The launch of Destiny 2 was nothing less than an embarrassment for Bungie. After having built Destiny 1 into an excellent FPS looter-shooter, already having gone through the growing pains of figuring itself out, here comes Destiny 2 to deliver an experience that was better than Destiny 1 vanilla, but was a vastly inferior product to what Destiny 1 had become. For that reason, I had avoided Destiny 2 for a long time, until the Forsaken expansion was released, and an all-too-familiar narrative broke out of Destiny finally redeeming itself. While yes, Forsaken finally brought Destiny 2 back to the level of quality that Destiny 1 had achieved, and arguably surpassing it, the excitement was tempered by the knowledge that it had taken so long to re-learn everything again.

As my introduction to Destiny 2, this collection gave me the chance to play through the base game and the 2 expansion packs that followed it. In short, the content here was not worth much. The campaigns were lackluster and boring at the best of times, and the side content was also rather boring. Strikes, a favourite activity of mine, would never again reach the quality of D1, and that remains the case to this day. The base game also had some truly awful design decisions that managed to regress on the core gameplay that D1 VANILLA had figured out. Even the raid experiences of D2 year 1 were lackluster, though even lackluster raids were better than most other co-op PvE experiences. Truly, little was missed by having avoided this content until now.

The Forsaken expansion, though, was to D2 what The Taken King was to D1. Reworks to the classes, the core gameplay, new side content, new play areas, and a well made campaign replicated the highs of that legendary expansion. That campaign really was what drew me back into the game, and while it's only good by Destiny standards, it's still a fun time, serving as a proper introduction to the new play spaces, characters, and enemy faction. The 2 new play spaces introduced here are great, with the Dreaming City being the second best area ever introduced to Destiny, and arguably on par with the Dreadnought from The Taken King. The amount of content hidden away in this area was enough to keep me engaged for hours.

As is tradition, the raid would be the centerpiece of the entire expansion, and Last Wish is magnificent, an experience that manages to top King's Fall from TTK in my opinion. The encounters are nicely varied, and require a properly engaged team to communicate and coordinate. Getting to the end of this raid is a challenge, and the fact that only 2 teams cleared it on Day 1 is a testament to the challenge it delivers. Sadly, the climactic final boss encounter has been neutered by poor balancing and power creep, so I have never been able to properly experience it without "cheesing" it to avoid the complex mechanics at play.

This expansion also saw the introduction of the Dungeon as a new type of content offering, essentially the quality and challenge of a raid in a 3 person activity. Shattered Throne was a fantastic dungeon, with a far lower barrier to entry, and a much more accessible experience. Forsaken also saw the introduction of Gambit, a novel PvEvP gamemode. Gambit was a promising new addition to the series, and one that I particularly enjoyed, though it was sadly riddled with balance issues, and has since been abandoned by Bungie. A shame that such a promising new gamemode would wither away, but such is the fate of most content in Destiny.

Forsaken was the bulk of my time with Destiny 2. The following expansion would see my interest drop-off, and the series would enter a tumultuous time until the next DLC that would "save" Destiny. In a lot of ways, Forsaken was the best expansion Destiny ever saw, equaling the quality of The Taken King before it, and elevating Destiny to even greater heights. Still, it also represents a turning point for the franchise, since after this point, Destiny would fall down the games-as-a-service rabbit hole, and being embracing more predatory monetization, and more tragically, content sunsetting. These two facts would be my main reason for leaving the game, and my reason for staying away, but I will still fondly remember the great times I had with Destiny 2, and I still firmly believe that it is a great game, just one that is hidden behind problematic leadership and business considerations.