Blaster designed to create Portal-like pathways for us, with a secondary function of bouncing its beam to different arrays to solve puzzles.
I want to preface that the new Matterspark, Mattermorph and Relocator systems are great additions to the tired puzzle activations we’ve had for so many years—the way it is utilized is very easy and sometimes thoughtful. At first, you’re just having a blast, but once you get deep into the 7hr campaign, you quickly realize that the puzzles you are faced to solve aren’t complex—maybe you’ll get 1 or 2 legit “aha” moments. This expansion is touting to be more of a Metroidvania-focused experience, but the world is not only mostly horizontal, but the upgrades to these destination abilities hardly make a difference—Matterspark for example upgrades to have the ability to pulse an immune shield foe so we can damage it, ok? I wish Bungie’s gameplay team thought of better ways to utilize these systems beyond what we currently have.
The Semblance of Improvement
The biggest draw, and probably the most annoying aspect for returning players is Gear 3.0—another evolution to Destiny’s sandbox and build-crafting. I personally love it, but I also see glaring issues with this new system. Tiered variants of loot are introduced in this expansion, which benefits incremental power gains—this is coupled with revised stats and an increased cap from 100 to 200. We now have new stats to distribute to like Weapons which improves reload, stability and damage, alongside 6 new Architypes that pairs 2 main stats with a Primary and Secondary function.
For context, if you want to have pre-3.0 max stats, you will only need to allocate 70 points to said stat (though, as of this writing, you need 85 since it’s bugged)—and if you want to focus on specific stats like Class and Grenade, you would focus the new Architypes on your Ghost such as Specialist or Grenadier and allocate accordingly. To get higher Tiered gear, you will have to play hard content by adjusting its difficulty with modifiers. Kepler has the ability to adjust its World Tier difficulty which drops Gear of its planetoid type as well. With the introduction of Gear 3.0, we now have Set Bonuses alongside an adjustment to Artifacts stat bonuses. This time if you have 2 or 4 pieces of the same gear, you get additional passives for your build.
All of this is welcomed, except when you learn how to grind for them. After I completed the relatively balanced Legendary campaign (even without the once overturned Third Iteration Exotic Scout Rifle from the Reward Pass—Bungie, stop giving Exotics in Reward Passes!) You are then directed to get more powerful gear from The Portal—a new menu tab for streamlined content. It is a good tab and has all the important bits you need to play Destiny 2 well. Every activity can be adjusted with modifiers for more loot and stronger Power. Each activity gives you specific gear tailored for it, if you want the best of the best, you will need to grind Pinnacle Ops. Sounds good right? Only, it’s egregious in nature because the content we will be grinding in are legacy ones—so in order to get stronger we are fighting through the same old content we’ve been grinding in the last 10 years. Now, I knew this going in, but at the very least Bungie could have launched The Edge of Fate with 3 Exotic Missions with varying runs, e.g. 10min, 25mins, 40mins. There’s not even a new Strike or Lost Sectors tied to Kepler.
At the moment, these traits are attributed to older Exotic Missions in the Portable Ops with varying rewards ranging from 1 Power drop to 3. Then, higher Tiered loot is locked behind Power Requirements, so when playing Solo, you have no choice but to grind your way up regardless. Again, on paper this is fine, but it only works if you have no content to run through with friends. This is coupled with the lack of new gear to chase. Sure, there’s rough 40 new pieces to chase, but with just about 5 Gear Set bonuses and 6 new architypes to manage and limited avenues to grind through, makes the overarching quality feel cramped at best. There’s simply just not enough to truly bring out the best of this new system.
The Perpetual End
The real purpose of your grind is to tackle Destiny 2’s latest raid—The Desert Perpetual. It’s an endgame activity that ties to the overarching story, and where the best loot are located. Content Mode was active on the weekend of its release, 4 days after the launch of the expansion, which gave no time at all for people to prepare. I couldn’t enter the raid during said time as I don’t have a team dedicated to grinding their eyes off here. After 48hrs, Normal Mode became available, and I was able to join random LFG groups. Several hours later I finally got my first clear, and another with Feats activated—the raids Modifier system. My only gripe with this raid is the fact that loot drops at Tier 1, which….I guess? I think it should drop at Tier 3 at most before Modifiers, but whatever—in either case, the Desert Perpetual is some of the best mechanics heavy raid I’ve ever played alongside amazing lore implication and aesthetics since…. well Salvation’s Edge.
Much like the approach in the campaign, you can tackle any of the first 3 encounters however you like, which eliminates the need for CheckpointBot! You face Vex in this raid as The Conductor tries to take control of the Singularity within III’s corpse. You will face a Hydra that needs it’s shield depleted during DPS, which forces the team of 6 to split into 3’s—coordinating call outs on which eyes on said shields to shoot, while preventing a whipe mechanic. Another is a Wyvern where you have to synchronize with 2 other members in shooting a tower for platforms to appear for a runner, to then initatiate DPS phase. The final before the boss requires us to deflect a sniper shot back at a Hobgoblin while running through coiled gates. Each are just as exhilarating as the next with once again, some of the best-looking aesthetics the game has to offer. I can’t wait to master each feat and earn potentially T5 loot.
REVIEW SCORE: 7.5/10
There’s a lot to like about The Edge of Fate—I wholeheartedly understand that this is an expansion that’s designed to create a foundation for the coming Saga, in a lot of ways it excels in storytelling and the potential behind Gear 3.0—but besides the Desert Perpetual raid and things to explore in Kepler, there is a lot to be desired in this expansion that just doesn’t sit well with me; the lack of a new Strike or Lost Sectors, the method to get new upgrades, the lack of architypes and gear sets to chase, it just isn’t enough to keep the game moving in a meaningful way.
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