#Lands of Lore 2: Guardians of Destiny Crack

[sapphicspacebabe]

light breaks, the dawn halts

Female Hunter | Destiny 2 spoilers | Retelling | Lore expansion

[29°54’S, 71°15’W]

[21:14 - April 21]

[Last City]

The Last City fell, and her Guardians fell with it.

The air smelled of death, of burning things and the sorrow of thousands. She could hear the funeral march of her Guardians: keens and screams and begging. They begged, her brothers and sisters. For the Traveler to rise from its slumber. For their Light to return. For the Cabal to show mercy. What had Ikora Rey said, in the infancy of her rebirth? The Cabal have six words for “advance” and none for “retreat”.

She assumed mercy was another word lacking from their lexicon.

The Red Legion showed no mercy.

Theda lay prostrate in the heap she had landed in, Cabal metal peeling her insides apart like a knife through a peach (She loved peaches. Brought back bushels for the Vanguard, for the children. He called her Peaches, and she pretended to hate it). The desperate pleas for respite that brought her back to shattered consciousness were silenced by a quick succession of bullets, the period at the end of a sentence. Except this time, this sentence had no sister to continue its story. Their Ghosts could not commune with the Traveller. There was no Light to resurrect these dead Guardians.

She felt the lack of Light as keenly as she could feel her broken bones.

She was scared.

She was weak.

She was unworthy.

Her gloved hand dug into the disturbed earth. She crawled forward with an aborted scream—the pain, she had forgotten what true pain felt like—crawled until she reached a broken rise of asphalt rammed vertically into the dirt. From there, it was a slow, painful rise to legs that shook under the weight of a body no longer connected to the Void.

(While her skin was luminescent with the light of ancient stars, her eyes aglow with the background radiation of the universe, she herself was not it’s True Child.)

Theda cast her gaze upward, into the artificial dusk. Smoke choked her, stung her eyes; her mask had fractured in her fall from the great Cabal warship. She could feel the tickle of a breeze along her jaw, lover soft. The ship itself was dwarfed by the Traveler, basked in the sick glow of the cage that ensconced it. The fall should have killed her, would have had her Ghost chiding her like a child.

Guardian, one of these days you’re gonna leap before you look and I won’t bring you back.

If you do that, there won’t be anyone left to put up with your bad jokes.

...Cayde likes them.

My point exactly!

Now, it wasn’t a lie. Even if she found her Ghost, even if his Lightless little shell survived the miles high fall his equally Lightless Guardian had miraculously survived, he could not resurrect her.

Her next death would be her last. But for now she was

“Alive. I’m alive.”

Her voice sounded broken, like it belonged in the space between stars. Awoken always had that affectation to their voice; a mysticism that set them apart from the humans they had originally been. They had touched the Dark, and the Dark had touched back.

Theda spoke as little as possible.

In her ear, another Guardian begged for mercy.

“This is Lisel Augustson on all channels. Is anyone in the City still alive. Please, let someone be alive. The Red Legion—”

A bullet. Lisel Augustson didn’t even have a chance to beg.

The ground rumbled. She lost her balance, fell to her knees in a crumpled heap. Her HUD was shattered, a spectrum of light refracting over and over and over until, disgusted, she yanked off her helmet with a ferocity befitting the moniker “Young Wolf” and, howling her rage, flung it at the corpse of a Cabal Colossus brought low.

The satisfaction it brought her was sweet, but fleeting.

Her rage dwindled, its wildfire heat doused with the iciness of agony unknown since before her rebirth. Theda could feel it’s symphony beneath her flesh, muscles and organs and skin reacquainting themselves with the sensation of prolonged agony. Leaning against the cracked asphalt, she pawed at her side, felt the jagged lump of metal piercing her side. It was still hot: hot from her blood, hot from the ship it had come from. It was beveled, scarred by gunfire. She could feel a good two inches of it outside her body.

It couldn’t stay there. She had to move.

Inhale. Exhale. Oxygen poisoned by smoke still invigorated her, filled her lungs to bursting. Inhale. Her gloved hand wrapped around the two inches of metal. Exhale. She whimpered, fear poisoning her soul—forgotten the fear of death. Weak. Undisciplined—

The sound she made was more of a howl. Blood spurted from the mouth of the wound, leaked between her fingers, black on black.

