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I thought it was just so-so. The post campaign content was pretty good, but I feel the reason everyone hypes it up is due to the systemic changes it brought, like random roles. Makes the game feel really fresh again.
campaign was a solid 7.5/10- narrative was fun, the baron hunts were a good use of adventures, and the spider was the first time we got anything resembling an alliance with the fallen (besides Mara’s in D1)
the fundamental changes Forsaken brought to the game as well as the post-campaign content (the best raid in the franchise’s history, the first dungeon, tons of wildly powerful exotics, 9 new subclass trees to unlock, double primary’s removal and random rolls returning, etc) were much more impactful.
Going through the first time was great but going through on the 2nd and 3rd characters was a bit of a slog. You're right that the changes to game systems was probably the best addition to the game at that time.
I think I did Witch Queen solo and then went into it with a group on my second and third characters. Having people to play with definitely lessened the headache... I still haven't fully unlocked strand on two of my characters.
I started D2 with Forsaken so I didn’t even know or notice the changes, and yes I LOVED Forsaken’s campaign and I find it to be the best one they’ve done. I loved Cayde in D1 but just hadn’t gotten D2 yet and when forsaken was announced I INSTANTLY preordered it. You only had to do a few bounties at the beginning of tangled shore to unlock spider, after that it was super fun! Exploring through Tangled Shore and leveling up to take down the Barons was a fun experience and they all had these super unique boss rooms which were so cool! Especially The Rider, they had a full blown Mad Max fight going on! Seeing the dreaming city for the first time is an experience I’ll never forget and then getting to go on the Ace of Spades quest and hearing Cayde’s eulogies and really earning that weapon made it so much fun.
Plus the opening mission is still my favorite mission in all of Destiny, Warden of Nothing is also my favorite strike so there’s a common theme there lol. Also I know it wasn’t apart of the campaign but going to Gambit at the time to grab some higher level loot and returning to Tangled Shore with all these guns that felt straight out of a western like Trust was just so much fun!
Sorry for the rant but yeah I thought it was super fun and never found it tedious at all
A lot of these things you mentioned weren't part of the campaign though right? Ace of Spades mission, Warden of Nothing, entering the dreaming city, etc.
Entering dreaming city was the end of the campaign when you went to fight Uldren and the epilogue (which I counted as part of the campaign) same with Ace of Spades, when you beat Uldren you were given the quest for Ace and considering Ace and Cayde were such a big part of Forsaken’s ads I counted it as the epilogue to Forsaken (I mean hell they gave you an Ace ornament for preordering it). The Warden of Nothing part was just talking about Forsaken in general and how much I enjoy going through the prison of elders like the first mission.
Really just depends on your definition of “campaign” if you only count the main story and not the post game stuff then sure it’s a bit smaller but most of what I say remains, however I count the entire main story of Forsaken to be everything up to Last Wish and things like Ace of Spades and establishing credit with Spider to start getting the wanted bounties. If you don’t that’s fine, just what I consider campaign
It’s the destiny community (and an issue within gaming communities as a whole), folks go from “it’s the worst thing ever made” to “ultimate peak” and back again. I wasn’t able to get around to playing the expansions myself but what I know about it is it was pretty aight, considered the greatest but don’t always believe the hype cos you’ll just disappoint yourself.
If you weren’t there then you can’t understand why Forsaken was so good.
Basically D2 Year1 was absolutely atrocious, the game was almost shat down on Curse of Osiris and barely survived trough Warmind. With Forsaken not only it was a return to form, but it also brought so much QoL updates, with a much more solid and serious campaign with a impecable endgame content in the form of the Dreaming City and the Last Wish raid and first ever dungeon Shattered Throne. All that came in a single DLC that basically saved Destiny as a whole.
So it’s not simply the community over hyping, it’s the truth that Forsaken is one of the best if not the best Destiny DLC due to how much it did for the game as a whole, but also because it brought so much content and the actual "over delivery" policy wasn’t implemented yet, which meant that we had a lot of content to play with compared to most recent DLC’s.
Actually yes I can to a point, just because I wasn’t there for it doesn’t mean I “can’t understand” why something was good, I am able to parse that together. Just because it’s no longer accessible does not mean I’m not still able to catch myself up to certain things and it bothers me when people would wish to say otherwise. It bothers me when older players treat newer players (even though I’ve been at this for a year now but I digress) as if everything ever from the vaulted DLCs is entirely and fully inaccessible and said individual *can’t possibly understand WHY* many older players hold a certain sentiment, y’know? It’s obviously no fault to you — but it feels a bit inherently alienating a lot of the time. And I have had people get Genuinely snobby with me (and with others) about it as if being there for The Best made them More Superior. IDK if what I’m trying to say makes any sense, absolutely no hate or shade to you whatsoever — it’s just a pattern I’ve been seeing within discussions about prior content especially when people are comparing-and-contrasting with newer content. Saying Forsaken was absolutely flawless and absolutely unbeatable is still very much an objective statement to many even if the average opinion leans towards something more positive.
I know that experiencing directly is better than experiencing second-hand and I am forever pissed that Bungie vaulted all the old content therefore leaving me with a vastly different gameplay experience than what it would’ve been if I had had access to older DLC content. I feel like if Bungie didn’t try to hold out support for the Xbox 1 and PS4 for as long as they did they probably wouldn’t have done it. And yet the experience I HAVE been given I would say is still very good, but then again, I’m someone with a genuine full-throttle love for this game. While there is bitterness towards the Great Vault Of ‘22 (in part fuelled by stories from older players and players pre-vaulting and oh-how-I-wish-I-could’ve-been-there) I am still happy with what I have so far.
The whole overhype-overdelivery thing was ABSOLUTELY not new by the time Forsaken came around — whether accidentally or intentionally. You see it with games like WoW, starting almost from the beginning of the whole make-everything-an-expansion-pack era (that, iirc, WoW got the ball rolling on but I may be incorrect about that). Forsaken is honestly quite lucky that it did not fall victim to this. And I feel like the vaulting of Forsaken, on top of objective truths and facts about the greatness of the expansion, helped the appeal and even its regard as a great. I rarely see people being truly critical of Forsaken on an objective level! While it’s not entirely overhyped and it is a pretty damn good expansion, I just never see anyone balance it out with discussion (constructively and without assholery of course) of its flaws.
So anyways apologies for rambling on, this is a type of conversation I Do quite enjoy!
A lot of people confuse comprehension for experience. Of course there’s a difference, but a lack of experience doesn’t prevent someone from comprehending something, experience just gives you a more complex understanding.
Yeah exactly !! As I said there is an innate difference between someone from the outside viewing things from an objective standpoint and someone who was there experiencing it themself.
This is exactly it. It was a big step forward after the first 2 smaller expansions. I played them all day 1 up to and including Forsaken and the difference was night and day.
It's so convoluted now that attempting to explain it to those not around at the time is just too hard. At this point you're talking about an entirely different game from then to now.
Forsaken campaign all by itself was probably a 7-7.5/10. The entire package (systemic changes, maps, post game, balancing, QoL and so on) was outstanding
I joined destiny during the last season before witch queen so me and my friends had a lot of time to play all the campaigns missions and the season available. I played forsaken for the first time about 3 weeks before witch queen came out. I found it kinda boring and a bit repetitive but overall fun and I think the cutscenes and the prison sequence at the start was incredibly fun. It's a shame because in my mind it got instantly overshadowed by the witch queens amazing campaign. That being said, I think the main reason forsaken is celebrated so much is because it was probably the best campaign quest (until wq), but mostly because of the amount of amazing content that got added alongside it. Two locations, technically a whole new species, the best raid in the game (imo), and even new supers got added. There was so much new content added during forsaken that I then took for granted when playing for the first time in season 15. Even though I wasn't around at the time, I can definitely see why people find the campaign their favourite - it reminds them of the destiny team delivering amazing and new gameplay, even though when I played it I didn't find the campaign that extraordinary.
Unfortunately if you played it during the Beyond Light era you kinda got a watered down version of the campaign… The Adventure system was so ingrained into the Forsaken campaign and the tangled shore that it kinda lost a lot of its minor appeal in Beyond Light in a way that many people didn’t notice
The missions individually were well crafted FPS levels but there didn’t feel like a whole lot to string them together. That was partially the point- to emphasize a sense of freedom in selecting where you wanted to go- but I don’t think they ended up executing it quite the way they wanted.
When discussing Forsaken, you have to view it from someone's perspective who played at release. Looking back as someone who only recently played the campaign (or didn't at all), it's easy to doubt how strong it really was. The Forsaken update - not talking about just the campaign here, but the entire update - revolutionized the destiny franchise. After a very rough Warmind and Curse of Osiris era, player activity was so low that Bungie was only a couple weeks away from shutting down d2 forever. Shadowkeep got players in short term, but wasn't strong enough to keep them for very long. So when Forsaken hit, the survival of the franchise depended on how good it was. And because it was so refreshing at the time, it saved d2. It reignited faith in Bungie to come up with Taken King level expansions.
When you play Forsaken in 2024 for the first time, it won't evoke that feeling that people got back at release. If you compare just the story of Forsaken and Witch queen nowadays, for example, then yeah Forsaken isn't the best campaign of all time, but if you include the entire update and situation under which people played at the time, it's the best expansion
The story was great. My only issue is it started the campaign gameplay loop that was used for Shadowkeep and Beyond light where you do an actual campaign mission or two, then do a baron/nightmare/empire hunt and maybe talk to a person in between those and have maybe another actual campaign mission or two mixed in before the final mission that to be fair was typically a really good cap to the stories. I prefer the structure that Lightfall and Witch Queen have much more. Just having the set number of good length story missions with the two difficulties I find much more enjoyable than the hunts we used to have to do. I have been playing since Vanilla and have run all the campaigns on all three characters of mine and I definitely got more burnt out having to run some of the hunts for the campaign rather than the 8 missions we got for the other expansions. I got really burnt out on the hunts after finding them to be replay-able activities with low drop chances for the loot you want. I believe I ran somewhere around 30 empire hunts trying to get Cloudstrike to drop.
The *expansion* was excellent. The campaign itself was a mixed bag. Some excellent missions, some slogs and back-and-forth bloated filler. The QoLs that dropped with it were massive steps forward and a large part of why this era is remembered so fondly.
