Friends, I have been playing some Destiny 2 and having a lot of fun doing so. I knew that Beyond Light was creeping up on us, but I had not really been following it terribly closely after the launch reschedule. After participating in the final night prior to the release and watching the Traveler heal itself, I started to get a bit of hype going on. Destiny is one of those games that I have been a voracious fan of the lore and the setting. The world that has been crafted rivals any of the great science fiction franchises, and I will stand by that statement. The challenge is that the game has always struggled with actually telling that story in a way that does not require you to go digging through the archives of some wiki to piece together the details.
If you have a spare four hours, I highly suggest the extremely dense review of the lore from Byf that takes you from the origins of Destiny through the Shadowkeep expansion. The challenge however is that a lot of shit has happened since that video. This week he released a follow up video on the complete story The Darkness that I plan on watching at some point today. This one clocks in at an hour and a half and while I have stayed somewhat connected to the events that are happening… I still feel like I could use a refresher course. Essentially the key conflict in the Destiny universe is between the Traveler that represents a force known as The Light, and a forced that has been speaking to us since Shadowkeep known collectively as The Darkness. With Beyond Light, we begin to start wielding the powers of the Darkness against our enemies that are also suddenly Darkness infused.
Beyond Light feels in so many ways like a restart of the game. The events that lead to the launch of the expansion saw the Darkness claim four locations. Gone are Io, Mars, Mercury and Titan… and knowing that going in was a little frustrating. Titan was my go to location for farming public events and had some of my favorite lost sectors… I will miss you Greg. The way in which they have done it however feels like we are starting a brand new chapter of the game. Now we have Europa and access once again to the Cosmodrome, which feels really damned good to be exploring once more. More than this the lighting in the entire universe is a bit more harsh and sinister. Everything about the game feels a little darker including the UI which has flipped to black on white to white on black. All of this reflects the fact that we are now taking our first steps into becoming a “Warrior of Darkness” to borrow the term from Final Fantasy.
There are a whole lot of things that I am going to miss from the destinations that we lost. That said, Europa is one of the best designed worlds that I have seen from the Bungie team. You have these giant icy fields, areas infiltrated by Vex structures, and the cold and modern labs of Clovis Bray. I am sure there are probably other areas that I have not explored yet but those are the stark differences between environments that I have already seen. Everything seems to be the gorgeous color palette that varies from deep dark teals to fiery maroons. Again though as you can see through this screenshot above… there is a dark sinister nature to all of the lighting and color work. It feels like we are going places we were not supposed to be going.
The area I am most excited to be back in however is the Cosmodrome. This is where we began our adventure in Destiny 1 and probably the area that I spent the most time exploring in either its original incarnation or the later Rise of Iron SIVA infused version. I was admittedly a little sad that the SIVA areas are closed off, but I guess that makes sense as they would probably want to control its spread. The Cosmodrome that is available however very closely presents that experience I felt back in 2013 as I first explored Alpha and later Beta on my brand new PlayStation 4. There were so many locations that we lost in the jump between Destiny 1 and 2 that I would love to explore once again. I still desperately want a modern version of an activity like the Prison of Elders, and while Sorrows Harbor was great… I still miss the Court of Oryx and Archon’s Forge events.
I said earlier that this really feels like a fresh start for the game, and with that comes a wiping of the original triumph system. There is now a legacy area that lets you revisit your past accomplishments, but upon logging into the game we all started back at square one with a brand new set of triumphs to complete. I have to admit that while I claim not to be motivated by achievements… it has been really nice ticking new boxes in the system. The only thing that I have not found is the cosmetic system that they talked about, but maybe that was going to come out in a later release of the game. I did spend awhile cleaning house in my vault and dismantling anything that was not outdated that I did not have deep emotional attachment to.
Also in the theme of fresh starts, I have changed clans and returned to Tequila Mockingbirds the group I raided in Destiny 1 with and spent the early days of D2 on the PS4 playing with. I have passed the baton of Greysky Armada to Thalen as I think he might be the most likely to return to the game and has some real world friends that he invited to the clan. This had been something that my friends Warenwolf and JazSquirrel had been low key suggesting for awhile, and I figured with the start of an expansion it was a good time to make the change. I am hoping with an active clan that I myself will be significantly more active and maybe even start raiding again.