(She forgot how her blood looked—Ghost healed her, fretted, Guardian, something’s...wrong.)

Theda coughed, spat a globule of blood on the asphalt. It dribbled down her chin. She allowed herself thirty seconds to recompose herself.

She had to move.

[illumynare]

Destiny Fic: Three Queens Rising

Summary: Six of them went down into the Pit. All six returned triumphant. But not unchanged.

(The AU where Eriana's fireteam managed to kill Crota and go home, and things still went terribly, terribly wrong.)

Pairings: Eris/Toland.

Notes: Also available on AO3.

Story/section titles (plus a bunch of quotes) are from the Grimoire card Ghost Fragment: Darkness 3, which you should totally read because it's the BEST. GRIMOIRE. EVER. Saint-14's vision is mentioned in the Lore for the Destiny 2 Helm of Saint-14.

(Yes, I know the timeline is kinda handwaved. My excuse is that Destiny's timeline isn't that clear to begin with.)

Thanks to @ir-anuk and @jencforcarolina, who read the first draft and gave suggestions.

1. the queen who builds a high tower

This is the last thing Eris Morn ever saw: Eriana's hands gripping the Praxic Fire, as wholly luminescent as the sun.

#

Six of them went down into the Pit.

So many times, they nearly did not return.

When Vell Tarlowe charged Alak-Hul, his courage and his strength were not enough—

But Eris's hands were steady on her sniper rifle, and Eriana's grenades lit the darkness, and Sai danced invisibly. When Vell died in his final Fist of Havoc, Alak-Hul died too, and Toland raised Vell before the waves of Thrall could devour his Light.

When Omar was dragged away into the tunnels, his luck failed him, and they gave him up for dead—

But Toland heard his screams, echoing through ascendant spaces that the rest of them could barely sense. Eris demanded that they follow Toland's lead. And they found Omar, broke the rack of bones that held him, shattered the Heart of Crota before she could feed him to the Hive. He lost an eye and an arm, but not his Light.

When they faced Omnigul, Sai's cleverness was not enough, and a wave of Thralls crushed her as she bladedanced with the jagged bones of Acolytes—

But Vell raised her and fought back-to-back with her, punching a Thrall for every one she knifed. Toland chanted the words that lowered Omnigul's shields. And Omar's Golden Gun rang three times, every shot landing between Omnigul's eyes.

Together they felled the Swordbearers, stole their powers, and crossed the bridge. Together they faced Ir Yût and fed the Deathsinger her own death.

Together they faced Crota.

It was Eriana who struck the final blow: Eriana, alight with the Praxic Fire as she gripped a sword that sang with Darkness. All of them firing together brought Crota to his knees, but it was Eriana alone who cleaved him apart and broke the Oversoul Throne.

For the rest of her days, Eris would remember how brightly Eriana gleamed in that moment.

Years later, she would remember how easily Eriana held the blade.

#

The first years after they killed Crota were golden.

Vell returned to the Pilgrim Guard. Sai vanished into the wilds. Omar clapped Eris on the shoulder, told her to mind her aim with grenades—and forever laughed, even though his Ghost never could restore his eye and arm. (The Heart of Crota had rent too deeply at his Light.)

Toland received a very reluctant, conditional pardon. Eris was made his guard and guarantor, and the duty sat lightly on her shoulders. There were long, lazy afternoon squabbles over the nature of the sword-logic and the universe; there were nights of whispering invocations as they echoed and mastered each syllable they had learned from the Deathsinger. They were confined to the Tower, but they read the reports of Guardians who delved the the tunnels of the Hive on the Moon, and when the Guardians delved too deeply, they chanted the spells to raise them out again.

Eriana became the Warlock Vanguard.

Eris saw her stand in the Hall of Guardians, glittering and tall and sure, and she felt that a missing piece of her heart had slotted into place. Eriana-3, disciple of the Praxic Warlocks, marked by the Cormorant Seal, was at last a light to all Guardians as she had been a light to Eris, when Eris was newly risen and afraid.

The first years were golden.

The years after, burned.

