You don’t even need to own Shadowkeep to enjoy a lot of the expansion’s content. The opening mission, the Moon patrol space, the new two new Strikes and the three Crucible maps are available as part of Destiny 2: New Light, the free-to-play version of the game. While the Raid and campaign are sectioned off, there’s a lot you can do without owning Shadowkeep (the Seasonal Activities require you own the Season Pass).
The Seasons of the Drifter and Opulence added new modes such as the Reckoning and the Menagerie, gave lore-fiends interesting stories to chase, and re-introduced fan-favorite exotic weapons like Outbreak Prime, Bad Juju and The Truth. If it hadn’t been for the broken mess that was “The Revelry” event, these two seasons likely would have gone-off without much issue outside of the usual power and weapon balancing.
Seraph bunkers and towers are unique to Season 10, most likely set to disappear after season of the Worthy’s completion. Ranking up seraph bunkers gives players a bonus in firepower in the seraph tower public event as well as within the legendary lost sectors. Tier 2-3 Gear can be earned from leveling up the bunkers and WWW.Destiny2fans.com the ability to complete bounties that reward seasonal weapons. Story-wise, players have yet to observe the fruits of their labors for pumping thousands of Warmind bits into the bunkers, but fully upgrading all 3 of them will award the individual triumphs for each bunker as well as “Full Stack Warmind Security” for the collective completion. The quest reward for all 3 bunker completions is the shaders Midnight Expert and Valkyrie Zero, the Knight of the Old Guard emblem, and the Absalom Knife ship. There are other Seraph triumphs rewarded for completing all the legendary lost sectors, seraph tower completions, and clearing the bunkers of enemies. All these triumphs work toward obtaining the Almighty Seal that players can show off in-g
Destiny campaigns have always been mind-numbing thanks to heavy-handed writing and mission design that overly relies on mundane busywork. The stories nearly always end up being vague, open-ended and unsatisfying. Forsaken changed that by making the story more personal and finding new and engaging ways to push that narrative forward. Shadowkeep, on the other hand, is content with regressing all that hard work. Aside from strong opening and closing missions, Shadowkeep barely delivers any meaningful revelations or character development. You, Eris Morn and the remainder of the Vanguard remain blank slates with surface-level characterizations. With the most emotive member of the cast, Cayde-6, dead, Destiny desperately needs NPCs with some personality. Unfortunately, that isn’t found anywhere in Shadowkeep.
What New Light doesn’t provide is mostly story content and endgame activities. To access this, you’ll need to purchase the expansions and Annual/Season Pass content separately. You can nab Forsaken now for $24.99, and Shadowkeep for $34.99.
The prime example that comes to mind is The Black Armory from the “Season of the Forge.” This was something built up as offering players a special kind of new weapon to chase via a new kind of public event. Both of these claims were true, but unfortunately the forge events wound up being overly grindy (and poorly balanced at first), and the weapons largely weren’t worth the effort. Successive seasons have had similar struggles, but not to the same degree and were largely successful.
Like previous seasons, players receive and seasonal from the Vanguard, Crucible, and Gambit vendors. Each of these quests Fighting in Style, City Defender, and Free advertising award a shader and emblem after it’s completion. Grand-Master level strikes are the current final step in Vanguard activities and were added to the game with a corresponding seal in the triumphs section. Earn the Conqueror Seal by completing the Insight Terminus, Exodus Crash, The Arms Dealer, Warden of Nothing, Broodhold, Tree of Possibilities, on Grand-Master difficulty. Unfortunately, there were no pinnacle/ritual weapons offered to players for each of these playlists this season, but previous weapons are still attainable through their given quests. “The Lie” quest has also landed, so make sure players complete it to receive Felwinter’s shot
After nearly nine months of haranguing from disappointed fans and harsh criticism from the gaming media in general, Bungie has finally presented us with something that is wholly exciting. Destiny 2’s “Forsaken” expansion looks great, better than great even. One could even say that it looks like it contains everything Destiny fans were expecting Destiny 2 to offer from the very beginning. Perhaps even more. Truly, it looks as if Bungie has finally heard the community’s feedback and acted upon it. That, however, only seems to be the case in regard to the content of Forsaken. Unfortunately, everything surrounding it is still classic Destiny-era Bungie. Destiny may be changing soon, but Bungie most certainly isn’t.