I am nowhere near finishing the main story, and it is paced in a way that leads me to become easily distracted. This may or may not be a positive to other players because between each mission there seems to be some open world activities that you need to engage in before entering the next story area. This personally fits my play style as I ground up to the soft cap of 1200… before actually starting the expansion story and I tend to space out story blocks with a lot of patrol activity anyway. However there will be folks that want to make a beeline through the story and might get a bit frustrated by that.
What I don’t know however is what the game is going to be like for brand new players. I am guessing that everything that existed previously on the missing planets is just gone forever? I would love to hear some clarification for anyone who did not do the Red War sequence previously, what that actually looks like now. Some friends asked me yesterday and I did not have answers, so if you do please drop them in the comments below.
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Last night I spent my evening with so many other players, hanging out in a new social space in Destiny 2 and watching a pulsating orb in the sky. My timeline was filled with pictures of the Traveler and various subtle changes as we counted down towards an undetermined event. When the almighty was shot down, something similar happened as folks watched it blow up and crash in very slow motion. Similarly I think we all sort of expected the traveler to subtly change as it began to heal itself. That however was not exactly the case, and what happened was considerably more interesting.
The first challenge however was trying to get through the login queue. I started this nonsense considerably later than most folks, and as a result I had to push through a queue of other 10,000 players. I had been watching Aztecross, because I did not really plan on joining in the reindeer games yesterday. I was not there for the explosion of the Almighty, and instead watched one of the many recordings that had been posted around and sped up so you could see the whole event that took place over a number of hours in a few minutes. I am not exactly sure what it was about last night however that made me want to log in and experience it for myself.
When you logged in there was a new mission called The Last City in the Tower where the Halloween events previously showed up. When you queued for the mission you were dropped down to a copy of The Last City that you’ve experienced in a few other events and you slowly make your way to a door leading to a brand new social area. There were a bunch of rumors scattered around about needing to do something while you were in that area, but it seemed like it was mostly just a vantage point to watch the world burn… or in our case the Traveler attempt to heal itself.
At various points during the night there were a number of subtle changings taking place. The random debris started to order itself into rings. There were lightning flashes taking place between the main body of the traveler and the larger chunks that had been floating around. Just ahead of 9 pm CST something started to happen and both Eris Morn and our own Ghost started talking to us. The surface of the Traveler began to pulse and shimmer as though suddenly liquid and waves of light started to cause a shimmering heat island effect in the area from which we were watching. You can somewhat see this happening if you look at the building on the right side of the above screenshot.
My good friend Jaz Squirrel recorded the event on their widescreen set up so you can experience the final moments of Destiny 2 before things changed. For those who don’t wish to watch it in video form… as we watched the traveler continue to pulsate brighter and brighter this is what played out between Eris Morn and your Ghost.
Eris Morn: Something is coming, I can feel it… Eris Morn: It is drawing power. Could it be enough to drive the Darkness away from us? Your Ghost: Every fireteam has returned to the City. Even the Hunters. They’re wit the people, keeping them safe. Your Ghost: Well, the last time this happened… the world ended. Your Ghost: I’m not worried. I’m not. Eris Morn: It is reforming. Healing its wounds. Eris Morn: This will not be the end. It will be an escalation.
When the sequence completed, the Traveler grew so bright that our visuals went completely white, upon which we were left with a cinematic. The Traveler fully healed radiating light to push back against the Darkness that now swallows the entire left side of the director map. In one swoop Io, Mars, Mercury and Titan are gone from us.
For those with particularly long memories with this Franchise, this visual might seem similar. In fact during the very intro video of Destiny 1, we saw a similar representation of how the Darkness came and engulfed the solar system. It seems that not only has the Darkness arrived, but we are once again being thrust into a new apocalypses of a sort. This time however the Darkness has reached out to us and has been courting all of the races that were once the chosen of the Traveler. The events of the last several seasons have lead us to question as to whether or not the Traveler is actually the benevolent force that we think it. It has also lead us to question if the Darkness is in fact evil, or has just been wielded to ill intent by our enemies such as the Vex and the Hive.
When the cinematic finished we were left with a very ominous server offline message. “The Light cannot save you. Seek us out on Europa.” So that is precisely what we will do when the servers come back online today. We will seek our fortune on Europa and begin the next chapter of Destiny.