To be a Guardian was to be dead, and live, and called to die again and again. Eris had known this since she opened her eyes to a room full of skeletons. There was no Guardian who did not know it.

Eriana, perhaps, was coming to know it too well.

The Warlock Vanguard remained unbowed. Her voice, as she questioned Guardians returned from disastrous missions, remained as stately and as calm as ever. Eris thought she might be the only one who could see grief in the flickering of Eriana's lights. She was certainly the only one sat with Eriana late at night as she studied in the Vanguard archives, hunting for a way to improve their defenses.

Wei Ning had been avenged. But new Guardians died the final death every day, and Eriana could not avenge or save them.

Eris worried about this. She said as much to Toland, one night as they sat watching the stars.

"These equations take their time," said Toland. "She'll balance herself in the end. Or die."

"She won't speak of it," said Eris. That was what disturbed her most: the two of them had talked endlessly about Crota, how and why he must die. She had known each heartbeat of Eriana's grief for Wei Ning. But now that Eriana was mourning again—was always mourning, for every Guardian—she would not speak of it.

"Hm," said Toland, and pressed his lips to her neck, and that that night Eris thought no more of Eriana.

But when Omar returned from patrol, grinning and triumphant—he was still a dead shot, despite missing an eye—she told him of her worries.

"I'll talk to her," he said. "We were all in hell together, yeah?"

Eris nodded.

She would would regret that ever, ever after.

2. the queen who raises an army

This is the most important thing that Eriana ever saw: the Light peeling up from Omar's chest in writhing, glowing threads as the Heart of Crota sang to him.

She had known for a long time that the Light would not protect those who served it. Else Wei Ning (most valiant, most pure) would not have died. But in that moment, Eriana finally understood that the Light was a thing, a substance that could be robbed and defiled—

Or gathered and used.

#

She became Vanguard to a shaken Tower. The treachery of Osiris still echoed in its halls. Barely months after she was raised to her position, Andal Brask died, and his protégé Cayde-6 took his place.

Eriana could not like either of her fellow Vanguards. Zavala was as brave as Wei Ning, but without her beautiful fury. Cayde had all of Wei’s brashness and cheer, but none of her nobility.

Every time that Zavala listened to a report of a dead Guardian and nodded in solemn acceptance, saying, “That was bravely done”—every time that Cayde cracked a joke, said, “Am I right or am I right?”—fire kindled in the hinges of Eriana’s jaws and ached at her fingertips.

They were not worthy. They were not right. Not when Wei Ning was Lightless and dead, when Guardians followed her into the final darkness every day.

Eriana had killed Wei’s killer, had slain the dark god of the Hive who was thought to be unslayable. And yet she felt, more and more, that she had done nothing. Changed nothing.

More and more, she found that Toland was the only one in the Tower she cared to speak with.

#

Toland the Shattered: a large name for a very small man. He was lean, pale, often stooping; when he did stand straight, he barely came to Eriana’s shoulder. His Ghost hovered close to his neck and never spoke. Granted the Light of the Traveler, he had squandered nearly all of it in forbidden research and wretched experiments.

Long ago, Eriana had despised him. When she had needed his wisdom to defeat Crota, she had used him. But when she had become Warlock Vanguard—

Then, she finally began to respect him.

For Toland alone understood what Eriana had learned when she slew Crota, when she saw the Light peeled away from Omar, when Wei Ning fell and never rose again.

And in his turn, Toland began to respect Eriana. For while she might not grasp Hive lore so easily as Eris did—Eriana had grasped Crota’s sword. She had pared the world into line with her will, and there was a light of reverence in Toland’s eyes now when he spoke to her.

Existence is a game that everything plays, Toland whispered in the gray hours of the morning as they stood on the Tower walls together. Staring up at the pale, lifeless hulk of the Traveler, Eriana agreed.

For all its miracles, the Traveler could only sustain. Revive. Delay.

Everything is becoming more ruthless and in the end only the most ruthless will remain.

Against the hungry Dark, what use was the gentle Light? It was only Crota’s own sword that had felled him.

This is the shape of victory: to rule the universe so absolutely that nothing will ever exist except by your consent.

Late one night, after another conference with Toland, Eriana went to stand on the Tower walls alone. She gazed out over the glowing expanse of the City. She listened to the soft laughter and chatter of the Guardians around them.