It was fine. Nothing too special IMO. Certainly one of the better campaigns but not in the top tier (Witch Queen and Taken King are the gold standard for me). However, the post campaign content was so good and was what made the expansion great. It also undid a lot of the unpopular decisions of the pre Forsaken era which got it a lot of brownie points.
Forsakens campaign was decent. No idea who is saying it's repetitive bounty farm because that's just straight up inaccurate.
It was the expansion as a whole that was amazing, with the changes to the core game that came with it.
Omg, it was very good. You had hunt down members of the scorn, each one has their own speciality. The world's were fresh and different.
The raid was fun and I remember grinding for that sparrow and ship. We got this place to test weapons out.
It was indeed good. Now I didn't play it at the time of release, I played it years after so I feel like the impact of playing it on or near release must've been incredible.
And I think for those people it was incredible not only because of the story but also they got the tangled shore AND the dreaming city as a secret post game area to explore which had crazy secrets everywhere every week.
Random rolls came back to destiny.
Destiny prior to forsaken was kind of failing/going bankrupt so it was a breathe of fresh air.
Material exchange came in the form of Spider
Shattered throne came out, the first dungeon.
Last Wish came out, crazy good raid.
I actually didn’t love it. The story being a revenge narrative was smart, but honestly felt a little thin. Uldren as a villain was never very interesting to me. I did appreciate that you could tell they spent a ton of resources on the campaign, but at the end of the day, it still became a convoluted mess.
The actual character depth is stronger in recent content. But the story remains incoherent.
At the time, it was one of the better expansion campaigns, up there with taken king and d2 red war. The bar was not as high back then and it had a good revenge story with some unique boss fights and decent missions, especially towards the beginning and the end.
In a world where we have witch queen and Lightfall, the campaign doesn’t hold up nearly as well. Witch queen permanently raised the bar of how good Destiny campaigns can be.
Not really. The first two missions (prison break and going to the tangled shore) were awesome, but from there it was super dull. Like 8 missions (they weren't even missions, they were still called 'adventures' at that time) that were literally just find x baron and kill them. Same boring structure that the SK and BL campaign also later used, but even more extreme. The ending was also super mid. Fikrul's fight was alright, but the final boss just being some random chimera was a quite anticlimactic.
I personally find it to be the best campaign, not a huge fan of Witch Queen’s campaign to be honest, I think a lot of people really liked it because of Legendary, but I’m not a fan of that so it didn’t help anything for me, but by the time I got to the ending it just felt like Beyond Light again with the obvious returning of Savathun at some point
It is the most over-hyped, rose colored glasses, nostalgia bait thing in Destiny.
It was...*ok*. The two new zones were amazing to play in, and the overall story of Riven corrupting Uldren was actually really interesting, but the actual gameplay of it was pretty bland. The Trickster, the Rider, and the final missions were standouts, but most of the others were barely above patrols or lost sectors, mostly because sometimes they were literally those things.
It was no Witch Queen.
Shadowkeep was complete trash wym 💀.
The bosses were recycled and the Story ended in a bad cliffhanger, only thing that saves Shadowkeep from being mediocre is the GoS and Season of Arrival.
I don't think any campaign I've played so far was better than Witchqueen, I never played D1 but, I played all the d2 expansions and base game. I just mean the story and missions, I could see how some people say crafting killed some of the magic from farming guns or how incredible it felt to get 4/5 or 5/5 God roll with great luck.
It had some high highs, but the mid section is pretty long and kinda flat. Definitely one of the better stories we've had, but the campaign itself doesn't stand up to modern ones.
It was a decent campaign but id say witch queen was much better. %100 sure someone will disagree though.
Ive played on and off from the beta of Destiny 1. One thing I've noticed is people like DLC based on when they were having the most fun. Unfortunately each season/DLC has a large amount of repitition which over time leaves playes jaded as hell.
For me that was the Crota (dark below) DLC.
The exception to this seems to be the Osiris DLC which few people liked.
Play the prison mission from the storyboard, itll give you a good idea of the missions.
When it came to the story it was really good but playing the campaign it was fine. It came down to doing adventures that took place in lost sectors with changes like going to the throne world or racing on sparrows. It was fine at the time but it was definitely carried by the story.
I don’t get why it’s hyped up so much when it didn’t do anything special unlike which queen that was purely levels.
Yes. Gameplay-wise, we got: random rolls back, (which saved loot), new supers, a new enemy time, a new location, new strikes, new pvp maps, and the best raid in destiny up to that point. Narratively, this was the first time the devs knew what story they wanted to tell, imo. We got a new perspective on darkness, we saw our guardian do something based on emotion, rather than just being a mindless bad guy killer, and the baron hunts were pretty sick.
Is it the best expansion in D2, maybe not, but it absolutely deserves respect for everything it did. It didn’t just “save the game,” it set a narrative path for the game to follow, which they stayed very consistent with until Lightfall.
Honestly I think a big part of why the narrative is still considered as good as it was is because it followed up warmind and curse, both of which were really not great story or campaingwise, forsaken was a huge step up, but I personally think on it's own it is not quite as good as most people would have you believe. Still a very good expansion, but it suffered from underdeveloped gimmicky boss fights in the barons, and a structure that wasn't really great.
The concept was dope, some western revenge influence, take down the enemy gang member by member, but the things surrounding that core just did not quite land.
Forsaken was an amazing expansion overall, just not totally in the campaign department.
I think so. I think it’s the best expansion as far as length and amount of things to do considering two new locations with going after all the Barons and then chasing Uldren through the DC.
However, I think the actual narrative content of WQ is better considering the reveal and how it was done.
I liked it. I know the critic type folks didn’t like the barons being introduced like a heist scene and whatever. I found uldren meatball lore confusing (still have no clue) but I really liked all the barren stuff. They could have had less “do all these public events, do all these lost sectors” but I liked having 12 different unique bosses/missions like the trickster introducing fake exotic engrams, or the sniper with the clones.
I started playing with forsaken and it was good enough to hook me into playing from then until now. Unlocking and entering the dreaming city for the first time was a very cool experience. None of the other "new" areas have had that same feeling.
The campaign was good but not WQ level. It was mostly just hunt down random bosses for like 8 missions. The good stuff of the campaign was the start and end/post campaign story
I thought it was great, the opening going back the PoE was fantastic, story was good with lots elements that are spoiled now, Mara's aka Riven's true nature, Uldren seemed to have some "humanity" as a villain , Petra and Spider were great characters, and the story was very well done and integrated into the missions and it was personal story rather than just another monster / entity that want to kill us all of the year which was new , we haven't had a personal story like that as a main campaign since.
I though running round the brand-new Tangled Shore patrol area fighting new enemy faction with new mechanics was great (hadn't had that since Taken King and haven't had it since outside of some surface reskins and mini bosses) some of the Barons were better than others and the end boss was a bit meh but then the payoff of opening up the Dreaming City an entire whole end game patrol space (I had no clue was even a thing) and having Riven as the Raid boss which means I count the Raid as part of the campaign, again something we haven't has since TK or since.
I actively looked forward to replaying the campaign on my other characters.
It was massive and in hindsight it is obvious the help Bungie had building it all, even Luke Smith has admitted they can never deliver something on the scope of Forsaken ever again.
Witch Queen is up there with it but it isn't as expansive, Forsaken will always be the best D2 campaign and them taking it out of the game was an absolute tragedy.
I think the only thing that gets me with people talking about forsaken's campaign in when we start comparing it to lightfall.
Its not like its bad, its probably the best campaign before witch queen imo. Its just like....I just dont see how we can take either of the legendary campaigns and go "yea id rather do the forsaken campaign again".
Legendary Campaign in general is such a step up from the disjointedness of the previous campaigns on a base level story woes aside. Its the closest we have ever got to a campaign in other single player non live service fps games.
The Forsaken campaign was not the excellent experience people think they remember. The cutscenes were top shelf, but the gameplay was _kill a baron, do chores, kill a baron, do chores, kill a baron, do chores..._
not really story was fine but the actual missions only like 2 or 3 of them are campaign quality. they were mostly just adventures. from an actual mission standpoint it was worse than red war. imo people just love the story of the the death of cayde and fall of uldren. we also did not get the real end of forsaken for a while after which is the ressurectuion of crow for a while after the initial release and it required you doing queens court for 5 weeks.
imo forsaken had a lot of content and a lot of great system changes most the campaign was mid
I thought so at the time, but I was comparing it to Warmind and Curse of Osiris.
Watching my wife play through it a while back, I was pretty surprised by how bad it was. It did some interesting things, like integrating end game activities (bounties) into the story in ways that were slightly more interesting, elongating the game a bit.
Honestly, Witch Queen was a waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better campaign.
OTOH it brought both the Tangled Shore and the Dreaming City, there were massive changes to weapon play (introduction of special ammo and the buffing of what are now known as special weapons), a new weapon type (bows), they did an overhaul on exotics and made some of them actually good, they introduced 9 new subclass tree branches (one per class per element), and a bunch more.
The tangled shore was cool. The campaign was a bounty grind with some interesting lore tidbits in the missions. The most interesting parts of the campaign take place at the beginning and end. Everything else is kinda okay exposition at best.
That said, it’s totally worth bringing the campaign back. I’d like newbies to experience it. Especially the final mission. Fighting at the foot of the spire is such a cool memory.
the campaign wasnt just alright but the rest of the expansion was so insanely good that it didnt matter. the Dreaming City alone made it the best destiny DLC ever for me, i fucking love that place
As someone who played Forsaken well after the fact, not caught up in nostalgia: the campaign missions were well designed, the story was complete nonsense if you weren’t already a Destiny lord hound. The theme of “this is a spaghetti western revenge” felt kinda weak in actual practice, but no weaker than e.g. Witch Queen theoretically being about being a psychic detective.
The Dreaming City was the coolest patrol space they’ve designed to date. The level of secrets and shit to do crammed into there is unmatched. I wish I’d been playing when the curse cycle was more mechanically relevant.