The post The Traveler and The Darkness appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
There is a region roughly 30 degrees north or south of the equator that is characterized by very calm winds and areas of high pressure. Historically this is a region that ships would effectively get “stuck” in for weeks at a time as they drift along listlessly without strong winds. According to legend in order to conserve the rapidly depleting supply of fresh water, some ships would throw the horses overboard. As a result they developed the nickname of the “Horse Latitudes”. There are however multiple competing theories about the origin if you are so inclined, but it is one of those terms from history class that held with me throughout the years.
Right now as I have felt so many times… I am feeling stuck. I feel like I am in this strange valley in between passions and just sort of languishing wildly there. I have the desire to play Genshin Impact, but I have ventured into a realm where I can only play so much at a given time without it feeling largely pointless. I figure at this rate I will probably be AR40 in about two weeks, when I will be even further in the hole on trying to get my characters leveled, ascended, talented and geared… when it doesn’t feel like I have made a significant dent since dinging AR35. As I have talked about before, everything hinges upon Resin and I don’t have the desire to spend the roughly $12 a day in primagems to ensure that I can get the maximum number of refreshes done.
So I find myself logging in every day, completing the daily quests… spending the resin I have available to me and then claiming the various daily login bonus rewards. I am now doing this on two different accounts and still finding myself lacking for something that feels meaningful. I could grind super hard on the second account but I figure that way lies burn out. Everything I am doing on that account already has an extreme “been there and done that” feeling to it, so I am trying to limit my time over there to just knocking out the dailies and stockpiling wish material.
Then there is World of Warcraft and the unknown release date of the Shadowlands expansion. If they came out tomorrow and said, that they were not launching until January, I feel like I could happily move on with my life. However the not knowing when and how it is going to launch feels awful. I’m currently running the Headless Horseman every day in an attempt to get the mount, but I found out yesterday that it only works on characters that are capable of getting the purple loot rewards. That limits me down considerably in the number of daily iterations. I should in theory be working on finishing out my rogue but I am just fundamentally not feeling it.
I created a new character on a new server with the theory of wanting to see the Exiles Reach player experience. However here he sits having never logged it in and started. I am just finding myself having a hard to getting started on anything in World of Warcraft right now, because it all feels lacking in some way. I guess what I want is something with the feel of Genshin Impact but the longevity of a World of Warcraft and the wealth of content to complete. I know someone in the comments is going to suggest Guild Wars 2, and god how I have tried to care about that game over the years. Whatever it is doing is not what I am wanting, even though I do clearly see some of the parallels to Genshin and the way the world is designed in both games.
I could in theory return to Destiny 2 and see if I can slide back into the rhythm of that game. The problem however is that I just feel so woefully behind in the seasonal construct. The fact that there has been so much revolving content that comes and then goes and that fact that we are losing several planets when Beyond Light lands in early November sorta paralyzes me. I have a bunch of Exotic quests that require various things, but I would need a team to do them… and I realize I can make that happen as well but that also in itself feels like a large outlay of energy.
In theory I should follow the lead of my friend Warenwolf and head back over to TQMB, but I am not even sure they would still take me back. I left at the PC launch of Destiny 2 because my long time friend group felt more comfortable if we started our own thing. However most of them bounced and I was never really quite capable of rekindling it once they were gone. My own huge lapses in play time didn’t help either, leaving us with effectively a dead clan. Having a vibrant community would probably help especially if it meant there were various drop in events that I could sign up for. That said I also know how much is going to happen in November as a whole and in theory I have a new console waiting on me as well.
That brings us to the next challenge. I have things that I wouldn’t mind getting back into on the PlayStation, but I am largely in a holding pattern until the launch of the PS5. I am not sure how much further I want to get into various games not knowing with 100% certainty that my save progress is going to carry over cleanly. Anyways I realize this is probably an annoying post to read but sometimes I write for me and my own mental housekeeping. I feel stuck and I need to figure out for myself how to get un-stuck.
The post Horse Latitudes appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Hey Folks! There is a thing that I occasionally do on my blog where I run down what I have been playing lately. There are games that I spend time in that don’t necessarily make it to the level of writing about. Regularly Playing has always served as a time for me to update the good ole sidebar of the blog and talk about the things that I am spending time exploring. It is also a time for me to push aside the games that for whatever reason I am just not that into right now. You have a lot of games that make their way back into the rotation, so when I say goodbye it is very rarely forever.
In theory this is a thing that I intend to do every month… but we are living in this time where it still feels like it SHOULD by all rights be March. I think this is going to go down in history as the “Lost Year” because it feels like we are all still very much on pause waiting for things to improve. I expect a significant amount of shake up given that it has been a little over two months since my last update.