She thought: I will defend them against this universe of spears.

To do that, she needed a knife.

#

Toland was prolific in his theories. Eriana was willing in her experiments.

But they made no real progress until the day that Omar came to speak with Eriana. Until the moment when Eriana ignored his words and stared at him with newly hungry eyes.

He was not the same, Omar Agah, and not only because he lacked an eye and arm. The Light was still a fountain within him, but it was . . . Looser. Unbound. Hanging off of him in ragged, invisible strands.

Available.

And in a moment, Eriana understood what she could do with him, and therefore had to. What was the only way to make the Tower and the Guardians strong enough, when all the universe around them was made of swords and spears.

“Omar,” she said, “Toland has a theory.”

He rolled his eyes. “Well, that means he’ll never shut up. Listen, this is why you need to leave the Tower for a bit.”

“It’s a way to keep the Guardians safer,” said Eriana. “We could use your help in the experiment. If you’re not afraid.”

And Omar smiled at her. “You lead, I’ll follow. Can’t be worse than the Hellmouth, right?”

Briefly, Eriana hated him: Omar Agah, whose luck saved him when Wei Ning’s did not.

But it had not been luck. It had been Toland’s knowledge and Eriana’s fusion grenades. They had saved him, and so now they had a right to him.

She told herself this, later, once he began to scream.

#

She did not expect Eris to rebel.

Zavala: of course he would resist her vision. Eriana was not at all surprised when she had to kill him. Cayde-6: of course he would deny her authority. Eriana did not blink when she leaned he had fled.

But Eris?

Loyal, gentle Eris, who had followed her into the Pit? Who had gazed at her, always, as if Eriana were the Traveler itself?

She did not expect that betrayal.

She had known that Eris would have questions. Eriana had studied Crota only to defeat him, but Eris had wanted to understand him. Of course Eris would want to know whence came the vats of Light that Eriana offered to the Guardians, and why the Ghosts fell silent once their Guardians had tasted that Light.

Of course Eris would want to know why Omar, and other Guardians after him, had vanished.

But Eriana had truly thought—she and Toland had both thought—that Eris would understand their logic. Their need.

There was only one way for the Guardians to survive, to be safe, and that was to conquer. To hone themselves into a knife. To abandon the gentle dreams of the Traveler and seize the sword.

If the price was that a few Guardians died screaming, the Light peeled out of their bodies and used to seed the great vats where it boiled and fermented and grew into a new elixir . . .

That was still better than the Tower ruined, the City sacked, humanity destroyed.

It was infinitely better than Wei Ning crushed beneath Crota’s sword.

Eris did not agree.

Eriana knew that she must punish her. But when she stood in the Tower’s central court, Eris bound before her, the assembled Guardians watching—

She remembered the days after the Mare Imbrium, when she had been nearly blind with grief, and Eris alone had stayed with her, sworn vengeance with her.

Eriana could not bring herself to kill her. Not after that.

But queens must enforce their authority somehow. So she summoned the Praxic Fire into her palms.

“Eris Morn,” she said, “for your help in slaying Crota, I will spare your life. But you are forever banished from the Tower.”

And then she struck Eris across the face.

Eris made no sound as her eyes turned to ash, but her Ghost screamed as it frantically tried to heal her��until Eriana caught it, twisted it, and incinerated its core.

“Go from here,” she said, letting the charred bits of the dead Ghost’s shell clatter to the ground, “and never return.”

3. this is the shape of victory

There's a silence in the Tower.

It's a beautiful place, drenched with sunlight in the day, gleaming with lamps in the night. Ghosts fly in obedient, graceful lines. Guardians clasp hands and clap shoulders as they wait to speak with the Gunsmith, with Master Rahool, with the Vanguard Queen.

The wind sings in the trees. But the Ghosts are forever silent. The Guardians speak only in hushed, reverent tones. And the Vanguard Queen speaks as she wills—

But when she speaks, silence follows.

#

There’s a whispering in the Wild.

Fewer Guardians roam there now. The Vanguard Queen does not like to risk her Guardians’ lives with mere patrols; if she does not send them forth in a host to conquer, she wishes them to stay within the City walls.

