Happy and Cringe Inducing Destiny Nostalgia:
I write this article with optimism for the future of the Destiny franchise. This positive feeling stems from my hundreds of hours of history with the game and I draw much joy and feel the occasional pang of nostalgia for the agonizing stressful parts immortalized in past memes and gaming memories.
I’ve watched enough previews and the cutscenes pack on the sci-fi alien shooter carnage even more than the sci fi-alien shooter carnage of the first game. I think more of the same can be a good thing as it is here, but Destiny 2 is shaping up to be a bigger sequel with the addition of the open world and already vibrant gaming community gearing up for the release of one of the gaming industry’s respected heavy hitters.
I know the people I’ll be playing with again look forward to the September release of Destiny 2 more than I. I have other games pushed to my peripherals as of now in terms of currently playing games and awaiting the not too distant release of Shadow of Mordor 2 and Assassin’s Creed Origins, and Star Wars Battlefront 2.
Make no mistake I will be psyched when Destiny 2 arrives, I love it enough to pin an article of the best and worst components experienced by a player that’s played the vast majority of DLC content. but I think the totality of my experience with the prior game includes too frequent groans over an average to long play session. I look forward to being sucked in another space vortex but I hope the experience will be more rewarding when the sequel drops.
15. Gjallarhorn
Ahh, the “most badass rocket launcher in any video game, ever” became the main sentiment when someone owning Destiny finally gets their hands on the Gjallarhorn Rocket launcher. The ability of the cluster tracking rockets, “Wolfpack Rounds,” enabled the Gjallarhorn to be the most coveted gun in the game. Many folks of the PvP and PvE community became enamored by the presence of this piece of Norse mythological inspired weaponry in their inventories or lack thereof. Gjallarhorn day, September 15th, a mere week after release Xur’s inventory stocked the weapon for a standard 17 Strange Coins.
I remember those that bought it loved the shit out of it and used it in battle against Atheon and Crota. Many topics on GameFaqs read: Raid Help Gjallarhorn Required. The thing was a serious boss killer, was being the key word when the developers finally nerfed the weapon to oblivion.
Using five or Gjallarhorn blasts to take out a Raid boss ended up being manic peaks of gameplay experience. The wait to get the fucking gun was real. Many others echoed the same sentiment in much angrier terms than I did.
I obtained the weapon in the Omnigul Strike with PSN members Cheezedaddy and Deeznuts as an award for help killing off the Thrall alien faction’s bottom bitch. I screamed loudly as I have before with other video games. I knew the potential for what I could do in a raid now that I finally had that damn gun.
14. Loot Cave
Ahhhh, the Loot Cave. The duration of this adventure felt like an extended carnival mini game. The concept was a feature and not a bug. The Cave is a means of farming green, blue, and purple engrams by shooting spawning enemies. As the enemies spawn in a cave in the Russian Cosmodrome they die soon after and drop engrams.
Players congregate across a field by a cluster or rocks and pull out their blasters and fire their weapons in a storm against the spawning enemies and rush to seize the dropped orbs after enough blue and purple piles build up in the cave. They claim their share of engrams in one glorious pile and sail back to the tower to face the damn Cryptark. tThe whole adventure is to further please Cryptark Rahool and his devious ends and torture the gamer with his famous low success rate for decrypting those precious engrams.
13. Master Rahool: Cryptark
The Cryptark in question does not look like a trustworthy Awoken male and his pretentious voice seems to suggests untrustworthiness. It’s an arrogant and high pitched Loki voice. He seems uninterested every time uncrypts an engram.
“These are forgeries. Someone is wasting our time!” The guy wastes our time by not having a reliable “encrypt all” button.
His blue face makes people yell at the screens as he says spews self-congratulatory crap at the player as he decrypts a series of twenty five blue engrams without any of them transforming into a legendary. That’s the shitty luck factor of Destiny at work. Master Rahool is a shitty character to deal with for anyone with a low tolerance of attention claiming annoyances every few seconds, like myself. I don’t like his yellow cloak or his glowing yellow Awoken eyes. I hope his storyline is axed or put to bed in a dramatic matter in Destiny 2.
12. Dinklebot
For a time Peter Dinklage voiced a key Destiny “character,” your ghost, the vertically challenged and robotic companion hovering over the player’s shoulder like a familiar. The quotes I loved most are lines from bits in the main story: “That wizard came from the moon!” The subsequent sample of the line appeared in a hilarious YouTube remix. Who could forget the perfect half assed attempt of surprise and fear of “We’ve woken the hive!” Dinklebot was a great tie in for the Fairly Odd Parents parallel “Dinkleberg” resemblance.
Dinklage’s lackluster performance led to a reimagining of the Ghost’s entire cadence and “soul” in the form of reliable voice actor Nolan North. Many gamers prefer NolanBot and yet others prefer the dearly departed Dinklebot. At least Dinklage was good for a laugh more so than being solely associated with providing the game with a lax attempt to voice a robot.
11. Being Stressed in Raids
10% of the Destiny community attempted the Raid missions, each one featuring a swarm of new mechanics. These raids are capable of making the player feel on top of the world to feeling defeated and stressed out. failing a stage dozens of times in a row causes tempers to fray and at times people leave the party in anger. I admit to feelings of stress after trying to be involved in the coordinated team Raids Destiny offers. I felt my patience was tested by the array of complex objectives. If you are the one that is messing the whole team up, one by one they will make this known. It’s happened to me and it’s happened to others.
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