Destiny House of Wolves
Destiny’s “House of Wolves” expansion released on Tuesday - and man, am I impressed. Bungie, you have outdone yourself this time.
Being brutally honest, I did not give two craps about Destiny leading up to the release. I got super addicted once I upgraded to the PS4 version and started playing with friends, but I eventually got burned out. I tried getting back into it for a couple days leading up to House of Wolves dropping, but I just couldn’t care.
However, the new HoW story quests blew me away. Aside from the lack of Peter Dinklage voice over throughout - too busy working on Game of Thrones and Pixels, perhaps? - the story missions for HoW were, by far, some of the best story-based content that the game has. I was very concerned for the future of Destiny if future expansions were similar to The Dark Below, but Bungie showed that they know what they’re doing.
The story missions were engaging, eventful, and I actually felt like I understood what I was doing - which can’t fully be said for the main story missions. Petra is nowhere near as annoying as Eris Morn, and I actually enjoy doing most of the bounties and side-jobs for the House of Wolves expansion - though it’s a tad annoying that Petra’s Wanted Bounties are on a weekly reset - instead of daily - when it’s so damn hard to get Treasure Keys or Etheric Lights.
By playing through the main story and doing both the new Strike and your first run of the Prison of Elders Arena mode at level 28, you’re then given what’s needed to purchase your first piece of HoW armor - which combined with “ascending” a piece of your pre-owned exotic gear with an Exotic Shard - makes it very easy to jump straight to level 33, at which point you can start grinding the higher level Prison of Elders runs to get more Etheric Lights and level up everything else to hit level 34.
This has been a problem for me, however. Despite seeing lots of screenshots of other players hitting level 34 early on Tuesday, I’ve yet to find a single Etheric Light or Treasure Key of my own. We’ve also been struggling with the level 34 PoE - which is what guarantees you an Etheric Light each week.
I heard people saying the new expansion made the game more casual, but I’m enjoying it thoroughly. Destiny has always been a casual-oriented game with a huge casual player base, and honestly I feel they needed to do some to cater to this audience, or else they will burn out the player base. They still need to add matchmaking options for certain activities, but this is a huge improvement. And the higher-level PoE arenas are still very difficult, so the casual players still have some work to do.
Also, they REALLY need to add in checkpoints to the PoE, like they do for Raids. The Arena runs take a very long time, and people have things to do - checkpoints are needed.
The strike was one of my favorite strikes to date. it was challenging, engaging, action-packed, and felt really good. Instead of the typical, annoying, “Defend your Ghost while he does a 3-step process” bit, you just follow the main boss through 3 waves. It was awesome.
The new weapons and armor feel pretty good, as well. The new sidearm that you get for doing the story quests, called the “Vestian Dynasty” is the perfect, retro-esque “Pew Pew gun” and I love it! It’s much, much better in PvE than PvP, but it can still be nasty in PvP when used right.
Speaking of which, the new Crucible PvP maps are really nice. So far, Destiny maps have been very hit or miss for me - either I hate them, or really like them. The couple times I’ve played Crucible on the new maps, I’ve liked them a lot. They feel well-designed, and they instantly felt natural - I knew where everything was right away. That doesn’t happen often. While that doesn’t change the weapon balance or make the cheap tactics people do any less cheap, it still makes PvP a bit more enjoyable.
It also happened that I finally got my Invective Exotic Bounty done this week, as well - so happiness all around! Too bad my Thorn bounty is still forever off.
Overall, House of Wolves is an incredible expansion to the Destiny world. I’m a bit worried about these stacking expansions, given that I haven’t seen any Blade of Crota invasions since HoW came out - and removing those events will cause problems for new or behind players, but so far I’m extremely impressed, and Destiny has re-entered my regular schedule.