But sometimes, Guardians are allowed a short mission. Sometimes, Guardians find a way to slip out. And when they do, sometimes they dare to whisper to each other, to trade in treasonous rumors:

There is a rebellion. There are Guardians whose Ghosts still speak to them. There is a blind Oracle, her eyes burnt out by the Vanguard Queen, and with the ashes of her eyes she sees the truth.

And not sometimes, but only once in a very long while, a Guardian dares to go look.

#

There’s a celebration in the caves.

Cayde is back, and with him three new Guardians to join their band, two of them stolen out of the Tower prisons just before their execution. It’s an amazing feat, and—little though Eris likes him—few but Cayde could have pulled it off.

Eris will speak to the newcomers later. For now, she sits in the little stone chamber she has claimed as her room, and listens to the muted din of the celebration. She thinks wistfully of the last night before they departed for the Moon—even close-lipped Sai laughing and toasting—

Her neck prickles with a sudden awareness, and Eris turns, knowing what is about to happen. The Light is no longer hers to sense, but her time on the Moon and her studies have left her still attuned to Hive magic.

The air before her shifts and ripples.

“Eriana is wroth at you tonight,” says Toland, who has never yet managed to appear behind her.

“Is she ever not angry?” asks Eris.

She hears the soft rustle of Toland’s robes as he sits; she reaches out her hand, and feels his fingers wrap around hers.

For one moment, they are back in the tunnels beneath the Lunar surface together, and nothing matters but the darkness and their breathing.

This time, Toland is the one to break their unity. “Deliver Cayde into her hands, and she might forgive you.”

Eris laughs softly. “Tempting, that. But I think I will suffer him a little longer.”

“Oh, Eris,” says Toland, sadly fond. “You could have learned so much if you had stayed. My research—”

It was refreshing to be pitied for something besides her lost eyes and Light, but Eris had no intention of listening to his speech again.

“I’ve spoken to Osiris,” she interrupts, and doesn’t need eyes to know that Toland has gone rigid with jealousy. “He thinks that Saint-14 might have truly seen the future.”

Toland snorts. “A Guardian savior who will drive back the Darkness? A childish fancy.”

He sounds again like the man she remembers from their first days in the Tower, before he pitied her, before he reverenced Eriana.

“Maybe,” Eris allows.

“And if there were such a one, surely it is Crota’s Bane,” says Toland, remembering his allegiance.

Eris thinks of Eriana, how steady her hands had been on Crota’s sword, on Omar’s chest as she peeled the Light away from him.

How gloriously she had shone in the moment before she made Eris’s eyes forever dark.

With infinite grief, Eris thinks, She could have been.

4. the queen at the end of time

This is the first thing you ever see: your empty hands, grasping at the air.

"Guardian! Eyes up, Guardian!"

You look, and floating before you is—you don't know what: a little floating thing, shaped like a starburst made solid.

"I'm a Ghost,” it says to you. “There aren't many of us left. And I've been looking for you a very, very long time.”

[technewss15-blog]

Funny To A Point – Heeding The Call In Destiny 2

After years of listening to gamers gripe about how the original Destiny ruined their lives in every conceivable way (even as they logged in hundreds of hours), Destiny 2 is finally here. Does the shiny new sequel provide Bungie with the redemption it doesn’t really need and has never asked for? Seeing as how all the early criticism has focused on the way shaders are used to paint your guardian pretty colors, it seems like the answer is yes. But we all know that the real verdict won’t be rendered until the professional critics weigh in – and we all know that the only professional critic that really matters is ME. Well, fear not, dear readers: Like my hideous Smurfette of a guardian, I am up to the task and ready to save the day!

Full disclosure: I never actually managed to finish the original Destiny. I played for about a week or so when the game first came out, but lost interest when that weird emo prince showed up in the incomprehensible-yet-paradoxically-simple story. My experience with Destiny since then has been downloading every new expansion and then feeling progressively more guilty for not actually playing them.

So what imbues me with the expertise needed to weigh in on Destiny 2, you ask? Well, for starters I was one of the first critics to identify and outline some of the major problems of the first Destiny – I was so early, in fact, that I received a massive amount of hate from the same super fans who would become Destiny’s super haters once they realized I knew what the hell I was talking about. I also cracked Destiny’s biggest secret, which has still eluded everyone else, so I think that makes me the King of Destiny? I dunno. Anywho, let’s get on with it, shall we?

