The most recent downloadable content release for Destiny 2 “Warmind” dropped yesterday, Tuesday, May 8. It brought a new campaign and a combat zone on the planet Mars as well as a giant, war-machine artificial intelligence into the storyline of the game.
For Destiny 2 developer Bungie, Warmind could be seen as something of a coup: for the most part, the DLC launch went without a hitch and people began playing almost immediately after it went live.
This is good for Bungie, which has seen a certain level of tension with its core audience over changes to the game and questionable treatment when dealing with the in-game shop and experience gains – most importantly, the game’s user interface would lie about XP gains and throttle on people grinding for bright engrams (a special reward in the game tied to play time).
In Warmind players are called upon by Anastasia Bray, a guardian with a past involving a technology called a “warmind” and named Rasputin, after a legendary Russian mystic who, according to legend, was almost unkillable. A Golden Age technology, Warminds were AI developed by nation-states with an interest to protecting the solar system from external threats, as a result, Rasputin has a control of extremely powerful weaponry – called warsats – capable of deploying immense firepower.
Needless to say, a warmind like Rasputin could have been extremely useful during the war against the Red Legion Cabal and Ghaul during the initial core campaign of Destiny 2.
Compared to the previous DLC title, Curse of Osiris, the campaign mission of Warmind are much more compelling, story-driven and fun. Ana Bray, as a rogue guardian outside of the main command structure, is a compelling character and Rasputin itself is an interesting “person” (even if we only get one line from it).
Perhaps the biggest caveat about the story from Warmind is that it is so short.
Our reviewer managed to run the entire story, from start to end, in one day. In fact, it went so quickly that it was over in one sitting without much stopping. Although at one point some leveling was necessary to access parts of the story, but it proved little obstacle. This is probably a good thing, level-gated content can feel frustrating if it slows progress too much.
Also problematic, the final boss battle of the campaign felt anticlimactic and shallow. The entire mission leads the guardians to understand that one of the great worm gods of the Hive, named Xol, is also buried on Mars with Rasputin. As expected, the final battle involves an encounter with the god – and it makes the player feel extremely powerful going toe to pharynx and winning – but it seems a much briefer and less satisfying than it should be.
Because of the short campaign, it feels as if it lacks punch or perhaps that it’s incomplete. Paradoxically, although our reviewers found it much more fun than Curse of Osiris, at the same time CoO’s sensation of length is what made it feel less interesting (we’re looking at you Infinite Forest missions).
The DLC also brings a constellation of other new content beyond the campaign. The idea behind stories in Destiny 2 DLC is to add a scaffolding to explain why content exists going forward. So, what does the DLC have to offer to keep players coming back after the story is completed?
First up is the new combat zone of Mars. It’s reddish, filled with ancient Golden Age buildings, all covered in Clovis Bray propaganda and littered with the remnants of Rasputin’s power. The zone itself feels just a little bit larger than Mercury (which came with CoO and is an extremely small map) and appears to offer two public events.
The surface of Mars also makes available a player-triggered public event called the Escalation Protocol. This is an interesting sort of horde mode battle. In MMORPG terms, EP is world-boss level and can support up to nine guardians. The event starts with waves of Frozen Hive and finally culminates in a massive boss that drops loot according to a weekly rotation.
Escalation Protocol is interesting and fun, although it takes a lot of coordination to get it going. The weekly rotating rewards also mean that it will continue to have a huge amount of replay value.
Warmind also adds a number of new exotic weapons to grind up. With a new light level of 385, up from 340, players will find themselves going back to the old grind to gain equipment that will help them continue to push themselves higher.
More things to grind and more weapons to get adds a lot of reasons for players to return to the game at large and continue to do exactly what they did before.
That means going back to Strikes and Raids – and Warmind adds to both. Our reviewers have not tried this part of the content yet, but two new strikes are coming and a raid lair. The two new strikes are called Strange Terrain and Will of Thousands. The new raid lair, The Spire of Stars, launches this Friday, May 11, which will bring the guardians one last time into the Leviathan.
Finally, Warmind brings new pursuits to the players to attract and keep their attention. New exotic weapons will be unlocked through special inventory-held quests, similar to the way that On The Comms worked to lead to the exotic Legend of Acrius.
These new pursuits now go into their own special inventory (instead of taking up a weapon slot) and display their requirements when selected. These meta-quests that lead to a big reward at the end add an extra layer on top of doing the usual content of the game – public events, patrols, strikes or raids – and gives players more reasons to visit the entire game an experience all the content.
One of the newest pursuits brings a fan favorite back from Destiny. It is a linear fusion rifle named Sleeper Simulant and starts with the pursuit Violent Intel, which is obtained by doing a post-campaign storyline from Ana Bray starting with Legacy Code using a hand cannon named IKELOS.
Warmind is a mere day out and, so far, it appears to have all the makings of an extremely solid content drop. As per the review, we would have preferred that Bungie put a lot more story and lore into the drop itself – but the overall outlay of extended content, pursuits and replay reasons will most likely keep bringing people back.
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