To Those Remaining
Diablo III – PC and Switch
Oh Diablo, my sweet Diablo… I can’t ever seem to quit you. This game probably spends the most time on this list, especially now that it exists in switch form. While I am finished with the current PC season, I do still fairly regularly pop it open from bed on the switch and chip away at the achievements there. What can I say that I have not already said a dozen times. I just hope I like Diablo IV even half as much as I love Diablo III.
Final Fantasy XIV – PC
Oh precious baby, you are hanging by a thread. I’ve been back a bit of late for the Yo-Kai watch event, but even that has mostly just been something to do while watching something on television. I know there is a whole new story arc that I need to play through since the 5.3 patch has landed finally. I will do that at some point but I am just not overly excited about Final Fantasy XIV right now. I wish I was because it truly is a wonderful game, but I am not sure what changed in me that struggles to latch onto the MMORPG gameplay experience for very long. I find myself being a strict soloist in the MMO space right now, and as a result I never quite fully buy into the good aspects of the culture and the gameplay offerings. I wish I could get over my fear of doing content with other human beings that I seem to have developed.
World of Warcraft – Retail and Beta – PC
I am not what you would call actively playing this game, but every so often I decide to poke my head in and work on leveling some of my alts. During this lull in the expansion I have leveled one of everything horde side by the Shaman, Priest and Rogue. I’ve been most recently working on the Shaman who is in Pandaria and I believe a few levels away from 100? This is often times the character that I play while we are podcasting, or if I am watching some show because World of Warcraft requires a bare minimum of interactivity to play it on the level I am playing it. I still get a stupid amount of enjoyment from its simple mechanics and my ability to just turn my brain off and rely entirely upon muscle memory.
To The New and Returning
Avengers – PC
I super did not expect to be playing this game right now. I had a lot of issues early on with it, but it turns out that I was more or less bit in the butt by my own shenanigans. There are still some minor issues of mouse and camera not exactly working in the way that I would prefer but it is extremely playable and the story is really solid. In fact I think at this point I am mostly playing because the story is extremely enjoyable. The game hits a deep uncanny valley at times because I think they are trying to shoot halfway between the more traditional comic appearance of the characters and that of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I’ve gotten used to it however and once I did the story being told has become pure joy.
Ghosts of Tsushima – PS4
I have been on a bit of a single player narrative game kick of late, and I have been playing a significant amount of Ghosts of Tsushima. I’ve not made it past the first part of the game, because I keep roaming around and killing baddies. I am more or less following the Samurai path where I present a challenge and then proceed to whittle down the rest of the masses after taking out their strongest. I love this game a lot, and the only thing that would have made it better is if I were playing on the PC with a Mouse and Keyboard. I’ve been a bit distracted the last week or so, but I am hoping over the extended weekend that I can return to this and keep moving forward.
Hades – PC
I am not entirely certain that this game has ever made the list, but I have had it in my arsenal for awhile now. I have a deep love for the types of games that Supergiant creates. Even when I don’t mechanically enjoy the game like was the case with Pyre, I really appreciate the story that is being told. Hades is effectively a blend of Diablo and a Rogue Lite game and involves escaping from the underworld, and powering yourself along the way to make that possible. It is a game or repetition because you are absolutely going to die over and over and over in your journey, each time starting back at the start and each time carrying some progress along with you. This has been in early access but we are starting to near an official launch, so I have been playing it again in anticipation. Really solid game.
New World – PC
I’ve not participated in two test events of New World and I am super happy to finally be able to start talking about it. The last long preview event that is wrapping up I believe today had no NDA and as a result I have been able to openly discuss it on the blog. As it stands I am so ready for this game to launch and to start being able to play it in earnest. I am hoping the next event is an Open Beta so that folks who did not pre-order can give it a shot and see if it works for them. This is definitely the type of game that I am going to want to find an active company to play in, and that does not mean that I am sold on the notion of leading one. I’m good at recruiting people, but I don’t seem to be good at keeping people engaged… myself included. So more than likely I will be looking for a company to join that would be open to any friends that I have who are also interested.
