House of Wolves: Wot I think (Destiny)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Sunday, May 31, 2015, 11:17 (3467 days ago)

House of Wolves is largely better than Dark Below, except possibly for the end game.

Once again, Bungie has used my ideas by eliminating damage and defense upgrade nodes. This is a great decision, and everything is better now. No downsides. Slowly the tedium of upgrading gear is going away, and perhaps one day will be eliminated altogether (as well as RNG loot).

The story missions are getting better all the time, but still have plenty of room to grow. Especially with a more story heavy expansion, the missions should be even more involved, long, and complex. They should blow Halo missions out of the water, but don't. I understand why, yet given the terrible constraints Bungie has placed on themselves these missions were the best yet, at least in my opinion. Yet, there could have been even more creativity. The VoG platforms make an appearance in the final mission, but are not utilized at all except for a set piece. I was sure that leaping across them was a reminder of how they work, and following they'd play a role in the fight. Maybe cover appears and disappears. Maybe the ground vanishes occasionally and you have to rotate around the arena fighting. But no, that would have been too cool.

Why do the story missions top out at 32? Why can't I select them all at level 35 for more difficulty? Again Halo had it right: selectable difficulty. Story missions should have level 30 enemies but have 4 difficulty levels. Simple as that. Even though they were decently fun, they were also rather easy, and I selected 32. I'm not so keen on handicapping myself just to have a challenge.

Bungie needs to up their storytelling yesterday. Here, we have a decent idea for a story, but it's not really given the proper care it deserves. It's baffling. Bungie has done it with Halo, and they should be able to do it with Destiny. Comet is do or die. If they don't get their act together and give us a decent story that is also told well, then they've lost.

I think it's safe to say that Peter Dinklage is either unwilling or unable to come back. Why else would a main character be essentially absent in the expansions? And why should he come back? He'd have been squandered here like he was in the base game. He can just do Game of Thrones and get paid more, make a better product, and win a few emmys.

I find it amusing that the new go to end game activity is PvP related. From what I've played, Trials of Osiris is not only a blast, but easily the best and most fun way to earn good gear and etheric light. The elimination game type is tough and tense, but in a good way. I am eager to see how the metagame changes with each map rotation, and I have a feeling your team will have to change it up a bit every week. I also feel a little bit sad when you beat a team and you see that you knock them out of their ticket, but such is the game type! The lighthouse was a wonderful surprise, and the excitement and wonder I felt going there the first time was something Destiny hasn't given me in a while. And the gear is great.

Unfortunately, Prison of Elders is a huge miss, just as I suspected. It's not even close to a raid substitute. You can toss all your ingredients in the pot and hope for the best, or you can carefully mix, measure, and purposely create a unique and wonderful combination of flavors. Who cares if it's different every time? None of the challenges even come close to what we'd face in a raid. It's not as challenging as a raid, nor as difficult. Not even close. Before the fifth round, it's all essentially the same regardless of the modifiers, and the round 5 boss and Skolas are just pushovers, as far as I've experienced.

Here you actually have a cool boss mechanic, which can be defeated and bypassed not by cheese, but by 3 players with Gjallarhorns (or 4th Horsemans and Thunderlords with arc burn). When you can just shoot the boss with everything you've got and he dies in 45 seconds, you have failed. You have to deal with and figure out Atheon's mechanics. You have to deal with and figure out Crota's mechanics. But Skolas? Nope, just shoot him a lot. It's so massively disappointing that concentrating your fire in an intense burst is enough to take out the Arena's toughest boss.

Likewise, the treasure keys are a huge mess. Final bosses should drop treasure keys 100% of the time on 34 and 35. It's utterly baffling why this isn't the case. Finding keys in the wild should be a bonus. What did I get for beating Skolas the first week? Absolutely nothing because I didn't have a key. The gear is also bad. The Queen's gear is just legendary gear. I have awesome legendary gear already, and not only that, but the perks don't all have tradeoffs on them. Can you get elemental primaries from PoE? If not, it's a big waste of time since it sure isn't that fun for its own sake. That's the irony. What good is your end game, if the best part of it is PvP where elemental damage doesn't matter? The elemental primaries were good before because the rock in PvE. But do you think I'm going to want to play PoE 9 times a week? No thanks.

Huge miss for the PvP end game, huge hit for the PvP end game, and a steadily rising quality to the story missions.