Will you avenge Cayde-6?
Year 2 of Destiny 2 kicks off with the Forsaken Expansion, which sees our Deadpool-esque robot Cayde-6 betrayed and murdered by Uldren Sov, who has clearly lost his mind after losing his sister Queen Mara during the events of Destiny 1’s expansion “The Taken King”. I was surprised to see Bungie kill off Cayde, after all he is the comic relief of the series (Ghost notwithstanding) but will we see justice prevail?
Turns out that Uldren has set himself up with some powerful allies, which you’ll have to take out individually Kill Bill-style, since each played a part in Cayde’s death. You’ll need to get your Light level up quite a bit to stand a chance on these missions, but you do get high-level loot much easier than at launch, so it shouldn’t take too long. On the whole, the campaign expansion is well done and all, but where does the story goes from here? We’ll have to wait to find out…
Besides the campaign expansion, there is a new Raid mission that launches today and a new multiplayer mode called Gambit. Gambit is a co-op based mode of 2 4v4 teams that kill AI, gather their points and cash them in at your base to summon an enemy at your rival team’s base to stop them cashing in until it is defeated. If you die holding a load of points, you lose them forever so you need to be careful gathering and choosing when to run back to bank them. After banking a certain amount, you will summon a large boss called a “Primeval” and you need to defeat it first to win.
You can also teleport to your rivals map to stop them for a limited time, but other than that you don’t actually cross paths. It’s more of a race to reach the total and beat the boss before the other team, it’s a nice idea and one that works out really well. It’s nice to see a new type of multiplayer mode and one that rewards teamwork, so kudos Bungie.
The new area to explore is also vibrant and beautiful to look at, especially in 4K HDR. The performance holds up and doesn’t lose framerate, while load times are sometimes long but not as much as launch. Voice-acting is still decent and for once, your character actually talks! The soundtrack for the campaign is also well done.
The Verdict
Destiny 2 Forsaken bids adieu to Cayde-6 in a nice send-off campaign, while giving us the addictive Gambit mode and new Raid. On the whole, it’s a great package and one that fans need to get now.