Wot I think: Rise of Iron *SP, including raid* (Destiny)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Tuesday, October 04, 2016, 15:07 (2786 days ago)
edited by Cody Miller, Tuesday, October 04, 2016, 15:13

It's the best of times and the worst of times. That's rise of Iron. I think more so than any other DLC it has a lot going for it, but has just so many backwards decisions that it baffles me. Most have already been discussed, but here we go.

The question of length has come up, and I don't have any problems with short games. After all, you can probably finish the best game of this decade in around 6 to 7 hours. The rise of Iron story missions were around this length. That doesn't make it bad necessarily. You have to look at the overall experience. I don't think the story missions were really that engaging, but this is the result of their design and length. It really hurts that the game doesn't have any kind of coherent story during the course of play. You are kind of always just running to a place for some unknown reason. You look at the "Download Complete" and 'Walls Come Down" missions, and they are not only short but absolute garbage in term of engaging design. We aren't doing anything cool. You are running to a place which you aren't quite sure why you are there, deploying your ghost, then killing enemies that spawn. Like every other stupid mission you played before. A serious lack of imagination here. The final mission and the first mission were the only one I felt had some kind of inspiration to them.

So was the game too short? Yes. I say this because the story missions did not leave you satisfied. They could have done so much more in terms of design to push us out of our comfort zone. Remember, we've been playing this game for 2 years. We know it really well. We already have the skills and knowhow to succeed. We need to be tested in different, fun, and unusual ways or else we just blow through it ezpz without really even having to think. It was autopilot. Comfort food.

There has already been a thread about this, but the game after the story missions is pathetic. It offers you nothing interesting to do to progress, or to explore. I don't want to play the same strikes over and over again. Literally the same strikes we have been playing before Rise of Iron came out. Does it not strike anybody as odd that one of the ways Bungie wanted you to progress was to play old content in a new DLC? Taken King 'questified' the game, and offered numerous things to do after the story missions. So the fact Rise of Iron did not is really really baffling.

The raid. I appreciate the Raid, and I think it's very fun. It's up there for sure. However, I am slightly disappointed in certain aspects because our expectations weren't really defied. You again have to remember that we have conquered raids before, and so know the 'language' of them. Killing the first boss is basically a reskin of the Warpriest fight. It's literally the same concept. We figured it out very quickly.

I am getting a bit tired of the idea of having an invincible boss, whom you must make vulnerable, then burn him until he's invincible again, then repeat. This is why I enjoyed the Siege Engine part so much, because it was a break from the type of boss fights that has been the unwavering norm since raiding began in Vault of Glass.

I would love to see future raids incorporate more sections like the Bridge, or Prove Your Worth, and the Siege Engine where you are not fighting bosses but nevertheless have regular enemies to kill and something to accomplish. After the siege engine, there was a really cool server room where a few splicer ambushed us. Why not turn that into an objective based fight, where we have to turn on the lights and unlock the door while being attacked by splicers? Would have been great. I'd also like to see boss fights where the boss isn't invincible and can only be killed by burn phases. At this point you can just assume shooting them will pop up 'immune'.

That being said, the raid is excellent when compared to the other raids in Destiny. However, there was no story lead up, and it just starts you off fighting this boss you have no idea about. This worked for the Vault because it was a mysterious side quest. But both Crota and Oryx had some context. The atmosphere of the raid is great, the environments are great, the fights are fun, and it'll be fun to run again and try new things or run again to level up.

The tl;dr version is that the story missions are ok, the raid and crucible are excellent, and everything else is shit. But more shit than the shit in pervious DLCs. Even Dark Below's shit.