Return of the King

I’ve been absent from the Destiny universe for a while. At the beginning of January, I deleted the game from my PS5 and with it went all the aggravation, frustration, tedium, sadness, drama, and a small amount of joy. That joy swelled as time went on having basically quit my second job as a Guardian of the remnants of humanity, left to eke out a miserable existence under the carcass of a dead or dying god. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t come back to this game until The Final Shape (the game’s supposed conclusion to the Light vs. Dark story arc) and that there would be very little that would bring me back into the fold. A month ago, one of the few things that would bring me back to the Destiny universe was revealed: Bungie was bringing the King’s Fall raid to Destiny 2. My reaction was quite literally shock and a near orgasmic screech as I rushed to reinstall the game.

But all that elation and joy and happiness was quickly ground to a screeching halt.

I had deleted the game back in January and thus had not bothered with buying any content - why would I since I wasn’t playing - and ran into more than a few obstacles since I didn’t own season passes for some of what was on offer. Sure, The Witch Queen and the other expansions were all free the week that I came back, but I already owned all of that stuff minus The Witch Queen and the seasons that came with it. This is where the trouble began as I was about to see just what it was like to experience the game if you didn’t own season passes and let me tell you, it sucks.

Like for example, this bullshit.

I shelled out the money for Witch Queen, the Season of Plunder Pass, and the 30th Anniversary Pack. While I already knew the story of what was going on in Destiny thanks to lore videos on YouTube from My Name is Byf and Myelin Games, it felt nice to pick the game back up and play it again after taking such a long break. I still think that putting Gjallarhorn behind a paywall was a pretty scummy thing to do, I have to admit that being able to two man the dungeon you have to run in order to get it still has me pretty giddy. Even after my hiatus I apparently still have some skill at the game.

New content to play, a free chest of 1500+ Light Level gear, the 3.0 subclasses, the promise of no more content removals, and a burning desire to face the Taken King again had me riding high on the waves of looting and shooting Destiny is best known for, but that is sadly where the good times quickly ended.

The frustrations and irritations associated with this game quickly returned to me, front and center and I was reminded very quickly why I stopped playing this game in the first place. People talking over dialogue in the game, not being strong enough to deal with this enemy or that, not having any help when I needed it, and now there’s the ugly truth that there’s certain things in the game that I can’t get credit for because I either wasn’t playing the game and that content is gone (or is bugged) or because whatever it was, was in the game years ago and is now gone. Looking through my triumphs section and seeing everything that I can’t unlock now is personally very disheartening even if it is a very accurate record of my game time.

The others knew how bad I wanted to run King’s Fall and decided to come back to the game too and that’s where the deal making began. Andrew said he’d help me but only if I promised to raid with him in Ghost of Tsushima. Definitely not an issue on my part because I wanted to try that out as well. The only real issue I have with that is my save from the PS4 version. I can either carry it forward to the PS5 version and thus sit and watch as all the trophies for everything get unlocked without me having to actually play the game or I can just start over from the beginning. I’ve started over, but I don’t know how long I can get Andrew to wait. Just getting the game to unlock all those trophies without having to actually play feels wrong somehow and feels like I’m being cheated out of my pleasure. But that’s a silly internal struggle I’ll deal with as time goes on. The real problem for me is with Jason.

I had specifically asked for people to be sober when we attempt to run King’s Fall because I knew it was going to be a little more difficult this time around and his response was a stubborn “I’m not doing that.” This angered me, and still angers me, beyond anything I could put to words. He was as excited about running the raid as I was, but to hear that he’s not going to take it serious enough to just be sober for one night really put me off. And just as I assumed would happen, we didn’t make much progress at all before I just got frustrated and left to go drink with Justin at the bar. It’s looking more and more like if I want to get a King’s Fall clear then I’m just going to have to either be very patient and wait until he realizes that he can’t do this when he’s high as a kite or just go get my clear with a different group of people and I’m sick of doing that. I want my friends to do this with me, otherwise what’s the point?

And speaking of Jason and his sobriety during this game, I’m already over him being so fucking high while playing that he just goes right into follow mode and just follows me around, gets in front of me, dies, can’t figure out how to do this or that and asks a million questions. I already want to quit playing again and I literally just came back.

But the promise of getting to visit this place in the near future is keeping me going with the game, for now. The neon / cyberpunk / vaporwave / retro futuristic style of Neomuna has me interested and I’m also interested to learn how this place has escaped all the shit that’s happened in our solar system since the collapse.

The other thing that’s keeping me going is the possibility of reuniting with the guys from New Zealand as I just spotted Indy online briefly. I know he’d be down to help defeat Oryx again. Until then, I guess I’ll just sit here in orbit until I decide what to do next.