After a long day at work, I lie in my bed and open up YouTube to see “Cayde-6” one of Destiny’s most beloved characters in the thumbnail. I click and two minutes of my life slowed, Prince Uldren, another character that was introduced in base Destiny, shot and killed Cayde. My mouth hung wide open, this is the first time Bungie has done something unexpected. This was the move that would save Destiny again.

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Destiny was launched in the early morning on Sept. 9th, 2014. Being the most successful launch of a new single title at around $500 million dollar sales in the first 24 hours, which is $20,833 per hour. With four expansions and three years into the games life cycle, Bungie decided to go a different route for the game.

Destiny 2.

A complete sequel to the first. Development began after Destiny’s third expansion, “The Taken King” which was arguably the best expansion and the savior for Destiny. With your beloved city destroyed by the “Cabal” (an enemy in the franchise) you and your fellow Guardians must take back the city. With two other barebone expansions, “The Curse of Osiris” and “Warmind” which I did do a review on earlier this year. With fans erupting about the lack of effort and storytelling of those expansions, Bungie needed a quick and hard hitting answer. That answer, was Forsaken.

Two and a half months later, another trailer was introduced, “Cayde-6’s Last Stand”, A four minute video that explained what happened before the first trailer, and it was fantastic. As Cayde is killed, and another character Petra Venj, your colleague on these missions returns as well.

This is what Bungie needed, to get their player base angry, wanting revenge on Uldren and the people that killed him.

Cut to Sept. 4, the release of “Forsaken” opens up with a cutscene trailer that was released after the first, and a great establishing shot for those who did not see the short cinematic.

Bungie has had problems of very stale and boring storytelling, whether not establishing characters, or just no effort put into the plot, this is not the case. Seeing the characters develop in game, interacting with one another and in game cutscenes show that Bungie went the extra mile.

Bungie made sure to fix this problem head on, dedicating an entire cutscene to all of the baddies you fight throughout the campaign, what they’re after and what makes them different out of all of the others, which is a huge improvement from the first two expansions.

As you progress, defeating all of the barons, working your way up the ladder and crossing names off, something becomes clear.

Are we on the good side?

When you defeat the latter half of the baddies, one asks you,

“Are you on the right side, murdering all of our people?”

This really makes the players think, does the taste of revenge account for murdering criminals instead of turning them in? It’s a great story plot point as the line between Light and Dark is very thin.

One last significant pro: the end game experience. It has been a weak point until Forsaken. Claiming “The biggest end game experience ever” having a daily and weekly reset, letting you always having something new to do when you login. As well as Gambit, a 4v4 Player vs. Player (PvP) and Player vs. Environment (PvE) hybrid. Kill enemies, collect their dropped items and bank them to win.

At the end of the day, Bungie did make better moves instead of hurtful.  At the end of the story, Prince Uldren, the main antagonist was brainwashed by a powerful being, Riven, and defeat her and now you have the murderer himself. You raise the gun that Uldren used to kill Cayde, and Petra, runs into the room. Being close to Uldren and working with him on missions, Petra, raises her gun towards him as well. The screen goes black and a gunshot is heard.

No one knows who really pulled the trigger, but Petra does give you her gun that she raised towards Uldren, then implying that she killed him. After all that work and talk about how Cayde needs to be avenged, you don’t even get to pull the trigger. Just a gun that I barely got to use because of the increasing levels made it obsolete fast.

Destiny 2: Forsaken got a lot of things right. New activities, revenge for the great plot with story telling amazing and voice acting for main characters. However, there were flaws, justifying for putting all of these baddies to justice, just for someone else to kill the guy you’re after. Future DLC (Downloadable Content) will see if Bungie has really figured out what Destiny really is, whether people should quit on the game, or follow it, will remain a mystery until future updates.