Today, Bungie released a brand new expansion to Destiny 2, a video game in which players are trapped forever in an infinite simulation. And if you wanted something revelatory, you might need to recalibrate your expectations.
Curse of Osiris, the first of two announced expansion packs for Destiny 2, opens up Mercury as a patrol zone and adds a handful of new strikes and missions to the game. It comes with some major balance tweaks and the first of two big quality-of-life patches, with the second launching on December 12. Curse of Osiris also includes a short story campaign that tasks you, Guardian and saviour of the universe, with rescuing a space wizard named Osiris from a group of nasty robotic Vex. Osiris was originally conceived as a key character in Destiny 1, but thanks to a massive story reboot, he was cut. Over the past few years we’ve heard bits and pieces about him, yet we haven’t seen him in the game until now.
I’ll reserve judgement on the bigger-picture changes until we’ve all had some time to digest them, but after a few hours, I can share that the campaign is short, beautiful and way too repetitive. The final battle is top-notch – and the boss is one of the best-looking enemies we’ve seen in Destiny to date – but overall, the story feels hollow. Rather than advance the game’s overall narrative or expand our understanding of Destiny lore in any sort of interesting way, it just kind of fizzles. Osiris himself is underwhelming, and although there’s some fun dialogue and character development, the campaign doesn’t have nearly enough time to hit the highs of Destiny 2‘s first main story.
A large part of the campaign revolves around the Infinite Forest, a Vex simulation in the centre of Mercury full of crystalline labyrinths and pulsating portals. Gorgeous and alien, like an extension of Destiny 1‘s Vault of Glass, the Infinite Forest is as visually appealing as anything we’ve seen in the game. It’s also, from what I’ve seen so far, boring.
During the campaign and subsequent adventures, you’ll have to trek through the Infinite Forest several times, which means running along dozens of variations of same-looking platforms and fighting your way through the same exact enemies as you move from door to door. The only reason to stop and fight filler enemies is when one of those doors glows red, which means you’ll have to kill a specially marked baddie called a Daemon in order to get it unlocked. Otherwise, there’s no real reason not to just keep running. And there’s really nothing fun about sprinting through platforms as you try to avoid meaningless battles.
Other missions fare a bit better. One of Curse of Osiris‘s cooler fights tasks you with defeating a massive Cabal general while dodging Vex mechanical defences, and the final boss combines raid-style scale and mechanics with a cool bit of story. Longtime Destiny fans will no doubt enjoy some of the character depth we see from the veteran Ikora, who has changed a lot since we first met her, and from the little-known Brother Vance, who we once knew as the guy who would dash all of our hopes in Trials of Osiris. As it turns out, Brother Vance is just an Osiris fanboy – who would have thought?
My colleagues and I will keep playing and writing as we get more of a feel for Curse of Osiris‘s larger-scale changes, but the story in a nutshell is short, gorgeous and tedious. At least the music is great.
Comments
11 responses to “Destiny 2: Curse Of Osiris’s Campaign Has Some Good Moments But Is Mostly Tedious”
It’s sad to see this isn’t going to change up Destiny 2 very much. I’ve enjoyed pottering around Destiny 2 vanilla, but have been skeptical that the expansions are really worth the money. Especially given the huge amount of other games at the moment that have gone on sale incredibly quickly
so out of curiosity (because I own the DLC already) what exactly is free and what is in the DLC?
is it safe to assume the actual content is paid and the levels (both actual player levels and light levels) are rolled into the game?
I’m pretty confident in saying that the additional levels (both player and power/light) are only accessible if you own the DLC.
that’s interesting, wouldn’t peg them to segregate players
They did it all through D1 and you will be locked out of some baseline D2 content if you do not have the DLC. Not a great move for something that’s only been out for a couple of months.
Like greenscreener already mentioned, they actually were pretty bad with it in the first game.
Non-DLC owners basically had original game content like nightfall strikes taken and moved up to the level of the DLC… There was no “Oh you can do your version of it still.” it was simply gone.
I’d go so far to say that the additional levels are absolutely there purely to segregate players and force people to buy the DLC.
I mean let’s be honest, it’s the Activision way… Things like selling map packs and such that split player bases, etc, and make people feel obligated to buy them to keep playing with everyone else.
The only thing I don’t like is once again it is all too easy, there are very few fights in which you are overwhelmed in. The enemies for the most part seem passive.
That and I am disappointed we are still seeing season one drops. I was like yay finally I will have some surprises when I open purples engrams but for the most part it is all the same old. (Hopefully this changes when I am finished the CoO story missions).
DLC already? C’mon this is taking the piss.
Anyone else on ps4 just have a 6gb download for this dlc? Why so small
I think it’s reused assets. Excluding the main area of Mercury, I think a lot of the assets of the infinite forest is reused from Nessus and Io – at least it definitely looks like it.
I bought the season pass, even though I don’t play as much Destiny as I did in D1 days. The only reason is because I have a bunch of friends who get on to socialise and do raids.
But this “expansion” is a piece of shit. It wasn’t at all fun to play. All I kept thinking as I went through yet another repetitive mission where I just run past every enemy was “please can I hurry up and finish this already”. The worst part is that the two new “strikes” are actually just two of the story missions. So that was a copout.
And why is it called “Curse of Osiris”? What was the curse exactly? For a character that has been talked about for three years and a lot of lore built around, all we got to see of him was an opening cinematic and a two-minute interaction with him at the end of the story. And that was it! Fucking terrible.
If you’re on the fence about getting this, don’t bother. It is SO not worth it.
I am thoroughly disappointed with the “expansion”. I bought the season pass an even for $25, it is not worth it. Strikes which are just story missions with new Voice Overs? The “infinite forest” with a very finite number of encounters? A tiny new “planet” which is about as big as Firebase Hades in the EDZ?
Very lazy excuse for an expansion. Plus has anyone else been pressed for ammo drops since it released?