Note: You can click on any of the pictures for a better look at whatever misadventures are being documented.

Destiny 2’s opening cinematic lays out the series’ plot like it’s reading a picture book to a child, and it’s a decision that I wholly appreciate. At this point, all I really remember about the first game is that a giant ping-pong ball gave my zombie soldier some sweet superpowers, which I used to kill a bunch of angry aliens as I searched for shiny balls engrams to score more loot. The intro doesn’t contain any huge revelations (“a mysterious good force is fighting a mysterious evil force!”), but I no longer felt the need to look up a plot synopsis on a Destiny fan wiki after watching it, and for that I’m eternally grateful.

Actually, Destiny 2’s intro did contain one particularly rude revelation: Because I didn’t max out my Destiny 1 guardian (I’m going to go ahead and blame Prince Creep for that), I can’t import her into the sequel. So as far as I can tell, from a lore perspective my original guardian gets blasted to smithereens during the cabal attack that kicks off Destiny 2. Not being able to carry over my character isn’t a huge loss, but it does undermine the fantasy a bit:

The Speaker: “You are the chosen Guardian, who will rise from the dead and save humanity from the galaxy’s greatest thr–“

*BLAMMO!!!* [Guardian’s head explodes into a fine mist.]

The Speaker: [Shuffling over to the next corpse] “Ahem…You are the chosen guardian…”

Anyway, with my old guardian now super-forever dead, I resign myself to creating a new character from scratch. I go with the Hunter class, because like me they are crafty and roguish and it’s my fantasy world so I’ll believe whatever I want! I also opt for a female Awoken, because humans are boring and robots are probably going to kill us all one day and I don’t need to be reminded of it every time I pull the trigger. At this point I realize I’ve remade all the same class choices I did in the first game, so I decide to just remake my character entirely. Think you’re getting rid of my guardian that easy? Think again!

Creating a character in a game usually turns into an all-night affair for me, as I obsessively shift every slider back and forth to its extremes before settling on the default position. Not so in Destiny 2! You get to create the exact hero of your dreams – by choosing from 7 stock faces and a handful of the ugliest hairstyles imaginable, because apparently the barbers were the first ones to be killed off in the apocalypse. Normally my wife weighs in on every minute detail during the character creation process, but the only feedback she offers me about Destiny 2’s limited options is that one hairstyle in particular makes my character “look like a heathen.” I’m not even sure what that means.

This just looks like Conan The Barbarian’s haircut to me, though come to think of it he probably was a heathen, so I guess she was right after all.

I opt for a crazy space mohawk instead, then move on to the face tattoos, which are always being as pointless and ill-advised in character creators as they are in real-life. Even so, Destiny 2 sets a new low bar for the extraneous category. Once again, I imagine an intern – possibly the same one who made Andromeda’s preset faces for BioWare – whipped them up in a matter of minutes.

Intern: “Hey, here are some face dots.”

Bungie Employee: “…You mean freckles?”

Intern: “Nah man, just face dots.”

Bungie Employee: “Alrighty then. Next!”

Somehow my guardian ends up looking vaguely like Margaery Tyrell, if she was thrown into the Mad Max universe and also purple for some reason. As totally rad as that sounds, I immediately regret every decision I made as soon as she pops up in the first actual cutscene – the gaming equivalent of getting dressed in the dark and then realizing you’re wearing your wife’s shirt as soon as you step out into the sunlight.* My wife also didn’t seem impressed, simply stating, “she looks quite striking,” which I assume is a polite euphemism for fugly. But whatever – at least it’s time to finally start playing!

Destiny 2 wastes no time getting into the action; after a brief cutscene starring the three characters from the first game that actually had faces, players are thrust into battle against a new faction of turtle-looking enemies called the Cabal. The Cabal are hellbent on destroying The Last City, which would normally be the name of a piece of armor or some robot butler in a Bungie game, but in this case it’s an actual city. Come to think of it, the Cabal is also a perfectly adequate name for an enemy faction…has Bungie lost its edge?!