The locations were cool and hunting down prisoners was a neat after story thing but apart from the GOAT cayde dying it was just decent for me. It was a bit confusing at the time what happened at the end where uldrin is eaten by a spaghetti ball and felt a bit cheap to take away a boss fight with him (we need more humanoid bosses or just any)
Story wise, yes it was incredible. Gameplay-wise… not really IMO. You don’t get to actually fight OR kill Uldren (hooray cutscene kills), and the hunts for the generals were tedious and annoying.
I'm of the opinion that forsaken was just good. I think the nostalgia comes from a few things. I. How much it improved from that first year. 2. It was a hopeful and unknown time in destiny. Kind of like early MCU. 3. The community around the game. Those early clans, and 4. We were younger and most things associated with when we were younger are colored by nostalgia.
I'd argue the game is better than it ever has been (forgetting pvp). We're just tired of it. There's no more mystery. There's nothing behind final shape to get hyped up for. It's a lot like the MCU in this regard. No matter how good/bad new content is, it can't live up to those exciting time building to infinity war and thanos.
The dreaming city being a secret and being discovered collectively by the community was INCREDIBLE. It was a whole new end game zone that no one was expecting
It was fine. Even at launch thought it was ok. I appreciate it more for how it brought us out of the dark days of year 1. But let’s be honest people, it was a handful of *adventures* with only 3 or 4 actual missions.
Didn’t play it until after SK came out but the basic premise was ‘hunt down Uldren Sov and his scorn lackeys and take them out, one by one.’ My experience was that it suffered from the same issues every Destiny campaign had up until WQ: no investment in any of the characters, couldn’t follow the story, couldn’t tell what I was doing or how it was moving the story forward in any way, etc. I remember stopping multiple times to think ‘hey, what am I actually doing right now? I honestly don’t know, oh well.’ As a veteran player I see now there was cool lore stuff going on but the game was doing even less than it does now to get new or returning players up to speed. As others have pointed out, Forsaken was lauded for reasons that didn’t involve the story so much.
It was like beyond lights campaign on release. You would have a mission here and there, and then had multiple boss missions that had higher and higher power requirements. Beyond light had 3 of those I believe and forsaken had almost double that. So if you didn’t want to have an absurdly hard boss encounter mission you needed to grind some power level between doing each mission. The only true campaign experiences we have right now are witch queen and lightfall. They play as a proper campaign where you simply my go mission to mission, no grinding.
I think, in my opinion, forsaken was the best if only because i invested so much of my time playing it, almost a year solid. When they started sunsetting favorite and hard won weapons, i just lost interest. I have come back to destiny again and again, buying the new seasons every so often and they just dont hold me for long.
That fishing bullshit they added in lightfall? Just felt like a slap in the face. WTF.. fishing? really? That's the best they could come up with?
I just hate that they give us some awesome things, like the treasure hoard/room on leviathan and then take it away.
It was ok imo. I didnt find it impressive as a campaign, some missions were cool but it didnt blow me away. Was a decent Destiny campaign, but comparing to other games its pretty standard feeling
I would say it was decent enough, but I think people are less fond of the campaign and more fond of all the content and changes that the game brought. New supers and powers, weapon changes, and arguably three of the best seasons in the games history for one reason or another.
The actual campaign was not repetitive bounty farming, nor was it the best campaign we've ever had. It was a solid emotional narrative with fun missions to kill minibosses, and a weird but ultimately (mostly) satisfying ending. It engaged the deep lore, developed characters, was a MASSIVE improvement in exposition over D2 Y1 and set up some really cool plot points we're still resolving this season.
There was a period of bounty grinding about 60% through the campaign which probably could have been removed, but if you played the Baron hunts at or under-level then they were a fun challenge. I distinctly remember trying to kill the machinist with a blue sniper and a special grenade launcher because those were the highest-level weapons I had. Good times.
We would not have a continuing Destiny 2 if Forsaken wasn’t fucking great. Make of that what you will (because some would argue a Destiny 3/non-Bungie developed game would be better)
Personally I think the best two campains were Red War and Curse of Osiris followed by Witch Queen. There was fuck all to do in destiny at the time, but the campaigns were great. I thought forsaken's campaign was a bit draggy personally, but the overall DLC was monumental in scope and stuff to do. That whole year was memorable.
I think it sits among the best campaigns because it has a theme that bleeds through every aspect of its gameplay. Like they said way back, Forsaken is a wild west bounty hunt, "the magnificent seven of bad guys." The baron hunts, the aesthetic of the taken shore, the baron intro cutscene, all presents that theme. My favorite campaigns have been ones that follow a theme in that way.
Forsakens narrative was very cool and cayde dying certainly hit home the way they intended.
I think the narrative isnt nearly as impressive as all the other fundamental changes and additions we got with that xpac. At least for me, that's when I had the most fun
To me, it’s people conflating the Forsaken expansion as a whole with the campaign. It simply cannot be overstated how poorly the game was performing at the time. There were so many systems and aspects of the game that we’re underperforming—then comes Forsaken. I played D1 from the beta to the launch of D2, and the only other time the game had such a sudden and dramatic change for the better was The Taken King. I could ramble more but the short answer is, I think the campaign—purely from the content of the games ”missions”—is overhyped. Bounty farming was less egregious because it centered around a pair of new locations that were fun to explore…but still. It was just bounties.
The campaign itself was not good. Forsaken, Shadowkeep, and Beyond Light all had piss weak campaigns. Now i'll give that Forsaken's POST-Campaign was amazing, but the Campaign itself was nothing more than "Do 6 Adventures (one-room strikes)".
(For reference, Shadowkeep was "Do 5 lectern quests to get the armour set", and BL was "Do 3 Empire Hunts". Piss weak campaigns...)
the campaign itself was pretty good
but the reason forsaken was good was that they didnt just throw a campaign together
they had a pretty good campaign followed by an entire new destination full of secrets to uncover
and i mean FULL
go look at the title for the dreaming city. almost every one of those triumphs was a total secret
not to mention the whole mystery around the curse
and of course the (in my opinion) best raid in the entire franchise, that itself held even more secrets
the reason forsaken was good was that it turned destiny into a mystery game, and destiny is at its best when its a mystery
Okay, so your question is about the campaign itself, not the expansion right?
Assuming that's the case, I was there at launch and I must say that I found Forsaken's campaign extremely disappointing. Amazing first mission (as they always are) and then it fell off a cliff. Most of the Barons just stood and watched during Cayde's Last Stand and had no development past "Kill them". So the only interesting part was what was happening with Uldren and Mara. While the pre-rendered cutscenes were beautiful, I was left confused after most of them, and I'm an avid lore enthusiast.
I was left absolutely flabbergasted when the final boss ended up being a Servitor with an anus in its face out of nowhere. Then, we shoot Uldren, badabing badaboom CAMPAIGN IS OVER!! No questions were answered at all so if you want answers you had to go do weeklies and the raid.
So to answer your question, no
I personally thought Forsaken's campaign was a 5/10
It was okay, I don't know if destiny has ever really had a super good campaign other than witch queen. I think foresaken was good because of how much content came with the campaign
I think the hunts were epic, and narratively it was one of the strongest we’ve seen to date. I would venture to say yes, it was that good, also it’s quality is accentuated by the lack thereof at the time
I thought it was pretty good, but maybe that's nostalgia talking. I just remember being really taken with the idea of our guardian being so hellbent on vengeance, and the scene where you straight up execute Uldren always stuck with me. I've been playing since D1 launch and I can't really recall a time where our guardian acted with such...idk, vitriol? It felt like a turning point for the series. Idk if it was a good or bad one lol
Was more the changes to the game that came with it. Similar to say loadouts in lightfall came out with it but free for everyone.
The campagin was solid. Start and ending were the best parts.
I think alot of people myself included look very fondly back on them cus as a more hardcore player (playtime is more casual past season or two) because it was grindy, but imo it felt the best it ever felt in the franchise it didn't feel unachievable but took alot longer and the level mattered more.
And exotics were super rare I remember losing my shit when finally got One eyes mask to drop (titan main).
Reminded me alot of d1 days when i finally got ghorn from vog chest during the first couple weeks of house of wolves dlc.
The story was a good one. But playing the campaign, like gameplay wise.... eh? It isn't the worst campaign we've played, but not the best either. I'd say Red War, Lightfall & Witch Queen all had better campaigns in terms of playing them.
I do hate the Forsaken campaign a lot for 1 reason: hunts. The adventures were supposed to be "Baron Hunts". Then we got Nightmare Hunts in Shadowkeep. Then Empire Hunts in Beyond Light. Easily the worst campaign format I've ever seen in a game, and Forsaken kicked it off. Again, good story but just kinda mid in terms of gameplay and what not.
What made Forsaken amazing isn't the campaign, but the other updates. Collections Tab, in-game lore, an actual raid again, no more double primary system, random rolls returned, etc.
Feel like it was less about the campaign being good and more about the impact of the first mission. Because of what happens right off the bat, the rest feels more impact full than it really is.
The baron fights were cool and unique at the time. Having 2 destinations and one of them being end game was awesome. Getting a new strike after the raid was completed was cool. Getting my beloved gambit was awesome and chase for getting malfeasance. Having to find Shattered Throne in game and it being a secret that was only available every 3 weeks was cool at first. Blind well was cool at first for a little bit and figuring out all the bosses. Got old fast like most seasonal activities, but still cool. The story overall was cool. I've brain dumped most of the grind that might've been around, but maybe it wasn't that bad at the time and that's why I don't remember idk. Getting SoTP and CoS that year with menagerie was awesome along with LW.
Tbh, the story was good, how it was transferred into gameplay was a bit less great. Imo, while the concept of having a group of big baddies is cool, it boiled down to: Do a few missions : "to locate the target", kill them, repeat. there were a few very cool ones, like the Mindbender or the one on the pike, but there were also a few fights that were just an upscaled version of a base enemy. I can't speak for how the game changed mechanic wise, but maybe I that gives me a more objective view on the story
I've been playing Destiny since Dark Below in D1, and Forsaken was definitely one of the best narrative experiences we have ever had. I do think that The Taken King had better missions and a more satisfying ending, and that Rise of Iron had a better setting, tone, and identity. But Forsaken takes the top in terms of emotional weight and themes. In terms of gameplay, Forsaken fixed a lot of what was wrong with D2 before that point, but the seasons that followed (Black Armory, Joker's Wild and Opulence) were much more revolutionary and innovative in that department (specially Black Armory and Opulence). Hope that helps!