Retro Games – Retro Freak Console, PC, and Switch
This is going to be a bit of a generic heading because I have been poking around in a lot of “retro games”. The thing is… I find it weird calling these game retro, because they are from my childhood. It is moments like this that I remember just how damned old I am at this point. Whatever you want to call them I have been back on a kick of trying to get my closet full of older systems and cartridges up and running on modern display technology. I’ve also purchased a Retro Freak console, which allows me to do a bunch of nifty things including dump rom and save games from cartridges and apply translation patches on the fly. The next project is to try and get my Neo Geo CD system up and running again and maybe apply the mod that replaces the very slow CD Rom with an SD Card interface.
To Those Departing
Destiny 2 – PC
I am not sure where we went wrong boo, I’m just not playing you. I have no clue what is up but for whatever reason I just haven’t been interested in playing Destiny 2 in this current season. I am not sure if it is the impending gear sunset or the fact that they are “vaulting” content to remove it from the game, but whatever the case I am just turned off right now. I think games should get larger over time not shrink constantly, and I hate the FOMO aspect of seasonal play. The truth however is just that I have not been interested in playing a shooter lately, and this last few months has been largely marked by me playing more single player and narrative driven content. I am sure I will be back when the expansion launches in November and have a grand ole time.
Guild Wars 2 – PC
You know that mission that AggroChat folks have been on about playing Guild Wars 2 and getting others to play it as well? For whatever reason it never sunk its hooks properly into me. I still don’t fully understand why this game that on paper should be something I am deeply into… never quite seems to work for me. There is just something about the gameplay loop that I don’t find as enjoyable as I should. The story content also never really hooked me, so while I keep trying to revisit this game… it never really does it for me. I am sure I will be back at some point because I am a glutton for punishment with a very short memory.
Phantasy Star Online 2 – PC
I can’t fully explain what happened here and why I stopped playing this game, but it happened. I am not even sure what distracted me. I just know that I have not logged in for a long while other than to convert to the Steam client. I am sure I will return because I was having quite a bit of fun with it. I also know that I was only a few levels away from hitting the cap at the time, and that there is a raised cap now that we have entered Chapter 4. I think I mostly got distracted by a string of single player experiences like Death Stranding.
Torchlight III – PC
I really do want to like this game, but I have not been all that into of it late. I think the core problem I have with the third iteration is that there just isn’t really a class that I enjoy. In Torchlight there was the Destroyer that I played a ton of, and in Torchlight II it was the Engineer. Both were big and bashy melee characters and right now in the third game there are two characters that CAN be played that way… but they both sorta feel fiddly. So I have been splitting my time between the Forge and the Railmaster…. and to be truthful neither of them feel the way that I want them to feel. I know Torchlight is a game that tries to cast aside the traditional Mage, Rogue, Warrior, and Cleric blend of classes… but I mostly just wish they had proper representation of those archetypes. My preference is to play something akin to the Diablo Barbarian or Crusader and they just don’t really have that represented.
Ships Passing in the Night
Death Stranding – PC
Death Stranding was a phenomenal experience. I legit get emotional just thinking about it. This is the game that I needed to play at the time in which I played it. It has become this extremely relevant allegory for the time that we are living in. I am not sure this is a game that everyone would enjoy, because the whole courier aspect of it that I found enjoyable could be pure tedium for someone else. The story being told though is really good and if nothing else you should probably watch a play through of it at some point.
Horizon Zero Dawn -PC
I had been anxiously awaiting the release of Horizon Zero Dawn for the PC, and when it came out I burned through it like wildfire. I think I put in a solid 50 hours in a very short period of time and cracking this open and revisiting it all was truly magical. I love Aloy and the world of Horizon, and I am anxiously awaiting the sequel. This is pretty much the reason why I will be buying a PlayStation 5 as soon as the pre-orders open. If you have never played Horizon Zero Dawn, you owe it to yourself to experience the game and the bow combat just works so much better with a Mouse and Keyboard.
Summary
I guess this is what happens when I wait almost three months between updates, there is a lot of change. I’ve bounced a few things off the list that I am almost certain I will revisit. Hell to be truthful what usually happens is just writing about them ends up making me want to log back in again. I know we have the launch of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2 that will be eating some of my time, and I would really like to restart Jedi Fallen Order but this time play it with Mouse and Keyboard. Additionally I really want to play through Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which has been on my list for awhile. In between those I will be wrapping up Avengers main story and seeing if I like the group content or not, and probably poking my head into New World each time a new test event opens. All the while the backlog continues to grow, but I have gotten fairly used to knowing I will never quite conquer it.
The post Regularly Playing: September 2020 Edition appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