What the heck are the space moles from Mass Effect doing in Destiny? And why are they so mean?!

The gameplay opens with your guardian returning to The Last City after some kind of patrol (or a sandwich run for we all know), and landing on the outskirts of the siege. I spend a few minutes of getting reacquainted with the controls, which includes immediately throwing a grenade at my feet and blasting away half my health. From there it’s on to the first battle, though things don’t go quite how I expect.

Even after all these years, I still remember my first open-ended skirmish in Halo; how dynamic the battle felt, and how the A.I. enemies seemed to be thinking and reacting for themselves. In contrast, much of the opening level in Destiny 2 feels more like Disney’s It’s A Small World ride than an FPS, as you’re guided from one small murder diorama to the next. Even for a self-grenading chump like myself, the initial enemies you face are about as threatening as the paper silhouettes at a shooting range, taking a step or two and then waiting politely for you to shoot their heads into some kind of ghost vapor. On the positive side, the controls feel as silky smooth as ever, and the first two guns I picked up were called Origin Story and The Last Dance, so at least Bungie’s still got it!

After a few more underwhelming encounters, the game’s seamless co-op kicks in – another guardian is just over the ridge and is in need of reviving! I’m not sure how he managed to die during this dog and pony show, but by the time I get over to him, a third player has him back up on his feet. It’s the thought that counts though, right?

Our improvised trio rallies around the bald dude who despite being a blue alien is always going to be Captain Daniels to me and anyone else who has seen The Wire (to my wife he’s the captain from Fringe, which is basically the same role only with parallel universes thrown into the mix). Daniels tells me that I should stay behind his shield, but I get annihilated by an incoming missile before it’s even deployed. So that’s how my co-op buddy died…

The Night King shows up in Destiny 2, but apparently he’s a good guy now.

One of my anonymous pals revives me and we hunker down and fight off a few waves of enemies together. It’s a cool, ships-passing-in-the-night kind of moment that reminds me of Journey, albeit with more guns and grenades and slaughtering aliens as they mindlessly funnel into my murder canal.** Once the assault ends, I turn to wave to my teammates, only to see that they have disappeared without so much as a goodbye –apparently manners were also a casualty of the apocalypse.

I move onto the next area and run into another NPC who I should probably know from the first game, but she promptly tells me that she’s going to “kick the Cabal where it hurts,” and then jumps onto the nose of a spaceship and disappears. I assume she’s talking about their space nards, though that’s an assumption in and of itself – how does she know the Cabal are males? Way to assume their gender, only human lady left on whatever planet this is. Seriously, is this Earth? Whatever. On to the next fight!

The next encounter actually gives me a run for my money, thanks to one enemy in particular: Pashk, The Searing Will. I know that’s his name because I actually took extra damage just to grab a screen of it.

No wonder he’s fighting so hard – people have probably made fun of his name for his whole life!

Unfortunately for him, Pashk is no match for Ode To An Unbroken Heart, which is the name I just gave my melee knife because two can play that game, Bungie!

With Pashk’s searing will extinguished, I head onto the next area, only to trigger a cutscene that introduces Destiny 2’s villain: a massive Cabal warrior named Ghaul. Well, mostly massive – his tiny bald head makes him look like a dude in a mascot suit who took his head off for a breather. Also, what is with villains wearing masks that distort their voices? Have we learned nothing from Bane?

I’m sorry, a world without what? Work on your enunciation, Ghaul! Also, why yo head so tiny?

Regardless, Ghaul gives a little speech about how puny guardians are, then drives the point home by planting his foot in my face and kicking me off of the magic tower we were trying to defend. As if that’s not bad enough, he also puts some kind of massive chastity belt on the ping-pong ball Traveler, which sucks away all the guardians’ superpowers. Talk about rude!

Despite just being a regular alien lady again, my guardian somehow survives the stories-high fall off the magic tower – though I guess that’s probably because it wouldn’t be much of a game otherwise (“And so the final guardian perished, and the might Cabal took over the galaxy. Thanks for playing!”). I limp out of the burning city with only a pistol, shooting some strange spikey dog creatures that also barf up their souls when they die (seriously, what kind of bullets are you shooting in this game?). Eventually a woman with a hawk shows up and invites me back to her village, which serves as the game’s first social hub. By that point in the evening my narcolepsy starts kicking in, and I repeatedly fall asleep while kicking around a giant soccer ball, only to wake up a few minutes later to sight of my character being nuked for wandering out of bounds – always a good time to call it quits.