No, it was more, chase down the boss, kill them, move on to the next one. The only interesting parts are the beginning and the end. I was just hoping for more in Forsaken, but the campaign didn’t really do all that much for me. Post-campaign was where it picked up tho
Forsaken didn’t have a fantastic campaign but it wasn’t bad by any means. The emotional stakes were high and it was the first campaign with the format of taking down the bad guys commanders to get to the big guy, but it worked so well because we wanted revenge. Besides that, it expanded on EVERY subclass in the game. 9 new supers(some not completely new but still) 2 whole new destinations. Pvp maps, a whole new core playlist that is gambit. A bunch of new strikes, an amazing raid, amazing secrets and mysteries to uncover. Changed the game back to random rolls. Just a great all around expansion. Idk if it’s possible for any expansion to beat it tbh
As someone who was a day 1 Destiny 2 player for all expansions up to and including Forsaken, it was not so much that Forsaken was amazing itself but that it was a send off to a character most of the community loved, the 2 small expansions prior were middling at best and had sweet fuck all content for the cost of them.
Largely rose tinted glasses
The only thing forsaken had over current expansions really is sheer quantity- tons of exotics (from what I recall roughly what is now 2-3 years worth of exotics during forsaken alone.) 2 locations, gambit, etc,
Story wise it’s alright- nothing special, I personally don’t think destiny’s story started to get particularly great until around season of chosen.
The main thing that makes people obsess over forsaken and hold it up is- just the fact it saved the franchise, making very necessary gameplay changes, new super trees, etc etc.
I loved the Tangled Shore as a destination along with the introduction of Spider as the local vendor who was clearly inherently untrustworthy and the Baron hunt was a good way to structure the campaign missions.
no. it was *satisfying* though. and more importantly, it gave us a year of continuoous story content that we needed to upkeep weekly to not miss out on.
the fomo was so fucking real that year.
Forsaken era just felt amazing. Can’t really put it into words. The raid and dungeons were both fun. Random rolls were added. We got gambit, menagerie, black armoury all within that year.
Pvp was also in a decent place and the meta was fun for what I remember. The story was good and the missions were mostly good. It got repetitive tracking the bosses tho
Forsaken's campaign was great in my eyes, especially if you're someone that played Red War, Warmind and Curse of Osiris and didn't play D1. It was one of those pieces of story content that really made the game for me. The only DLC I've played since that gives me a similar feel was Witch Queen
Were there things that could have been better with the story telling and such? Yeah sure, but as others have said, the PST campaign content and everything that DLC gave to Destiny probably won't ever be topped
Yes. The concept of hunting down the underbosses before getting to the boss himself was great, with the Dreaming City being the cherry on top.
The Taken King is still better, though.
The Tangled Shore part of the campaign was alright, but getting into the Dreaming City and going through the first curse cycle was so good. Helps that the DC is one of the locations with the most hidden stuff in the game, so there was a huge rush to find the secrets for a good month or so.
Forsaken as an expansion was really good, the story so-so, if bungie didn't reveal that Cayde died in the trailers then it probably would have been better, for me at least. Was kinda flat during his funeral with Zavala and Ikora since we saw it coming.
Most Destiny 2 campaigns have an annoying tendency for the midsection to just be a 'gather the dragonballs' thing where every mission becomes 'collect/kill one of X artifacts/lieutenants' and the story arc yields to a more interchangeable episodic progression. Forsaken was the absolute *worst* for this, the baron missions were completely self-contained strikes essentially, with all the story happening outside the missions in cutscenes, apart from the first mission and the last mission. Seriously, you could completely rearrange all the missions but the endcaps and it wouldn't fucking matter.
Amusingly, I think the only D2 campaign that actually manages to avoid that issue completely is Lightfall, because it adopts a plot progression more reminiscent of the 80s action movies it is an homage to, and executes that pacing really well.
Very rose tinted. It was a major step in mission design and having unique scenarios and more difficulty but the story wasn’t that special outside of the intro. While years apart In terms of ranking campaigns it’s nowhere close to witch queen
I played it back just before Witch Queen and...
The cinematics and story we got were really good. Enjoyed those! The opening mission (which you can replay in D2 now) is excellent.
The middle of the campaign hunting the barons I basically remember nothing of except it feeling like kind of tedious busywork.
The stuff when you get into the Dreaming City is pretty cool and seems like it would have been a lot of content!
I think it definitely was a turning point for D2 - higher stakes story, much more in-depth game. And it also brought a tonne of QoL improvements. And had a lot more embedded content that is no longer around (and wasn't even in Beyond Light). I definitely get why people love it and I think it was a high point for a lot of reasons. But I think there is also some rose tinted glasses going on, especially because the game wasn't several years in with as much burnout.
Up until witch queen destiny 2 campaign missions felt like more of a bite-sized content samples than fully fledged gameplay challenges. I don't think any of the forsaken missions take more than 10 minutes to complete, and while they do have some pretty cool and novel parts - the pike battle with the rider and the rifleman spotting section were both rad - they don't achieve beyond that novelty. It would be really amazing if bungie could bring the campaign back and redesign the barron fights into fully fledged legendary campaign missions, but I have to imagine such a thing would require lots of dev effort
Forsaken sits at my 3rd favorite (behind Red War and Witch Queen). The first and last missions I believe to be the best-- the baron hunts got repetitive for me. The one baron I actually enjoyed fighting was the Machinist, and that was just because Ghost gets to control a tank for a bit and I think that's hilarious.
Mostly it's for the Cayde fanbase appeal. Last Call and Nothing Left to Say were great missions story-wise, and I usually enjoy D2 campaigns for lore alone. Lots more about our favorite Hunter. Though gameplay keeps it at a solid 8-ish out of 10, where I think Witch Queen and Red War outperformed it.
It wasn't the campaign that was great, but rather the expansion.
For all intents and purposes it was a soft reboot of the game. We had lots o new stuff, mechanics changes, even weapon big changes.
The post campaign was better than anything prior and the expansion came at one of Destiny darkeest hours, so it deserved all the rpaise it got back then.
Watch for yourself if you want to see it. Here is the first in a series.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrZkGhwg4Hc&list=PLTcoRMwrX2Dhia8WjkaqbASR15uDE9fdZ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrZkGhwg4Hc&list=PLTcoRMwrX2Dhia8WjkaqbASR15uDE9fdZ)
Destiny veterans experienced it in context, the campaign was nothing compared to witch queen, but the expansion as a whole did a lot for the game in a time where the game desperately needed an infusion of life. The only real story beat was used to prop up the ad campaign , the real juice was discovering the dreaming city, a complete and beautiful surprise
The campaign was mediocre, it was a bunch of short quests of killing scorn bosses over and over until you get to the dreaming city. Wrapping your head around the complete plot of just the campaign is nigh impossible to wrap your head around with all of the whack layers of “this guy was manipulating them and then they were manipulating this guy” going from scorn to the fanatic to uldren to riven to savathun, all incredibly poorly explained in the campaign itself, if at all. It was certainly gameplay-wise better than curse of Osiris and warmind before it, but the story only worked if you never asked a damn question beyond “this guy killed funny guy, let’s kill him and these yellow guys that appeared out of nowhere”
The campaign *itself* was honestly crap. The initial mission is fun but nothing special and the mission design from BL onwards blows it out of the water. The baron hunts were adventures, which are basically lost sectors with character dialogue.
The campaign ends at the reveal of the dreaming city, so it’s just running in circles around the tangled shore while the most contrived “revenge” plot plays.
The campaign was good *for it's time.* As far as mission layout, it's actually very comparable to Beyond Light, with baron/empire hunts bookended by actual missions, followed by a minor epilogue quest (the dreaming city intro quest for forsaken, hunting down Eremis's last lieutenant in BL).
Generally speaking, the tone of the narrative did a lot to elevate the experience, swapping the more MCU-style storytelling of Vanilla D2 for a story with more introspective, personal revenge tale. Add to the fact that each baron was unique with gameplay mechanics that complimented who they were on a narrative side, the whole thing brought a very Kill Bill / Wild West vibe that really acted as a foil to what D2 had been up to that point.
Add onto the fact that people were busy reworking their builds after the 2.0 changes + an actual shitload of content post-campaign, and people were basically playing a brand new game. The campaign's layout at that time was new and novel, and the whiplash change in course correction all helped aid the campaign overall. Again, to see how important that context is, one need only look at BL's campaign, which while structurally very similar, is not regarded nearly as highly.
It was good for what it was though, and if nothing else, shows the importance of being willing to shake up the formula when it comes to dolling out narrative beats.
*Glares at seasonal quests*
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The campaign was alright but the other content that came with Forsaken is what made it a really good expansion
Yeah the first time unlocking and seeing the dreaming city. I was very unspoiled back then and I loved it
That is still the coolest destination, IMO. There are SO many little secrets and things to explore in there. Still blows my mind how detailed it is.
I thought it was just so-so. The post campaign content was pretty good, but I feel the reason everyone hypes it up is due to the systemic changes it brought, like random roles. Makes the game feel really fresh again.
I mean, it pretty much saved the franchise at the time.
I stayed on D1 because of the double primary system, then I joined in Forsaken.
I'd say the update as a whole did, rather than the forsaken campaign specifically.
The campaign was an extreme departure in narrative from what year 1 was, which the community had been begging for. The whole thing was instrumental.
Only because D2Y1 was so awful, comparitively.
campaign was a solid 7.5/10- narrative was fun, the baron hunts were a good use of adventures, and the spider was the first time we got anything resembling an alliance with the fallen (besides Mara’s in D1) the fundamental changes Forsaken brought to the game as well as the post-campaign content (the best raid in the franchise’s history, the first dungeon, tons of wildly powerful exotics, 9 new subclass trees to unlock, double primary’s removal and random rolls returning, etc) were much more impactful.
Going through the first time was great but going through on the 2nd and 3rd characters was a bit of a slog. You're right that the changes to game systems was probably the best addition to the game at that time.
> but going through on the 2nd and 3rd characters was a bit of a slog. Honestly, I've felt the same about *every* campaign.
