Author Archives: Justin Fox

Back on the horse.

Marathon, Destiny 1 player and Day 1 Destiny 2 player here (currently 3,168 hrs in D2 on record).

I stopped playing Destiny 2 after The Witch Queen (which I absolutely loved and still think was Bungie’s best D2 DLC to date), mainly because I got sick of complaining about the state of the game so much. IE: I loved the game so much that I hated it.

For the past 2 years I’ve been playing Diablo Immortal, II, III and IV, Starfield, Fallout IV and Starfield. It’s been a good break (much more chill gaming experiences than Destiny grandmasters and raids that’s for sure!), but more recently I played through Remnant 2, and replayed through Remnant from the Ashes too which got me back in the mood for more pew pew pew action again.

A friend I was playing these games with wanted to give Destiny 2 a go (and a friend who never left D2 has been trying to get me to pick up the game again for years now). Initially I was dead set on never playing D2 again as I was certain that I was getting more enjoyment from regularly checking in to this reddit and YouTube for all the Destiny 2 drama, but a part of me wants to put the final nail in the coffin with The Final Shape, so I thought fuck it. I’ll re-install it.

The first few hours of returning to D2 was fucking savage. I was bombarded with pop-ups enticing me to spend money on this and that. I had forgotten just about everything; How the fuck do I bring up my sparrow again? Ohhhh, bring up the ghost first, then the sparrow… how do I do finishers again? How do I upgrade weapons and where do I turn in bounties? The UI is an absolute mess, not to mention my friend who was new to the game was even more lost than I was and my mate who never left was absolutely decimating everything on the screen in every activity we were doing.

I started doing what the seasonal quest tab was telling me to do, then the game was trying to get me to do an activity I didn’t have access to, so I bought the season pass, then the game tells me the activity is part of Season 22 and I can’t do it unless I buy the annual pass?! Fucking what?!

So fuck me dead. I pay for Lightfall + the annual pass (despite watching ALL the negative review videos on YouTube). I start out at 1600 light level and can’t grind for the Gyrfalcon’s Hauberk (Void Hunter for life!) as I’m WAY too low for legend lost sectors. OK I gotta level up. Then it hits me… I have to grind bounties (lots of them) and do the same old shit I’ve been doing for the past 10+ years. At this stage I was just about to rage quit again, but then it happened. I started grinding bounties, then strikes, then the crucible and even fucking gambit and dares of eternity, and just like smoking the first cigarette after quitting for months I was hooked once more.

Fuck this game!

Posted on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/18qqc97/returning_player_just_like_that_im_hooked_again/

My Barb.

Dark, moody, awesome.

Finished the main campaign at level 35, now on to Hell!

I bought Diablo II Resurrected a year or so ago, but just couldn’t get into it. I almost instantly found it too old school and too hardcore, but in retrospect it’s Diablo Immortal (and now Diablo IV) that’s to blame for making me soft. IE: The new games have so much inventory space, waypoints, no penalties on death (in D2 you have to go back to your dead body to pick up your gold and gear) and more mod cons.

Recently I brought up the idea of playing Diablo III with Chardae and Laci who are both on XBOX. I have D3 on PC, but there’s no controller support, or cross play, so if I wanted to play with them I’d have to buy an XBOX. Ultimately I couldn’t justify the costs and feeling left out (fomo as both of them bought D3 for XBOX) I thought I’d try D2R again and I’m SO glad I did.

I now understand why hardcore Diablo fans consider D2 to be the best of the franchise. I feel like I now know and understand the lore of Diablo so much more. In my playthrough I came across so many characters and locations (even specific dungeon names) that have been re-used and referenced in the new games. It all felt a little like déjà vu, or, reverse engineering?! Kinda like learning how to drive in an automatic, but then learning and mastering a manual.