You thought I was joking about falling asleep, didn’t you? Think again!

While Destiny 2’s opening doesn’t leave the strongest impression (even by tutorial-level standards), it contains at least a few sparks of Bungie’s patented dynamic combat, and does a much better job setting up a story and villain than the first game. And while I wasn’t particularly blown away by anything in my first night (well, except for the out-of-bounds limit), my subsequent play sessions have been more emblematic of what Destiny 2 strives for: tense and challenging fire fights against formidable enemies; an addictive loot loop that has me switching up my arsenal at a satisfying pace; and fun public events that you can jump into during the final few seconds and still nab the rewards. There’s also the PvP that I’m sure I’ll get obliterated in, and co-op strikes and raids if I can ever get Jeff Cork to put down Path of Exile and play with me (oh how the tables have turned).

Oftentimes in my column I tend to either gush endless praise for a game or take a big dump on it, but so far Destiny 2 hasn’t elicited anything quite so extreme from me. I’m enjoying the combat and the sense of progression, despite the fact that my character feels more like a mute marionette puppet than a super hero (seriously, a silent protagonist? In 2017?). And while I’m enjoying the game more and more every night, I don’t know that I’ll be one of those crazy people who plays it obsessively for years on end.

Anyway, I continued writing down more impressions and anecdotes in the subsequent play sessions, but rather than weaving them all into a(n even) long(er) and (more) boring narrative, I’ll just throw them in with some pictures and videos, and use the extra time to play more of the game. If that’s not a ringing endorsement, I don’t know what is!

Few games take the term “monster closet” more literally than Destiny 2. It’s seriously just a door with mysterious black smoke!

The European Dead Zone is like a taxi zone at the airport – ships are constantly coming in and dropping aliens off on the same street. You’d think they’d have a better invasion plan.

All joking aside, Bungie serves up some awesome sci-fi environments every now and then.

The hawk lady seems pretty cool. Even if she fell for the face dots.

Titan looks like an awesome neon-blue planet when you view it on the map, but it turns out it’s just Mother Base. Also, what’s with all these potato-chip bags?!

Sometimes Destiny 2’s combat suffers from the level design, with enemies funneling into murder canals because it’s the only path through the environment. Then again, sometimes it’s also fun to rack up a billion headshots in a row.

I ran across these two little frog aliens, which I’m assuming are Destiny’s equivalent of Statler and Waldorf. I’m hoping they play a big role in the story later on.

Not to get too deep into spoiler territory, but Cayde’s torrid love affair with this chicken is as emotionally touching as it is sexually graphic.

There are a lot of big balls in Destiny 2. Just saying.

Seriously, they’re all over the place.

Bungie says the EDZ is the biggest zone they’ve ever created, but I don’t know how that’s possible when every rig on Titan contains an endless sprawl of identical rooms and corridors. One time when I was hopelessly looking for an exit, I ran into a big knight-looking dude and received a Lost Sector banner when I defeated him. In my case the “Lost” was quite literal. Also, does anyone else find it weird that Titan is a class in Destiny 2 and also a planet? Too many Titans, Bungie!

I don’t even want to know what that is.

Breaking news: The totally useless spaceships return in Destiny 2! They’re not fooling anyone, but they do make for a pretty snazzy-looking loading screen.

Everyone spawns into the same location on The Farm, making you look like some horrific, multi-headed mutant. The extra arms would probably come in handy during battle, though.

I was super excited when I got sword from a treasure chest. A sword! Then I found out it’s some kind of weird magic sword that needs ammo. How the hell is that better than a rocket launcher?!

And finally, it’s not a sci-fi game if you don’t have floating rocks – and also point out said floating rocks to the player via NPC dialogue. In this case, ghost speculates that they’re caused by some kind of Hive magic. How’s that for science fiction!***

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Funny To A Point – Heeding The Call In Destiny 2 was originally published on Tech News Center The Digital Generation