Curse of Osiris’ plot can be beaten in two hours and is filled with so much repetition and so little exposition. Osiris, who is the character this DLC is about, only shows up in the flesh for a minute at the very end. The main villain is just an ominous robot who shows up and then is defeated through a quick-time event. To understand how lazy this story is, look no further than the ‘Deep Storage’ mission, which is just a re-purposed ‘Pyramidion’ strike. The campaign does hold one bright spot; Sagira, Osiris’ ghost. Voiced by Morena Baccarn (Firefly, Gotham), Sagira briefly becomes your companion during a large portion of the campaign and is a real delight. Charming and well-written, it’s disappointing when she does finally leave. Nolan North’s performance as Ghost has declined in quality over the years, and it would have been great if players got the option to choose who they wanted as their companion.
Without a doubt, the best new addition Curse of Osiris brings to Destiny 2 is the Raid Lair. Filled with challenging puzzles and boss fights, Raid Lairs provide the thrill that the rest of the expansion is sorely missing. While it would have been nice to get a new Raid or endgame activity like in previous expansions, the Raid Lairs are interesting enough to keep players hooked momentarily.
Oh, patrols return in Destiny 2. The blinking green beacons are littered throughout the EDZ, and the missions they dole out haven’t changed from the first game. Kill a certain amount of enemies to collect materials, kill a captain, scan an area, etc. Patrols are still meaningless busy work, but you do get some rewards for completing them.
Destiny 2 has even managed to mess up its core gameplay. While the developers’ hearts were surely in the right place when they chose to streamline the gameplay in the name of accessibility and PvP balance, in practice most of their changes have done more harm than good. One can tell that PvP was the major focus, because the changes work quite well for it. No longer do players have to endure the frustration of shotgun metas and constantly getting mapped by sniper rifles. Reduced access to abilities and power/special weapons allows for slower engagements. They’ve opened the door for an improved Crucible experience. The problem is that these changes are downright awful for the rest of the game. As it stands, Destiny 2’s gameplay mechanics encourage the hoarding of abilities and ammo rather than their enjoyment.
Where does Destiny 2 go from here? Curse of Osiris, much like previous Destiny DLCs before it, is more of the same. It can barely hold a spotlight on Osiris, who’s supposed to be one of the most important Guardians and it leaves more questions than it answers. Destiny 2 Updates 2 might be in more of a state of flux than Destiny. It wants to appeal to everyone. Casting such a wide net means knots, holes and all sorts of other problems.
The first piece of DLC for Destiny 2 dropped this week and Guardians have taken to The Curse of Osiris like Mercury takes to…OK, I don’t have a good example. What can be said for The Curse of Osiris is that it isn’t making waves and isn’t what Destiny 2 was missing to bring it back from the woes that it has been going through. Then again, isn’t Destiny always going through woes? If anything, Curse of Osiris is proving to be more of the same , while coming across as a bit watered down. I asked for three cubes bartender, not a glass full of ice with my whiskey. Caydee-6 would not be pleased, although he might not care either. For those Guardians that do care, though, it’s proving frustrating, and for anyone who might want to jump back in, Curse of Osiris doesn’t sell itself well.
On paper, the EDZ appears to be the largest open area Destiny has ever seen, but its scale can be deceptive. Using the brand new in-game map (accessed by holding down the Touchpad on PS4), it looks far bigger than the Cosmodrome. Looking closer, however, reveals that large sections of the map are taken up by long, winding roads. Take those away, and the EDZ may not be as big as it’s made out to be.
The dreaded public events from Destiny have gone from being the most boring things to do in the original game, to bring some of the most exciting activities in Destiny 2. Easier to find and participate in, players can now locate and fast travel to them via the in-game map. There’s no more need to use a third-party website anymore.
Over the course of its lifespan, most players agreed that Destiny’s most persistent problem was a general lack of content. There just wasn’t enough to do between DLC expansions. The thing is, those expansions never actually helped all that much. It would only take a week or two for the hardcore crowd to start complaining about a lack of content again. Some would blame those players for spending too much time with the game and burning through that content too quickly, but it’s only natural that players would quickly burn through expansions when they often didn’t include many new features. I was cautiously optimistic that Destiny 2 would address the real issue at the heart of its forebear’s content woes, but this sadly hasn’t been the case. It’s added a few minor features in the form of the new director, a map, small activities in its explorable spaces, milestones and flashpoints, but that that’s it. Oh wait, scratch that. Milestones and flashpoints are just re-branded bounties, so they’re actually not new at all. So not only does it offer less content than Destiny’s final form, but it still hasn’t addressed the first game’s core problem.