update: upon playing the legendary campaign after the recommendation of everyone on earth, they got me. im sucked in. whoever designed the new void specs was on fire. the entire game should feel like the legendary campaign.

man you'd think a story about playing witcha worm would be a bit more engaging, but once again the campaign writing team doing as much as possible to tank the beautiful work the world design and lore teams are doing. i guess its an unenviable task though, writing a satisfying introduction and conclusion of a main villain who has been whispered about for nearing in on a decade now while also making clear the motivations of half a dozen factions and the rules of a brand new fantasy world entirely disconnected from our real world solar system when your actual timeframe for narration is only something like half an hour out of a six or seven hour campaign. i guess when you have a neverending story, eventually you have to get ram right through the mystery and wonder that made the world feel so intriguing. oh well, onward to bigger and better things, we've got pixar movie villains to kill.

I guess I will say, I’m not nearly as infatuated with their world design this go around as I have been with their last couple of expansions. The frequent small caves, thick smog covered swamps, and hedge mazes combined with areas smashed together by teleporters ends up leaving the world feeling disjointed and claustrophobic. Like old development picked up off the cutting room floor and bashed together. The major bright spot is the pyramid ship mission, but in this case the mission mostly takes place within the artistic framework of the previous expansion. Like all the most awe inspiring locations in destiny, I crawled through that ship, stopping to check every model, feeling my stomach drop creeping towards the edge of a great expanse with the spiritual vertigo upon the acute realization of scale. This is when destiny is firing on all cylinders, but unfortunately it’s just short lived in WQ. The throne world failed to provoke anything resembling that level of reaction in me. Interesting and technically gorgeous, but hollow when compared to my favorite destiny locations.

its fine though, i've made my peace with the fact that i'll probably always love and hate this game. that bungie will really let their people do some fairly interesting shit at the outliers while constraining the main engagements to the kind of shit that keeps the most people playing. i don't think its going to click with me this time though, which is good I think, when it comes to actually appreciating this game. The more you go through the same motions chasing levels and rare guns, the harder it is to really love the most wonderful parts of what this team has built. i finished the campaign, and having realized on day two that i'm already too late probably to be ready for the day one raid, i've already lost interest in the treadmill. seeing the crafting system play out as forcing you to use weapons you don't care about over and over really just puts me off, game already has far too much of fretting over not maximizing your game time for me. bounties were more than enough.

anwaysy, love you have a good time.

absolute mess of a poorly made cynical skinner box on top of one of the most fun shooting of all time and an incredibly fascinating universe/lore. the only high point of shadowkeep was probably garden of salvation, which was absolutely fantastic and one of the most fun experiences in gaming. pretty much everything else though left a sour taste in my mouth.

ive checked back in briefly for some of the seasons, and their habit of trying to string players along doing dozens and dozens of hours of basically the same exact content they have been doing for years just feels worse and worse the longer it goes on. theres also dozens of quality of life things that just seem to never be addressed.

it can just get incredibly frustrating trying to engage with this game for the amount of time the game asks you to. play it, get to the point where you can experience the raids once or twice, and bail.

im just gonna set this to played so i can keep track of my thoughts.

03-09-2022
the dedicated mounted fights are the worst boss encounters they have ever made. not a single thing about mounted combat feels satisfying to me. i'm also becoming less and less convinced around all the summons. i get that its basically an in game easy mode, and thats fine, but i cant help that nagging feeling that some of these bosses are built specifically with the summons in mind. the act of using them just makes the fights feel less readable and more chaotic, so it feels a bit like a lose lose for me personally.

honestly theres been a whole hell of a lot of feeling like i'm either underpowered or overpowered. its definitely the least satisfying feeling souls game so far as far as combat goes. either i'm fighting like usual using my whole melee toolkit and feeling like i'm underpowered compared to a souls game, or i'm bloody slashing everything into bits feeling like an absolute god. i've had a pretty consistent feeling of being out of place much of the game.

03-06-2022
its so funny i was ever worried this game was going to be easier than any of the other games. by the time i finished stormveil, i thought i was at least nearing the halfway point just based on what i could make out from the map.

03-05-2022
OHHhhhh the rennala intro oh my god, the chorus of children. absolutely beautiful, the gold and blue tones to the arena. completely superb shit, im punching the air, im hollering.

3/3/02, cleared the map all around godrick, just killed godrick.

im unsold on the open world when it comes to really sparking that fire in me that most locations in the souls games do. however, jesus christ did they nail the loop. i rarely find myself playing late into the night, but i keep getting stuck in that "ok i'll just check out one more spot".

-i'm not sure i'm understanding the combat just yet, two handed uchigatana feels less impactful than it ever felt in ds. struggling really hard until i gave up and put a shield on, and guard counter + poise break feels absurdly strong. not sure i like that, but maybe they accounted for the dodge roll two handed builds somewhere in the itemization and i just haven't found it yet. the enemies and bosses are great, i just for the first time am not sold about a combat addition in a FROM game.

this game i think was a mess in a lot of ways, but it is good to play with a friend you don't talk to that often. the ending had us howling at how fucking stupid it was. who was that guy? who was the other guy? why is kelvin here, he looks so good in his pink pajamas. why are they fighting? who is this guy's dad?

it was pretty unfortunate too that after the first couple of hours, there was little tension on the game. base building was almost entirely unnecessary, with nothing in the world threating your movement, travel was little but a time suck. the emergent gameplay aspects of a game you'd want to see from a survival game with a lot of systems are almost nonexistent. at no point did it drive home the fantasy of "having to survive in a hostile world". but whatever, thats ok.

still does not stand up to the part time job sort of playstyle bungie can sometimes ask of the player, but the environments and art style in this are still some of the most extravagant in any sort of modern visual medium.

due to sunsetting, you now have to play the mind numbingly tedious DLC drops in order to have the gear to be ready for day 1 raids. i no longer have the time and patience for engaging with the parts of the game i don't enjoy, so deep stone crypt was probably my last day 1 raid. while experiencing this previously entirely unknown activity with 5 other players is one of the greatest gaming experiences you could ever have, its questionable if its worth all of the work throughout the year to make sure you are ready for it.

its fine. the game itself is in the best state its been in in years, and there are no major pain points so far that tend to flare up with games that ask so much of the player. however, it just feels fine. by far the most excitement i have felt so far is the expansion launch ritual of seeing all the old clan again after a couple years.

in all likelihood, i'm going to follow the same pattern of playing this for a couple months and then wandering away again like i have for the last 3-4 expansions. that being said, unlike the last expansion, i'm not going to be walking away out of frustration.