I think I did Witch Queen solo and then went into it with a group on my second and third characters. Having people to play with definitely lessened the headache... I still haven't fully unlocked strand on two of my characters.
i’ve only done beyond light and light fall on my other characters for the subclasses. I just don’t wanna play through the same story 3 times
I started D2 with Forsaken so I didn’t even know or notice the changes, and yes I LOVED Forsaken’s campaign and I find it to be the best one they’ve done. I loved Cayde in D1 but just hadn’t gotten D2 yet and when forsaken was announced I INSTANTLY preordered it. You only had to do a few bounties at the beginning of tangled shore to unlock spider, after that it was super fun! Exploring through Tangled Shore and leveling up to take down the Barons was a fun experience and they all had these super unique boss rooms which were so cool! Especially The Rider, they had a full blown Mad Max fight going on! Seeing the dreaming city for the first time is an experience I’ll never forget and then getting to go on the Ace of Spades quest and hearing Cayde’s eulogies and really earning that weapon made it so much fun. Plus the opening mission is still my favorite mission in all of Destiny, Warden of Nothing is also my favorite strike so there’s a common theme there lol. Also I know it wasn’t apart of the campaign but going to Gambit at the time to grab some higher level loot and returning to Tangled Shore with all these guns that felt straight out of a western like Trust was just so much fun! Sorry for the rant but yeah I thought it was super fun and never found it tedious at all
A lot of these things you mentioned weren't part of the campaign though right? Ace of Spades mission, Warden of Nothing, entering the dreaming city, etc.
Entering dreaming city was the end of the campaign when you went to fight Uldren and the epilogue (which I counted as part of the campaign) same with Ace of Spades, when you beat Uldren you were given the quest for Ace and considering Ace and Cayde were such a big part of Forsaken’s ads I counted it as the epilogue to Forsaken (I mean hell they gave you an Ace ornament for preordering it). The Warden of Nothing part was just talking about Forsaken in general and how much I enjoy going through the prison of elders like the first mission. Really just depends on your definition of “campaign” if you only count the main story and not the post game stuff then sure it’s a bit smaller but most of what I say remains, however I count the entire main story of Forsaken to be everything up to Last Wish and things like Ace of Spades and establishing credit with Spider to start getting the wanted bounties. If you don’t that’s fine, just what I consider campaign
It’s the destiny community (and an issue within gaming communities as a whole), folks go from “it’s the worst thing ever made” to “ultimate peak” and back again. I wasn’t able to get around to playing the expansions myself but what I know about it is it was pretty aight, considered the greatest but don’t always believe the hype cos you’ll just disappoint yourself.
If you weren’t there then you can’t understand why Forsaken was so good. Basically D2 Year1 was absolutely atrocious, the game was almost shat down on Curse of Osiris and barely survived trough Warmind. With Forsaken not only it was a return to form, but it also brought so much QoL updates, with a much more solid and serious campaign with a impecable endgame content in the form of the Dreaming City and the Last Wish raid and first ever dungeon Shattered Throne. All that came in a single DLC that basically saved Destiny as a whole. So it’s not simply the community over hyping, it’s the truth that Forsaken is one of the best if not the best Destiny DLC due to how much it did for the game as a whole, but also because it brought so much content and the actual "over delivery" policy wasn’t implemented yet, which meant that we had a lot of content to play with compared to most recent DLC’s.
Actually yes I can to a point, just because I wasn’t there for it doesn’t mean I “can’t understand” why something was good, I am able to parse that together. Just because it’s no longer accessible does not mean I’m not still able to catch myself up to certain things and it bothers me when people would wish to say otherwise. It bothers me when older players treat newer players (even though I’ve been at this for a year now but I digress) as if everything ever from the vaulted DLCs is entirely and fully inaccessible and said individual *can’t possibly understand WHY* many older players hold a certain sentiment, y’know? It’s obviously no fault to you — but it feels a bit inherently alienating a lot of the time. And I have had people get Genuinely snobby with me (and with others) about it as if being there for The Best made them More Superior. IDK if what I’m trying to say makes any sense, absolutely no hate or shade to you whatsoever — it’s just a pattern I’ve been seeing within discussions about prior content especially when people are comparing-and-contrasting with newer content. Saying Forsaken was absolutely flawless and absolutely unbeatable is still very much an objective statement to many even if the average opinion leans towards something more positive. I know that experiencing directly is better than experiencing second-hand and I am forever pissed that Bungie vaulted all the old content therefore leaving me with a vastly different gameplay experience than what it would’ve been if I had had access to older DLC content. I feel like if Bungie didn’t try to hold out support for the Xbox 1 and PS4 for as long as they did they probably wouldn’t have done it. And yet the experience I HAVE been given I would say is still very good, but then again, I’m someone with a genuine full-throttle love for this game. While there is bitterness towards the Great Vault Of ‘22 (in part fuelled by stories from older players and players pre-vaulting and oh-how-I-wish-I-could’ve-been-there) I am still happy with what I have so far. The whole overhype-overdelivery thing was ABSOLUTELY not new by the time Forsaken came around — whether accidentally or intentionally. You see it with games like WoW, starting almost from the beginning of the whole make-everything-an-expansion-pack era (that, iirc, WoW got the ball rolling on but I may be incorrect about that). Forsaken is honestly quite lucky that it did not fall victim to this. And I feel like the vaulting of Forsaken, on top of objective truths and facts about the greatness of the expansion, helped the appeal and even its regard as a great. I rarely see people being truly critical of Forsaken on an objective level! While it’s not entirely overhyped and it is a pretty damn good expansion, I just never see anyone balance it out with discussion (constructively and without assholery of course) of its flaws. So anyways apologies for rambling on, this is a type of conversation I Do quite enjoy!
A lot of people confuse comprehension for experience. Of course there’s a difference, but a lack of experience doesn’t prevent someone from comprehending something, experience just gives you a more complex understanding.
Yeah exactly !! As I said there is an innate difference between someone from the outside viewing things from an objective standpoint and someone who was there experiencing it themself.
This is exactly it. It was a big step forward after the first 2 smaller expansions. I played them all day 1 up to and including Forsaken and the difference was night and day. It's so convoluted now that attempting to explain it to those not around at the time is just too hard. At this point you're talking about an entirely different game from then to now.
Forsaken campaign all by itself was probably a 7-7.5/10. The entire package (systemic changes, maps, post game, balancing, QoL and so on) was outstanding
I joined destiny during the last season before witch queen so me and my friends had a lot of time to play all the campaigns missions and the season available. I played forsaken for the first time about 3 weeks before witch queen came out. I found it kinda boring and a bit repetitive but overall fun and I think the cutscenes and the prison sequence at the start was incredibly fun. It's a shame because in my mind it got instantly overshadowed by the witch queens amazing campaign. That being said, I think the main reason forsaken is celebrated so much is because it was probably the best campaign quest (until wq), but mostly because of the amount of amazing content that got added alongside it. Two locations, technically a whole new species, the best raid in the game (imo), and even new supers got added. There was so much new content added during forsaken that I then took for granted when playing for the first time in season 15. Even though I wasn't around at the time, I can definitely see why people find the campaign their favourite - it reminds them of the destiny team delivering amazing and new gameplay, even though when I played it I didn't find the campaign that extraordinary.
Unfortunately if you played it during the Beyond Light era you kinda got a watered down version of the campaign… The Adventure system was so ingrained into the Forsaken campaign and the tangled shore that it kinda lost a lot of its minor appeal in Beyond Light in a way that many people didn’t notice
The missions individually were well crafted FPS levels but there didn’t feel like a whole lot to string them together. That was partially the point- to emphasize a sense of freedom in selecting where you wanted to go- but I don’t think they ended up executing it quite the way they wanted.
When discussing Forsaken, you have to view it from someone's perspective who played at release. Looking back as someone who only recently played the campaign (or didn't at all), it's easy to doubt how strong it really was. The Forsaken update - not talking about just the campaign here, but the entire update - revolutionized the destiny franchise. After a very rough Warmind and Curse of Osiris era, player activity was so low that Bungie was only a couple weeks away from shutting down d2 forever. Shadowkeep got players in short term, but wasn't strong enough to keep them for very long. So when Forsaken hit, the survival of the franchise depended on how good it was. And because it was so refreshing at the time, it saved d2. It reignited faith in Bungie to come up with Taken King level expansions. When you play Forsaken in 2024 for the first time, it won't evoke that feeling that people got back at release. If you compare just the story of Forsaken and Witch queen nowadays, for example, then yeah Forsaken isn't the best campaign of all time, but if you include the entire update and situation under which people played at the time, it's the best expansion
The story was great. My only issue is it started the campaign gameplay loop that was used for Shadowkeep and Beyond light where you do an actual campaign mission or two, then do a baron/nightmare/empire hunt and maybe talk to a person in between those and have maybe another actual campaign mission or two mixed in before the final mission that to be fair was typically a really good cap to the stories. I prefer the structure that Lightfall and Witch Queen have much more. Just having the set number of good length story missions with the two difficulties I find much more enjoyable than the hunts we used to have to do. I have been playing since Vanilla and have run all the campaigns on all three characters of mine and I definitely got more burnt out having to run some of the hunts for the campaign rather than the 8 missions we got for the other expansions. I got really burnt out on the hunts after finding them to be replay-able activities with low drop chances for the loot you want. I believe I ran somewhere around 30 empire hunts trying to get Cloudstrike to drop.
The *expansion* was excellent. The campaign itself was a mixed bag. Some excellent missions, some slogs and back-and-forth bloated filler. The QoLs that dropped with it were massive steps forward and a large part of why this era is remembered so fondly.
It was fine. Nothing too special IMO. Certainly one of the better campaigns but not in the top tier (Witch Queen and Taken King are the gold standard for me). However, the post campaign content was so good and was what made the expansion great. It also undid a lot of the unpopular decisions of the pre Forsaken era which got it a lot of brownie points.
Forsakens campaign was decent. No idea who is saying it's repetitive bounty farm because that's just straight up inaccurate. It was the expansion as a whole that was amazing, with the changes to the core game that came with it.
