Destiny 2: Beyond Light Reviews
Beyond Light isn't going to change anyone's mind about Destiny 2. Either you love the weekly grind, the increasingly complex lore, and pushing your mates off a ledge in a Raid, or you don't. For those who do, there's a lot to discover and plenty to grind for with the added benefit of the reworked game engine. They, like myself, will no doubt be sinking hundreds of hours into this over the next year. A solid, well executed update to Destiny 2, with even more content on the horizon.
My advice? Wait to see how the next-gen upgrade of Destiny 2 shakes out if you're either on the fence about returning, or jumping in for the first time. Come December 8, it should be a drastically different experience, as the lessened load times and sharper visuals (and performance) should help smooth over some of Destiny 2's shortcomings. It still has many.
With the release of Beyond Light, Destiny 2 struggles to give players to continue investing time into it. Any content you buy or items you earn in the game are subject to removal at Bungie’s whim; we’re just buying a license to play the content, not the content itself.
But it’s also undeniable that much of the rest of the game outside that experience is in shambles or has disappeared entirely. At the end of last season Destiny 2 told me to go to Europa to find an ancient power, and I have. The only problem now is that I don’t know where else to go with it.
The best part about Beyond Light is that it looks and feels like a sequel without needing to start from scratch. A new power set like this isn’t something I expected to see out of an expansion. In that way, Beyond Light answers a question that’s given me serious doubts as a fan: how much can Bungie change Destiny 2 without moving to a new game entirely? For the first time, Beyond Light feels like Destiny 2 is truly putty in Bungie’s hands, rather than a titanic ship that takes eons to turn.
With Beyond Light, Destiny 2 can still get cyclical and repetitious, but its new abilities and improved storytelling make it feel much more alive.
An engaging story feels like a turning point in the canon, but the game feels diminished after stripping away roughly half of the locations, activities, and other core content
Beyond Light delivers one of the best raids in Destiny history and some of the best story moments in Destiny 2, and that's more than enough to make up for a few disappointing gaps.
One of Destiny 2's best expansions thus far, providing an assured roadmap for the series to move into. It is just more Destiny though.
Beyond Light is a fun campaign on a beautiful and expansive new world, but Destiny 2 is still some way from being the best version of itself.
Destiny 2 breaks new ground with Beyond Light, while other parts remain frozen in time.