Destiny 2 Review (Silvoom)
The only time I have ever been this volcanically angry at a game in my entire life was when Starbound flopped a few years back after its creator and his right-hand goon bullied their employees to the point of self-sabotage.
I'm done. I'm through. Almost a decade of underdelivery after broken promise after barefaced greed after underdelivery after broken promise after barefaced greed, I've had it for good. The lovely but flawed art that is Destiny 2 the videogame has been beaten down, broken, hollowed out and ultimately subsumed by Destiny 2 the storefront, by a monster named Pete Parsons and his greedy little baker's dozen.
Bungie as we knew it is indisputably dead. We, the players, now have hard evidence that greed has compromised Destiny's structure since before the beginning, and the few have exploited the many for all they're worth to create an inferior product in the name of lining their pockets, no matter who or what they must burn short-term. The directors at Bungie will - either in person, or through their poor employees as proxies - misdirect, downplay, twist the truth, and even outright lie to get what they want from both the people they employ and the customers whose money they hunger for.
While I have "only" been playing this game for approximately 5 years, I have followed Destiny since the first game was announced. I know the story. I've seen everything. Now, years of speculation has been confirmed. Employees, past and present, saying they've been crunched, rushed, and all-around mistreated; tried their hardest to fight back against the game's ever-increasing nickel-and-diming of customers, to no avail; *begged* their superiors for the time, resources and change in direction to halt this game's slow death by decay, which were ignored; and everyone deemed expendable, even invaluable team members who've destroyed themselves trying to hold this game together, were simply thrown overboard when it came time for SOMEONE to start being paid less, making sure to dismiss their expendable employees at the very end of a month to minimize how much severance they had to pay them.
Again, even players - current or prospective - either so selfish or innocently in denial that they don't care about the mistreatment of dozens of artists and workers should mind that every piece of abuse Parson and his entourage heap on their employees not only "will" trickle down into the game itself, but HAS, for YEARS. Battle passes? Seasons? Bright engrams? Silver? The Eververse store? $100 annual passes? Paid skips? Event cards? That's just the monetization - their grubby little fingers can also be traced back to sunsetting/vaulting, vanilla D2, Curse of Osiris, Warmind, Shadowkeep, Beyond Light, Lightfall, and nearly ever single problem you can think of that you've had with Destiny lately. Go on, think of one, any one, just offhandedly. Something simple, like the overuse of art assets (weapons) and areas? Something deeper, like the oversimplification of modding? Something outright fundamental, like the massive downgrade in enemy AI from Halo to Destiny 1? Everything, except for a few honest-to-god accidental bugs that are innate to making any game, can be traced back to how Bungie's 1% have fed the rest of their employees through a meat grinder since Parson took over in 2016.
Do not be fooled by their lies anymore. While you are not a bad or evil person if you continue to play the game despite this information and any harassment against people who do will not be tolerated, if you *do* continue to play it, you do so at your own peril at best or out of denial at worst. Until it inevitably shuts down after The Final Shape, Destiny 2 will only get worse and worse and worse and worse and will never be the game you want it to be. The greed will worsen, the quality will worsen, and the directors ruining this game - who now wear Bungie's face like a meat-mask - will never be dethroned. ANYTHING YOU ARE HOLDING ON TO NOW THAT IS CONVINCING YOU TO CONTINUE PLAYING THIS GAME, IN SPITE OF ALL THIS, IS SANDSTONE IN YOUR HANDS; YOU CANNOT HOLD IT FOREVER AND IT WILL ERODE AND CRUMBLE BETWEEN YOUR FINGERS WITH NOTHING BUT TIME AND THE WINDS. LET GO. MOVE ON. FOR YOUR OWN SAKE.