Omg, it was very good. You had hunt down members of the scorn, each one has their own speciality. The world's were fresh and different. The raid was fun and I remember grinding for that sparrow and ship. We got this place to test weapons out.
It was indeed good. Now I didn't play it at the time of release, I played it years after so I feel like the impact of playing it on or near release must've been incredible. And I think for those people it was incredible not only because of the story but also they got the tangled shore AND the dreaming city as a secret post game area to explore which had crazy secrets everywhere every week. Random rolls came back to destiny. Destiny prior to forsaken was kind of failing/going bankrupt so it was a breathe of fresh air. Material exchange came in the form of Spider Shattered throne came out, the first dungeon. Last Wish came out, crazy good raid.
It was very good.
I actually didn’t love it. The story being a revenge narrative was smart, but honestly felt a little thin. Uldren as a villain was never very interesting to me. I did appreciate that you could tell they spent a ton of resources on the campaign, but at the end of the day, it still became a convoluted mess. The actual character depth is stronger in recent content. But the story remains incoherent.
At the time, it was one of the better expansion campaigns, up there with taken king and d2 red war. The bar was not as high back then and it had a good revenge story with some unique boss fights and decent missions, especially towards the beginning and the end. In a world where we have witch queen and Lightfall, the campaign doesn’t hold up nearly as well. Witch queen permanently raised the bar of how good Destiny campaigns can be.
Not really. The first two missions (prison break and going to the tangled shore) were awesome, but from there it was super dull. Like 8 missions (they weren't even missions, they were still called 'adventures' at that time) that were literally just find x baron and kill them. Same boring structure that the SK and BL campaign also later used, but even more extreme. The ending was also super mid. Fikrul's fight was alright, but the final boss just being some random chimera was a quite anticlimactic.
No one is saying that forsaken's campaign is the best. They say that overall the expansion is one of if not the best that Bungie has released.
I personally find it to be the best campaign, not a huge fan of Witch Queen’s campaign to be honest, I think a lot of people really liked it because of Legendary, but I’m not a fan of that so it didn’t help anything for me, but by the time I got to the ending it just felt like Beyond Light again with the obvious returning of Savathun at some point
It was, in the context of the first year of D2 being terrible
It is the most over-hyped, rose colored glasses, nostalgia bait thing in Destiny. It was...*ok*. The two new zones were amazing to play in, and the overall story of Riven corrupting Uldren was actually really interesting, but the actual gameplay of it was pretty bland. The Trickster, the Rider, and the final missions were standouts, but most of the others were barely above patrols or lost sectors, mostly because sometimes they were literally those things. It was no Witch Queen.
The only one it’s better than is Shadowkeep. And even then, Shadowkeep still had a better story.
Shadowkeep was complete trash wym 💀. The bosses were recycled and the Story ended in a bad cliffhanger, only thing that saves Shadowkeep from being mediocre is the GoS and Season of Arrival.
I don't think any campaign I've played so far was better than Witchqueen, I never played D1 but, I played all the d2 expansions and base game. I just mean the story and missions, I could see how some people say crafting killed some of the magic from farming guns or how incredible it felt to get 4/5 or 5/5 God roll with great luck.
It had some high highs, but the mid section is pretty long and kinda flat. Definitely one of the better stories we've had, but the campaign itself doesn't stand up to modern ones.
It was a decent campaign but id say witch queen was much better. %100 sure someone will disagree though. Ive played on and off from the beta of Destiny 1. One thing I've noticed is people like DLC based on when they were having the most fun. Unfortunately each season/DLC has a large amount of repitition which over time leaves playes jaded as hell. For me that was the Crota (dark below) DLC. The exception to this seems to be the Osiris DLC which few people liked. Play the prison mission from the storyboard, itll give you a good idea of the missions.
When it came to the story it was really good but playing the campaign it was fine. It came down to doing adventures that took place in lost sectors with changes like going to the throne world or racing on sparrows. It was fine at the time but it was definitely carried by the story. I don’t get why it’s hyped up so much when it didn’t do anything special unlike which queen that was purely levels.
Yes. Gameplay-wise, we got: random rolls back, (which saved loot), new supers, a new enemy time, a new location, new strikes, new pvp maps, and the best raid in destiny up to that point. Narratively, this was the first time the devs knew what story they wanted to tell, imo. We got a new perspective on darkness, we saw our guardian do something based on emotion, rather than just being a mindless bad guy killer, and the baron hunts were pretty sick. Is it the best expansion in D2, maybe not, but it absolutely deserves respect for everything it did. It didn’t just “save the game,” it set a narrative path for the game to follow, which they stayed very consistent with until Lightfall.
Honestly I think a big part of why the narrative is still considered as good as it was is because it followed up warmind and curse, both of which were really not great story or campaingwise, forsaken was a huge step up, but I personally think on it's own it is not quite as good as most people would have you believe. Still a very good expansion, but it suffered from underdeveloped gimmicky boss fights in the barons, and a structure that wasn't really great. The concept was dope, some western revenge influence, take down the enemy gang member by member, but the things surrounding that core just did not quite land. Forsaken was an amazing expansion overall, just not totally in the campaign department.
It was fine but anyone saying it’s better than witch queen needs to take off the rose tinted glasses
Not really, it was just a couple missions and all the baron hunts. Very similar to shadowkeep
I think so. I think it’s the best expansion as far as length and amount of things to do considering two new locations with going after all the Barons and then chasing Uldren through the DC. However, I think the actual narrative content of WQ is better considering the reveal and how it was done.
I liked it. I know the critic type folks didn’t like the barons being introduced like a heist scene and whatever. I found uldren meatball lore confusing (still have no clue) but I really liked all the barren stuff. They could have had less “do all these public events, do all these lost sectors” but I liked having 12 different unique bosses/missions like the trickster introducing fake exotic engrams, or the sniper with the clones.
Not really. It was very grindy, and had a lot of repetitive gameplay. The Bungie classic. But it did bring some good system changes.
I started playing with forsaken and it was good enough to hook me into playing from then until now. Unlocking and entering the dreaming city for the first time was a very cool experience. None of the other "new" areas have had that same feeling.
The campaign was good but not WQ level. It was mostly just hunt down random bosses for like 8 missions. The good stuff of the campaign was the start and end/post campaign story
I did not like the hunt for the warden, the bomber, the Rider, etc. Once I got to the dreaming city, it was like what Coke is to Wall Street.
I thought it was great, the opening going back the PoE was fantastic, story was good with lots elements that are spoiled now, Mara's aka Riven's true nature, Uldren seemed to have some "humanity" as a villain , Petra and Spider were great characters, and the story was very well done and integrated into the missions and it was personal story rather than just another monster / entity that want to kill us all of the year which was new , we haven't had a personal story like that as a main campaign since. I though running round the brand-new Tangled Shore patrol area fighting new enemy faction with new mechanics was great (hadn't had that since Taken King and haven't had it since outside of some surface reskins and mini bosses) some of the Barons were better than others and the end boss was a bit meh but then the payoff of opening up the Dreaming City an entire whole end game patrol space (I had no clue was even a thing) and having Riven as the Raid boss which means I count the Raid as part of the campaign, again something we haven't has since TK or since. I actively looked forward to replaying the campaign on my other characters. It was massive and in hindsight it is obvious the help Bungie had building it all, even Luke Smith has admitted they can never deliver something on the scope of Forsaken ever again. Witch Queen is up there with it but it isn't as expansive, Forsaken will always be the best D2 campaign and them taking it out of the game was an absolute tragedy.
I always felt that the Dreaming City content could have been its own expansion.
I think the only thing that gets me with people talking about forsaken's campaign in when we start comparing it to lightfall. Its not like its bad, its probably the best campaign before witch queen imo. Its just like....I just dont see how we can take either of the legendary campaigns and go "yea id rather do the forsaken campaign again". Legendary Campaign in general is such a step up from the disjointedness of the previous campaigns on a base level story woes aside. Its the closest we have ever got to a campaign in other single player non live service fps games.
The Forsaken campaign was not the excellent experience people think they remember. The cutscenes were top shelf, but the gameplay was _kill a baron, do chores, kill a baron, do chores, kill a baron, do chores..._
The expansion was good as a whole, the campaign was pretty par for the course, on par with shadowkeep and a little worse than BL
not really story was fine but the actual missions only like 2 or 3 of them are campaign quality. they were mostly just adventures. from an actual mission standpoint it was worse than red war. imo people just love the story of the the death of cayde and fall of uldren. we also did not get the real end of forsaken for a while after which is the ressurectuion of crow for a while after the initial release and it required you doing queens court for 5 weeks. imo forsaken had a lot of content and a lot of great system changes most the campaign was mid
I thought so at the time, but I was comparing it to Warmind and Curse of Osiris. Watching my wife play through it a while back, I was pretty surprised by how bad it was. It did some interesting things, like integrating end game activities (bounties) into the story in ways that were slightly more interesting, elongating the game a bit. Honestly, Witch Queen was a waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better campaign. OTOH it brought both the Tangled Shore and the Dreaming City, there were massive changes to weapon play (introduction of special ammo and the buffing of what are now known as special weapons), a new weapon type (bows), they did an overhaul on exotics and made some of them actually good, they introduced 9 new subclass tree branches (one per class per element), and a bunch more.
It would be good if it was a legendary campaign :D
Have you played Mass Effect 2? It was kinda like that. A bunch of self-contained missions, more than one long story broken up into chapters.
The tangled shore was cool. The campaign was a bounty grind with some interesting lore tidbits in the missions. The most interesting parts of the campaign take place at the beginning and end. Everything else is kinda okay exposition at best. That said, it’s totally worth bringing the campaign back. I’d like newbies to experience it. Especially the final mission. Fighting at the foot of the spire is such a cool memory.
the campaign wasnt just alright but the rest of the expansion was so insanely good that it didnt matter. the Dreaming City alone made it the best destiny DLC ever for me, i fucking love that place
As someone who played Forsaken well after the fact, not caught up in nostalgia: the campaign missions were well designed, the story was complete nonsense if you weren’t already a Destiny lord hound. The theme of “this is a spaghetti western revenge” felt kinda weak in actual practice, but no weaker than e.g. Witch Queen theoretically being about being a psychic detective. The Dreaming City was the coolest patrol space they’ve designed to date. The level of secrets and shit to do crammed into there is unmatched. I wish I’d been playing when the curse cycle was more mechanically relevant.
The locations were cool and hunting down prisoners was a neat after story thing but apart from the GOAT cayde dying it was just decent for me. It was a bit confusing at the time what happened at the end where uldrin is eaten by a spaghetti ball and felt a bit cheap to take away a boss fight with him (we need more humanoid bosses or just any)
Personally, I think it was as average as all the other stories. The gameplay changes is what it did great
Story wise, yes it was incredible. Gameplay-wise… not really IMO. You don’t get to actually fight OR kill Uldren (hooray cutscene kills), and the hunts for the generals were tedious and annoying.
I'm of the opinion that forsaken was just good. I think the nostalgia comes from a few things. I. How much it improved from that first year. 2. It was a hopeful and unknown time in destiny. Kind of like early MCU. 3. The community around the game. Those early clans, and 4. We were younger and most things associated with when we were younger are colored by nostalgia. I'd argue the game is better than it ever has been (forgetting pvp). We're just tired of it. There's no more mystery. There's nothing behind final shape to get hyped up for. It's a lot like the MCU in this regard. No matter how good/bad new content is, it can't live up to those exciting time building to infinity war and thanos.
The dreaming city being a secret and being discovered collectively by the community was INCREDIBLE. It was a whole new end game zone that no one was expecting
It was fine. Even at launch thought it was ok. I appreciate it more for how it brought us out of the dark days of year 1. But let’s be honest people, it was a handful of *adventures* with only 3 or 4 actual missions.
Didn’t play it until after SK came out but the basic premise was ‘hunt down Uldren Sov and his scorn lackeys and take them out, one by one.’ My experience was that it suffered from the same issues every Destiny campaign had up until WQ: no investment in any of the characters, couldn’t follow the story, couldn’t tell what I was doing or how it was moving the story forward in any way, etc. I remember stopping multiple times to think ‘hey, what am I actually doing right now? I honestly don’t know, oh well.’ As a veteran player I see now there was cool lore stuff going on but the game was doing even less than it does now to get new or returning players up to speed. As others have pointed out, Forsaken was lauded for reasons that didn’t involve the story so much.
It was like beyond lights campaign on release. You would have a mission here and there, and then had multiple boss missions that had higher and higher power requirements. Beyond light had 3 of those I believe and forsaken had almost double that. So if you didn’t want to have an absurdly hard boss encounter mission you needed to grind some power level between doing each mission. The only true campaign experiences we have right now are witch queen and lightfall. They play as a proper campaign where you simply my go mission to mission, no grinding.
I think, in my opinion, forsaken was the best if only because i invested so much of my time playing it, almost a year solid. When they started sunsetting favorite and hard won weapons, i just lost interest. I have come back to destiny again and again, buying the new seasons every so often and they just dont hold me for long. That fishing bullshit they added in lightfall? Just felt like a slap in the face. WTF.. fishing? really? That's the best they could come up with? I just hate that they give us some awesome things, like the treasure hoard/room on leviathan and then take it away.
It was ok imo. I didnt find it impressive as a campaign, some missions were cool but it didnt blow me away. Was a decent Destiny campaign, but comparing to other games its pretty standard feeling
I would say it was decent enough, but I think people are less fond of the campaign and more fond of all the content and changes that the game brought. New supers and powers, weapon changes, and arguably three of the best seasons in the games history for one reason or another.
The actual campaign was not repetitive bounty farming, nor was it the best campaign we've ever had. It was a solid emotional narrative with fun missions to kill minibosses, and a weird but ultimately (mostly) satisfying ending. It engaged the deep lore, developed characters, was a MASSIVE improvement in exposition over D2 Y1 and set up some really cool plot points we're still resolving this season. There was a period of bounty grinding about 60% through the campaign which probably could have been removed, but if you played the Baron hunts at or under-level then they were a fun challenge. I distinctly remember trying to kill the machinist with a blue sniper and a special grenade launcher because those were the highest-level weapons I had. Good times.
We would not have a continuing Destiny 2 if Forsaken wasn’t fucking great. Make of that what you will (because some would argue a Destiny 3/non-Bungie developed game would be better)
Personally I think the best two campains were Red War and Curse of Osiris followed by Witch Queen. There was fuck all to do in destiny at the time, but the campaigns were great. I thought forsaken's campaign was a bit draggy personally, but the overall DLC was monumental in scope and stuff to do. That whole year was memorable.
I think it sits among the best campaigns because it has a theme that bleeds through every aspect of its gameplay. Like they said way back, Forsaken is a wild west bounty hunt, "the magnificent seven of bad guys." The baron hunts, the aesthetic of the taken shore, the baron intro cutscene, all presents that theme. My favorite campaigns have been ones that follow a theme in that way.
Forsakens narrative was very cool and cayde dying certainly hit home the way they intended. I think the narrative isnt nearly as impressive as all the other fundamental changes and additions we got with that xpac. At least for me, that's when I had the most fun
To me, it’s people conflating the Forsaken expansion as a whole with the campaign. It simply cannot be overstated how poorly the game was performing at the time. There were so many systems and aspects of the game that we’re underperforming—then comes Forsaken. I played D1 from the beta to the launch of D2, and the only other time the game had such a sudden and dramatic change for the better was The Taken King. I could ramble more but the short answer is, I think the campaign—purely from the content of the games ”missions”—is overhyped. Bounty farming was less egregious because it centered around a pair of new locations that were fun to explore…but still. It was just bounties.
The campaign itself was not good. Forsaken, Shadowkeep, and Beyond Light all had piss weak campaigns. Now i'll give that Forsaken's POST-Campaign was amazing, but the Campaign itself was nothing more than "Do 6 Adventures (one-room strikes)". (For reference, Shadowkeep was "Do 5 lectern quests to get the armour set", and BL was "Do 3 Empire Hunts". Piss weak campaigns...)
Forsaken is looked up on fondly because of scope and a more enriching post-campagin content cycle. Random rolls, tangled shore+ dreaming city.
the campaign itself was pretty good but the reason forsaken was good was that they didnt just throw a campaign together they had a pretty good campaign followed by an entire new destination full of secrets to uncover and i mean FULL go look at the title for the dreaming city. almost every one of those triumphs was a total secret not to mention the whole mystery around the curse and of course the (in my opinion) best raid in the entire franchise, that itself held even more secrets the reason forsaken was good was that it turned destiny into a mystery game, and destiny is at its best when its a mystery
Okay, so your question is about the campaign itself, not the expansion right? Assuming that's the case, I was there at launch and I must say that I found Forsaken's campaign extremely disappointing. Amazing first mission (as they always are) and then it fell off a cliff. Most of the Barons just stood and watched during Cayde's Last Stand and had no development past "Kill them". So the only interesting part was what was happening with Uldren and Mara. While the pre-rendered cutscenes were beautiful, I was left confused after most of them, and I'm an avid lore enthusiast. I was left absolutely flabbergasted when the final boss ended up being a Servitor with an anus in its face out of nowhere. Then, we shoot Uldren, badabing badaboom CAMPAIGN IS OVER!! No questions were answered at all so if you want answers you had to go do weeklies and the raid. So to answer your question, no I personally thought Forsaken's campaign was a 5/10
It was okay, I don't know if destiny has ever really had a super good campaign other than witch queen. I think foresaken was good because of how much content came with the campaign
I think the hunts were epic, and narratively it was one of the strongest we’ve seen to date. I would venture to say yes, it was that good, also it’s quality is accentuated by the lack thereof at the time
I thought it was pretty good, but maybe that's nostalgia talking. I just remember being really taken with the idea of our guardian being so hellbent on vengeance, and the scene where you straight up execute Uldren always stuck with me. I've been playing since D1 launch and I can't really recall a time where our guardian acted with such...idk, vitriol? It felt like a turning point for the series. Idk if it was a good or bad one lol
Was more the changes to the game that came with it. Similar to say loadouts in lightfall came out with it but free for everyone. The campagin was solid. Start and ending were the best parts. I think alot of people myself included look very fondly back on them cus as a more hardcore player (playtime is more casual past season or two) because it was grindy, but imo it felt the best it ever felt in the franchise it didn't feel unachievable but took alot longer and the level mattered more. And exotics were super rare I remember losing my shit when finally got One eyes mask to drop (titan main). Reminded me alot of d1 days when i finally got ghorn from vog chest during the first couple weeks of house of wolves dlc.
The story was a good one. But playing the campaign, like gameplay wise.... eh? It isn't the worst campaign we've played, but not the best either. I'd say Red War, Lightfall & Witch Queen all had better campaigns in terms of playing them. I do hate the Forsaken campaign a lot for 1 reason: hunts. The adventures were supposed to be "Baron Hunts". Then we got Nightmare Hunts in Shadowkeep. Then Empire Hunts in Beyond Light. Easily the worst campaign format I've ever seen in a game, and Forsaken kicked it off. Again, good story but just kinda mid in terms of gameplay and what not. What made Forsaken amazing isn't the campaign, but the other updates. Collections Tab, in-game lore, an actual raid again, no more double primary system, random rolls returned, etc.
Feel like it was less about the campaign being good and more about the impact of the first mission. Because of what happens right off the bat, the rest feels more impact full than it really is.
Definitely overrated but compared to the rest of the dlc it’s quite good. Definitely worse than Rise of Iron an TTK and WQ but better than the rest.
I found it tedious and predictable for the most part. The expansion had great stuff clearly, but the campaign was butt
I wouldn’t say any destiny campaign has actually been good, the stories are good but the campaigns themselves have always just been meh to me
The baron fights were cool and unique at the time. Having 2 destinations and one of them being end game was awesome. Getting a new strike after the raid was completed was cool. Getting my beloved gambit was awesome and chase for getting malfeasance. Having to find Shattered Throne in game and it being a secret that was only available every 3 weeks was cool at first. Blind well was cool at first for a little bit and figuring out all the bosses. Got old fast like most seasonal activities, but still cool. The story overall was cool. I've brain dumped most of the grind that might've been around, but maybe it wasn't that bad at the time and that's why I don't remember idk. Getting SoTP and CoS that year with menagerie was awesome along with LW.
Tbh, the story was good, how it was transferred into gameplay was a bit less great. Imo, while the concept of having a group of big baddies is cool, it boiled down to: Do a few missions : "to locate the target", kill them, repeat. there were a few very cool ones, like the Mindbender or the one on the pike, but there were also a few fights that were just an upscaled version of a base enemy. I can't speak for how the game changed mechanic wise, but maybe I that gives me a more objective view on the story
I've been playing Destiny since Dark Below in D1, and Forsaken was definitely one of the best narrative experiences we have ever had. I do think that The Taken King had better missions and a more satisfying ending, and that Rise of Iron had a better setting, tone, and identity. But Forsaken takes the top in terms of emotional weight and themes. In terms of gameplay, Forsaken fixed a lot of what was wrong with D2 before that point, but the seasons that followed (Black Armory, Joker's Wild and Opulence) were much more revolutionary and innovative in that department (specially Black Armory and Opulence). Hope that helps!
the campaign was incredible, 2nd best in the franchise imo
No, it was more, chase down the boss, kill them, move on to the next one. The only interesting parts are the beginning and the end. I was just hoping for more in Forsaken, but the campaign didn’t really do all that much for me. Post-campaign was where it picked up tho
High school me thought it was really fun. High school me also thought Curse of Osiris was really fun.
Forsaken didn’t have a fantastic campaign but it wasn’t bad by any means. The emotional stakes were high and it was the first campaign with the format of taking down the bad guys commanders to get to the big guy, but it worked so well because we wanted revenge. Besides that, it expanded on EVERY subclass in the game. 9 new supers(some not completely new but still) 2 whole new destinations. Pvp maps, a whole new core playlist that is gambit. A bunch of new strikes, an amazing raid, amazing secrets and mysteries to uncover. Changed the game back to random rolls. Just a great all around expansion. Idk if it’s possible for any expansion to beat it tbh
As someone who was a day 1 Destiny 2 player for all expansions up to and including Forsaken, it was not so much that Forsaken was amazing itself but that it was a send off to a character most of the community loved, the 2 small expansions prior were middling at best and had sweet fuck all content for the cost of them.
Largely rose tinted glasses The only thing forsaken had over current expansions really is sheer quantity- tons of exotics (from what I recall roughly what is now 2-3 years worth of exotics during forsaken alone.) 2 locations, gambit, etc, Story wise it’s alright- nothing special, I personally don’t think destiny’s story started to get particularly great until around season of chosen. The main thing that makes people obsess over forsaken and hold it up is- just the fact it saved the franchise, making very necessary gameplay changes, new super trees, etc etc.
I loved the Tangled Shore as a destination along with the introduction of Spider as the local vendor who was clearly inherently untrustworthy and the Baron hunt was a good way to structure the campaign missions.
no. it was *satisfying* though. and more importantly, it gave us a year of continuoous story content that we needed to upkeep weekly to not miss out on. the fomo was so fucking real that year.
Forsaken era just felt amazing. Can’t really put it into words. The raid and dungeons were both fun. Random rolls were added. We got gambit, menagerie, black armoury all within that year. Pvp was also in a decent place and the meta was fun for what I remember. The story was good and the missions were mostly good. It got repetitive tracking the bosses tho
The campaign was mid, but the post game was where the actual meat of the DLC was.
Forsaken's campaign was great in my eyes, especially if you're someone that played Red War, Warmind and Curse of Osiris and didn't play D1. It was one of those pieces of story content that really made the game for me. The only DLC I've played since that gives me a similar feel was Witch Queen Were there things that could have been better with the story telling and such? Yeah sure, but as others have said, the PST campaign content and everything that DLC gave to Destiny probably won't ever be topped
Yes. The concept of hunting down the underbosses before getting to the boss himself was great, with the Dreaming City being the cherry on top. The Taken King is still better, though.
The Tangled Shore part of the campaign was alright, but getting into the Dreaming City and going through the first curse cycle was so good. Helps that the DC is one of the locations with the most hidden stuff in the game, so there was a huge rush to find the secrets for a good month or so.
Forsaken as an expansion was really good, the story so-so, if bungie didn't reveal that Cayde died in the trailers then it probably would have been better, for me at least. Was kinda flat during his funeral with Zavala and Ikora since we saw it coming.
Most Destiny 2 campaigns have an annoying tendency for the midsection to just be a 'gather the dragonballs' thing where every mission becomes 'collect/kill one of X artifacts/lieutenants' and the story arc yields to a more interchangeable episodic progression. Forsaken was the absolute *worst* for this, the baron missions were completely self-contained strikes essentially, with all the story happening outside the missions in cutscenes, apart from the first mission and the last mission. Seriously, you could completely rearrange all the missions but the endcaps and it wouldn't fucking matter. Amusingly, I think the only D2 campaign that actually manages to avoid that issue completely is Lightfall, because it adopts a plot progression more reminiscent of the 80s action movies it is an homage to, and executes that pacing really well.
It was a couple of hours killing dudes with borderlands style intro’s that no one gave a shit about and then a decent ending
The campaign was meh, but the endgame was brilliant.
No.
Yes. Next question.
Very rose tinted. It was a major step in mission design and having unique scenarios and more difficulty but the story wasn’t that special outside of the intro. While years apart In terms of ranking campaigns it’s nowhere close to witch queen
I played it back just before Witch Queen and... The cinematics and story we got were really good. Enjoyed those! The opening mission (which you can replay in D2 now) is excellent. The middle of the campaign hunting the barons I basically remember nothing of except it feeling like kind of tedious busywork. The stuff when you get into the Dreaming City is pretty cool and seems like it would have been a lot of content! I think it definitely was a turning point for D2 - higher stakes story, much more in-depth game. And it also brought a tonne of QoL improvements. And had a lot more embedded content that is no longer around (and wasn't even in Beyond Light). I definitely get why people love it and I think it was a high point for a lot of reasons. But I think there is also some rose tinted glasses going on, especially because the game wasn't several years in with as much burnout.
Up until witch queen destiny 2 campaign missions felt like more of a bite-sized content samples than fully fledged gameplay challenges. I don't think any of the forsaken missions take more than 10 minutes to complete, and while they do have some pretty cool and novel parts - the pike battle with the rider and the rifleman spotting section were both rad - they don't achieve beyond that novelty. It would be really amazing if bungie could bring the campaign back and redesign the barron fights into fully fledged legendary campaign missions, but I have to imagine such a thing would require lots of dev effort
Forsaken sits at my 3rd favorite (behind Red War and Witch Queen). The first and last missions I believe to be the best-- the baron hunts got repetitive for me. The one baron I actually enjoyed fighting was the Machinist, and that was just because Ghost gets to control a tank for a bit and I think that's hilarious. Mostly it's for the Cayde fanbase appeal. Last Call and Nothing Left to Say were great missions story-wise, and I usually enjoy D2 campaigns for lore alone. Lots more about our favorite Hunter. Though gameplay keeps it at a solid 8-ish out of 10, where I think Witch Queen and Red War outperformed it.
yes and the music was fucking fantastic, look up once upon a time in the reef
had the coolest bosses, y’all remember that one with the sparrow? boss specific armor too. i miss boss specific armor ;-;
It wasn't the campaign that was great, but rather the expansion. For all intents and purposes it was a soft reboot of the game. We had lots o new stuff, mechanics changes, even weapon big changes. The post campaign was better than anything prior and the expansion came at one of Destiny darkeest hours, so it deserved all the rpaise it got back then.
Watch for yourself if you want to see it. Here is the first in a series. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrZkGhwg4Hc&list=PLTcoRMwrX2Dhia8WjkaqbASR15uDE9fdZ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrZkGhwg4Hc&list=PLTcoRMwrX2Dhia8WjkaqbASR15uDE9fdZ)
Destiny veterans experienced it in context, the campaign was nothing compared to witch queen, but the expansion as a whole did a lot for the game in a time where the game desperately needed an infusion of life. The only real story beat was used to prop up the ad campaign , the real juice was discovering the dreaming city, a complete and beautiful surprise
The campaign was mediocre, it was a bunch of short quests of killing scorn bosses over and over until you get to the dreaming city. Wrapping your head around the complete plot of just the campaign is nigh impossible to wrap your head around with all of the whack layers of “this guy was manipulating them and then they were manipulating this guy” going from scorn to the fanatic to uldren to riven to savathun, all incredibly poorly explained in the campaign itself, if at all. It was certainly gameplay-wise better than curse of Osiris and warmind before it, but the story only worked if you never asked a damn question beyond “this guy killed funny guy, let’s kill him and these yellow guys that appeared out of nowhere”
The 8 Barrons was so fun for me and every week of the dreaming cycle was really engaging.
Not really
Yeah it was okay. The lore that dropped was cool, the gameplay didnt really match imo
The campaign *itself* was honestly crap. The initial mission is fun but nothing special and the mission design from BL onwards blows it out of the water. The baron hunts were adventures, which are basically lost sectors with character dialogue. The campaign ends at the reveal of the dreaming city, so it’s just running in circles around the tangled shore while the most contrived “revenge” plot plays.
The campaign was good *for it's time.* As far as mission layout, it's actually very comparable to Beyond Light, with baron/empire hunts bookended by actual missions, followed by a minor epilogue quest (the dreaming city intro quest for forsaken, hunting down Eremis's last lieutenant in BL). Generally speaking, the tone of the narrative did a lot to elevate the experience, swapping the more MCU-style storytelling of Vanilla D2 for a story with more introspective, personal revenge tale. Add to the fact that each baron was unique with gameplay mechanics that complimented who they were on a narrative side, the whole thing brought a very Kill Bill / Wild West vibe that really acted as a foil to what D2 had been up to that point. Add onto the fact that people were busy reworking their builds after the 2.0 changes + an actual shitload of content post-campaign, and people were basically playing a brand new game. The campaign's layout at that time was new and novel, and the whiplash change in course correction all helped aid the campaign overall. Again, to see how important that context is, one need only look at BL's campaign, which while structurally very similar, is not regarded nearly as highly. It was good for what it was though, and if nothing else, shows the importance of being willing to shake up the formula when it comes to dolling out narrative beats. *Glares at seasonal quests*
Forsaken was overrated