Destiny 2: Warmind Review - Out with the Old, In with the Old Again?

Destiny 2: Warmind was supposed to expand the gameplay and story, but it feels like a filler for a season pass, and it’s not the wave of new content that was promised to the community.

Bungie seems to be going through a weird cycle. It launches a game, interesting and exciting, but the balancing is all screwed up, and the rest of the components don’t quite fit. The studio tries to fix it, makes some promises to the community that everything is going to be better, and screws it up again. Eventually, a new expansion is released, making the game the way it should have been right from the start.

Then Bungie launches Destiny 2, and while it brings a ton of new stuff, it’s still not right. A DLC is released, but it makes little impact, and it actually seems to set the game back. Now we’re at that point in the cycle where the studio launches a second DLC, but it’s still not the content the community is looking for. We can only hope they have something down the line that can fix Destiny 2 just like they did with the first one in the series.

I don’t know just how many times Bungie will be able to pull this off with its games, because at some point people will stop paying $20 for hollow content.

What is Warmind?

Some of you might remember that during the original campaign you had to start a warmind on Io, with only a single line detailing what it was, meaning an AI network designed to protect humanity against unknown threats.

The problem is that Bungie is treating the story just as a support for the loot and action when it should be the other way around. The writers gloss over interesting aspects, introduce new characters and events without setting the background, and generally make everything as bland as possible.

Destiny 2 is supposed to be a larger-than-life adventure, with the fate of the solar system hanging in the balance. They were supposed to add little tidbits of information that would be explored later, but it’s hard to care about a concept such as the Warmind when it’s introduced with a couple of lines of dialogue in the original campaign. You can check out the review for the original Destiny 2 and the Curse of Osiris DLC.

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In any case, for this DLC the players will be going to Mars where they will find out about Rasputin, the last Warmind in existence. Since the lore in Destiny is kept intentionally vague, players will have to discover it themselves.

So you’ll start with a couple of missions that are really short but do allow for a more proper introduction to the overall arc. And then you’re back in the DMZ, for yet another mission. Bungie can’t seem to remember that we’ve been in the DMZ lots of times before, and it’s not exactly the kind of task that we wanted.

We later return to Mars, and we’re handed another couple of missions. It turns out that we’re playing strikes, and the bosses are nothing all that special. You might recognize them from the original campaign as Nokris, Herald of Xol and Crota, Son of Oryx.

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Another couple of missions later and you’re done with the new campaign. If you’re a PS4 player, you get another mission, but we’ve played this on the PC. I have to reassure Bungie that no one is happy with this weird exclusive. The end is just not right and it doesn’t feel connected with the rest of the campaign. “Is that all?” is the question in everyone’s mind.

It’s not all bad

This is the last DLC to be included in the Season Pass and new content is expected to arrive in September, but keep in mind that it’s going to cost extra. In any case, the new strikes are pretty fun, along with the Escalation Protocol mission, that throws wave after wave of enemies at the player.

And then it’s Mars itself, which for some weird reason seems much more populated than all the other regions (planets) that were initially available. It’s a nice refresher, but I think it’s more about the fact that Mars is much more familiar to people than Io or a strange planet at the edge of the solar system.

Unfortunately, this is pretty much where all of the praise stops. For the most part, it’s all about rehashed content, reskinned weapons, and weird missions that don’t quite fit.

The main character of Warmind is not who you might think. It’s the planet itself, which I find it really well done and easy to navigate, despite the fact that it’s quite large. It might not seem like that from the start, but after just a few hours of play, you’ll feel that you’ve been there for a much longer time.

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Another cool thing is the Escalation Protocol, and I know that there are not a lot of people that we’ll agree with me. It’s probably because I like defending areas against ever increasing odds. The payout doesn’t match the effort, but it’s still fun nonetheless

I also like the concept of the Warmind, along with its lore and purpose. It could have been much better explored, but at least it wasn’t an alien bent on the destruction of the humans or absorbing the light.

There are simply too many problems with the DLC to encompass, but the biggest flaw is the short campaign and background provided for players. We wanted more, but somehow, we received less.

For some strange reason, it feels like the campaign was built a long time ago before Bungie released the roadmap and started to take into consideration the community feedback. It’s a problem with many games, but it’s much more glaring in an online multiplayer title.

It’s not only the short campaign but the rehashed content. Many of the weapons and items have returned with some minor changes, and there isn’t enough stuff to warrant the price tag required by the DLC.

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion