As Destiny 2 will get nearer to its tenth anniversary, the shared world action-RPG is at the moment at one thing of a crossroads. Following the tip of The Ultimate Form, many gamers struggled to maintain up with the steep energy grind and evolving saga arrange by The Fringe of Destiny. It is exhausting to disclaim these clear stumbles with Destiny 2 in 2025, however there’s nonetheless a lot potential for robust storytelling and slick motion inside the rising universe of Bungie’s satisfying on-line RPG.
And that is what makes the upcoming Renegades enlargement an attention-grabbing subsequent step for Destiny 2. It not solely seeks to realign the ascent to higher energy for gamers but in addition expands the universe with a pulpy, sci-fi storyline that leans proper into the affect of Star Wars. After getting an early hands-on expertise with Destiny 2: Renegades, I received to understand the way in which that developer Bungie is rethinking Destiny 2’s energy grind, and the way they’re getting gamers to embrace the scoundrel’s life as they navigate the shifting battle zones of the brand new Lawless Frontier.
Renegades picks up after the occasions of The Fringe of Destiny, with The Drifter warning the Guardians of a menace led by a new Cabal faction referred to as the Barrant Imperium and a mysterious fallen guardian named Bael. Embarking on a new mission with out help from the Vanguard, The Drifter and different returning allies will type alliances with the rising community of syndicates inside the new Lawless Frontier – all to tackle the Barrant Imperium, struggle again towards the fallen guardian, and uncover the bigger conspiracy that The 9 are working in the direction of.
What’s attention-grabbing concerning the story with Renegades is that it is concurrently the subsequent part of Destiny 2’s ongoing Destiny saga – establishing adjustments to the galaxy’s energy dynamics – but it is also an enlargement that pays deep homage to the Star Wars sequence. It is not a lot the Star Wars universe invading Destiny 2, a la Fortnite, however somewhat Destiny 2 leveraging its personal lore for its tackle a Star Wars story.
In response to recreation director Tyson Inexperienced, Destiny 2: Renegades faucets into a related conceit to the Forsaken enlargement and its house western revenge plot. However the alternative to collaborate with Lucasfilm on a Star Wars crossover allowed them to take it additional with a compelling crossover for the Renegades enlargement. “One of many benefits that the brand new launch mannequin gave us, which is 2 expansions a yr, means you possibly can experiment extra inside these particular person expansions – you possibly can strive various things,” Inexperienced stated. “So we noticed what we needed to do with a ‘house western’ revenge story, and we figured, let’s do it in that one, let’s purpose for this. So we took the thought of Star Wars as whole inspiration and constructed a Destiny enlargement round it; that is form of how we all the time do it. On this case, I believe it comes by way of way more richly, as a result of it is being extra deliberate with its influences and magnificence, but it surely’s nonetheless essentially a Destiny enlargement.”
On the floor, it might come off as an prolonged sequence of cheeky references, and it initially took me a while to get used to the visible homages to Star Wars iconography – resembling a close to one-to-one recreation of the opening of A New Hope, full with movie-accurate sound results. However I received extra into it because it went on, and I appreciated the try at attempting to make a front-facing mash-up of types. I particularly had a blast hopping into a big walker to mow down foes. To this point, it seems like a good match, and truthfully, a lot of the Star Wars facet matches, provided that Destiny and most fashionable sci-fi and fantasy media have already got Star Wars DNA baked in.
Consistent with the Star Wars connection, Renegades additionally introduces the Blaster weapon variant, and similar to Han Solo’s and Chewbacca’s weapons from the films, the Blasters hit exhausting and may fireplace rapidly. They’re primarily laser weapons that require venting to keep away from overheating, which is a truthful tradeoff contemplating how helpful they are often in a struggle. To be clear, these aren’t completely new weapon archetypes, however somewhat new weapons with a twist, a few of that are variants of older weapons just like the Candy Enterprise unique. However the added wrinkle of venting weapons in between downtime does change up firefights a bit, and it may be tremendous satisfying to tear into enemies with a Gatling Blaster rifle that feels proper out of The Clone Wars.
By far essentially the most distinctive weapon to accumulate is the unique Praxic Blade, Destiny 2’s tackle the lightsaber. Although just like Destiny 2’s current energy swords, the Praxic Blade is an unique particular weapon that offers heavy injury and grants guardians the flexibility to deflect incoming enemy fireplace, and may even be thrown like a boomerang to deal ranged injury. It is a very satisfying weapon to make use of, and the unique quest to accumulate it was a robust mission that made me really feel like I used to be taking up a trippy Jedi problem. I do not use swords too usually in Destiny 2, however I ended up utilizing the Praxic Blade a lot greater than I believed I might, given how helpful it was towards crowds. Additionally, enjoying as my Warlock actually allowed me to stay out that Jedi fantasy inside Destiny.
In contrast to The Ultimate Form and The Fringe of Destiny, the first marketing campaign of Renegades takes a much less guided method and does not steer you into the core missions to make progress. Exterior of the important thing story missions that may take you to bespoke locales, nearly all of the motion in Renegades focuses on increase your popularity inside the Lawless Frontier, the place you will tackle numerous missions starting from smuggling, sabotage, and bounty hunts of key targets. Your new residence base is the Tharsis Cantina on Mars. On this social house, you and different guardians will construct up your popularity with the completely different syndicates vying for energy inside the Lawless Frontier.
Sadly, the enlargement does not introduce a new vacation spot to discover. It as a substitute focuses on increase the Cantina social house and the excursions into the brand new battle zones throughout Mars, Europa, and a remixed Venus within the Lawless Frontier actions. This does make for a smaller scope, however I felt extra engaged with how I might take my time earlier than leaping into new actions, which deal with solo or fireteam missions preventing rival syndicates.
One of many new techniques within the Cantina is the Syndicates, three factions vying for management of territory throughout the Lawless Frontier. Consistent with the scoundrel fantasy, you will need to determine which ones you will work with to construct up a popularity and unlock rewards. My favourite faction was the Tharsis Reformation, a Vex sect that broke away from the machine hivemind and gained its personal sentience – and it additionally wears its personal jackets to showcase its individuality.
The syndicates are an attention-grabbing addition, and it actually helped to showcase the Cantina as a totally realized den of scum and villainy – and you’ll even bribe characters inside the social house to get recommendations on secrets and techniques inside the Lawless Frontier. However what I actually preferred concerning the Syndicates particularly is that they felt like a extra developed model of the Faction system from Destiny 1. In Renegades, you are really serving to these syndicates amass energy inside the Lawless Frontier, which is able to unlock bonus Renegade skills to make use of within the discipline and extra specialised gear. This particularly comes into play with some missions that concentrate on contested territories, which require you to tackle precedence contracts to assist your chosen syndicate safe them.
Talking with core artistic director Ben Womack, he acknowledged that a invaluable lesson discovered was that it is necessary to suppose past boundaries and attempt to broaden upon the same old construction and tone when essential. The chance to make a Star Wars-themed Destiny 2 enlargement helped the workforce rethink parts of the sport’s signature fashion and construction.
“I believe my huge lesson that I discovered is that once you’re making one thing new, you usually have a bunch of conventions and bounds that you need to take into account, particularly for video games which were round for a very long time like Destiny,” Womack stated. “It is tempting to stay to these conventions as being the boundaries of the foundations, however the reality is that it’s essential re-examine all of them each single time when attempting to actually create one thing particular and make a splash. That is very true when having a partnership with Lucasfilm. We checked out how we made the sandbox stuff we have carried out, we now have blaster weapons that may stick with us going ahead, seeing how the Praxic Blade turned out, and we’ve the assorted new syndicates that turned out nicely. There are issues that we positively would not have carried out, however we needed to settle for and push previous these common boundaries to do this stuff, and so long as it is nonetheless enjoyable and individuals are responding to it, and the texture is there, then it is the correct determination.”
I used to be actually impressed with how chaotic and thrilling the Lawless Frontier jobs had been. These PvE-focused missions really feel like stepping behind enemy strains, the place you need to full dynamic targets. It actually saved my workforce consistently on the transfer, and as soon as the job was full, we needed to make one final dash to the exfil to finish the mission, or else undergo the results. One of many huge twists with these missions is you can activate new Renegade skills to name in help drops. I used to be in a position to summon a vex protect for cover, name in an aerial bombardment, and even activate battle armor to dish out to assist even the percentages.
Relying on what issue you are enjoying on, the problem can actually ramp up rapidly, particularly when enjoying on a mission that enables for enemy participant invasions. Very similar to the Gambit mode, a lone rival participant can step into your squad’s recreation and take you out to earn rewards for his or her syndicate. You possibly can decide out of missions with invasions. Nonetheless, it does current a fascinating and unnerving twist to the missions, and you are not completely punished for getting worn out by a significantly devious participant who can get the leap on you.
After all, gaining energy and incomes the brand new gear to develop your guardians is the massive drive for enjoying Destiny 2. Sadly, gamers struggled to maintain up with The Fringe of Destiny’s shifting energy ranges and steep grind, main many longtime gamers to maneuver on. Throughout our hands-on, the builders had been candid about how they dealt with that method within the earlier enlargement, and one of many bigger updates coming with Renegades is realigning the sport’s energy method so it will not require as many hurdles to beat.
Together with a refocused loot pool that shall be a bit extra beneficiant and balanced with getting gamers powered, there are additionally new and refreshed actions and pinnacle ops for gamers to tackle, which embody extra issue tuning choices for gamers who need to maximize their possibilities for gaining strong loot. Together with 300 new storage slots within the vault, the portal menu and its number of noteworthy missions to sort out will even see a refreshed model of the Seasonal Hub, which gives extra rewards for gamers to accumulate by finishing each day and weekly challenges that may give extra incentive to dive into the actions of the hubs. This technique was launched in The Fringe of Destiny, however Renegade’s up to date model is simpler and extra inviting to interact with.
In response to the sport director, they took the criticism to coronary heart following the discharge of The Fringe of Destiny and have been steadily releasing updates to make the subsequent enlargement one which retains gamers engaged and never pissed off by the grind.
“We appeared on the drawback that we had and we stated, ‘We predict there’s a route right here,’ which is leaning into extra techniques of pursuit, getting new tiers of substances, armor units, and energy development, and issues like problem customization,” Inexperienced stated. “This stuff that may enable a core viewers of gamers to actually say, like, I am actually gonna take this recreation and put it by way of its paces, and get good rewards for it. It sounds nice on paper, but it surely did not work. I believe we have been taught a bunch of exhausting classes about what our gamers need, and there are actually two sorts of stay video games: there are stay video games that take heed to the gamers and reply to them, after which there are lifeless ones. And we do not need to be a lifeless stay recreation, we need to preserve constructing Destiny. So we’re listening to our gamers, and what our gamers are telling us is that they do not need to chase a easy quantity that goes up, they need actual rewards.”
Although I wasn’t in a position to get a sense of the bigger pursuit of energy with my restricted hands-on time, I did admire that Destiny 2: Renegades feels a bit extra beneficiant with its loot high quality and methods to maneuver up. These ache factors in Fringe of Destiny made the development a slog, however with Renegades, I discovered myself getting a lot extra into the circulate – plus I actually preferred that it allowed me to get the Praxic Blade pretty early on. Nevertheless, I do fear that D2’s new route with the Portal hub continues its menu-heavy focus. It is handy, for positive, but it surely’s additionally a little bit of a headache to navigate, and it lessens the motivation to go to the assorted social areas and locations.
To this point, Destiny 2: Renegades seems like a correct step ahead for the live-service pioneer’s subsequent chapter, making for a extra player-conscious expertise. It is definitely not seeking to reinvent Destiny 2 with a new sprawling marketing campaign, however somewhat, realign its method to getting gamers again into the correct circulate that does not really feel like a drag. Together with the brand new Star Wars-inspired marketing campaign that faucets into it, it might find yourself being the proper in fact correction that Destiny wants – plus it is enjoyable to see a Star Wars story play out within the Bungie’s universe.