Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate

Written by Rob Larkin on 8/11/2025 for PC   PS5   XSX  

Destiny has carried Bungie as a studio through the last decade. The legendary games developer, which made its bones as the creators of the Halo franchise, brought the same magic and gunplay from Master Chief and infused it into the Guardians of Destiny’s universe. A central narrative to this new universe weaved its way from the earliest days of the original Destiny through its sequel Destiny 2 to finally culminate, after a 10-year journey, in the previous expansion, The Final Shape. It was a frankly excellent expansion which, I noted in my review, had put the game into the best place it had ever been. But even though the sendoff in the Final Shape was so strong, it was still a sendoff. The story was told. It was an ending to a saga, saw large swaths of the player base move on in its wake, and placed the franchise, and even the studio, in a bit of a precarious place staring into an unknown future. 

Bungie promised the Destiny universe would go on. But the spring brought a string of bad press including studio layoffs, project cancellations, and numerous controversies over the eventual indefinite delay of its other main IP, Marathon—a game many believe the studio was banking on for its future. Uncertainty surrounded not only Destiny the game, but even Bungie’s viability as a studio. An absolute titan of the games industry was struggling to find its footing. Bungie needed a win, and it was time to finally step into that promised future of Destiny with this expansion, The Edge of Fate, and whoa buddy this ain’t your grandpa’s Destiny anymore... 

The Edge of Fate probably introduces the biggest shift in the way someone plays Destiny since the jump from Destiny 1 to Destiny 2. Unfortunately, that first major shift into the sequel was a disaster, mitigated only when just about all of its changes were clawed back to save the game a few expansions later with Forsaken. The game was on the brink. With stale loot and watered down systems, both new and old players fled. This rebound and course correction seemed to sow certain seeds into the developer, like the idea that meaningful loot was crucial in maintaining the viability of their game. So, they fixed the game. Other triumphs followed until the apex of the Final Shape. But with the Edge of Fate, I wonder if the pendulum hasn’t swung too far in the opposite direction. Are we now reaping those seeds from the first correction, with loot becoming the sole focus of a grind that really seems to only cater to the hardcore and the streamers? Let me explain. 

Destiny, at its core, is a looter shooter. The gunplay and gameplay is great. It’s a shooter, but you’re also completing missions and events in order to secure that sweet dopamine hit in the rewards that burst from the chest at the end of each mission. The issue facing Bungie was that a lot of the reward paths in Destiny 2 had become stale. Most players had better armor than they would ever need, and many of the gun archetypes as well. Without random rolls on the exotic weapons, there were very few legendary weapons per season that would drive the community to actually hunt to get the best random rolls to drop. Fun game, but very little to chase. And this chase is very important because, quite frankly, there isn’t enough to explore in Destiny’s pseudo-open world. There are tons of old missions to re-play…well, not counting those that haven’t already been deleted, or “vaulted,” and are no longer accessible. But that’s the core loop of Destiny: play old missions to score new loot.

Sometimes, new content will also introduce new activities. Some of it is seasonal, like the coil, where you can complete runs and rain loot. Others are a bit more permanent, like Onslaught, which dropped in an otherwise content drought but introduced a horde mode that was well lauded. But without any new activities introduced with this expansion, the Edge of Fate's major point is to simply reintroduce the grind. Major systems have been overhauled and reworked, and new loot, like meaningful armor rolls and brand-new gun enhancements, have been introduced. But to get it, you have to first endure the grind.  

Unfortunately, it feels like the grind has pretty much swallowed Destiny 2 and is still greedily ravaging for more, more, more. The hubris and folly of the Grasp of Avarice dungeon in-game has infected the systems that prop up the game as a whole. When you load into the Edge of Fate you are, of course, first presented with the opening chapters of the new narrative that accompanies any expansion. The Nine, other-worldly beings from four-dimensional space who represent the domains of the nine planets, are at the heart of this epic that promises to eventually tie into themes like the very nature of choice and fate. It’s a story that is intended to weave, much like the previous saga of light and dark, for years to come. But it only really takes 10 or so hours to actually run through these missions and cutscenes to conclude this opening act. Along the way you are introduced to “the Portal.” In fact it is the portal, not the planetary world map, that now takes center stage as the default menu to load into game play. The pseudo-open world has become an afterthought. Even the color palette on the menu itself has been muted. It is through the portal that you must now seek and find your rewards—in the grind. 

Destiny has rolled back the clock and reset every guardian and item in their inventory to 10 power. Power is determined by the overall combination of your highest piece of gear for each of eight slots—three weapons and five armor pieces. Through the campaign, you will find yourself on the way towards 200 power, the “soft cap.” You play, and each item dropped gives you a tiny boost. Once you do hit 200 power, then the grind begins—because its only through the Portal, and selecting missions from its menus, adding increasingly more difficult modifiers, can you then begin the Sisyphean slog towards 400 power. Roll that boulder up one reward chest from one mission at a time, only to have your power and the whole grind reset in December when the next season begins. So why do it?

Because the rewards, the best ones, the ones you actually want, are unobtainable until you reach or at least approach 400 power. 200 power ushers you into Tier 2 rewards. 300 comes with Tier 3, and while 400 does the same with Tier 4, it also finally brings with it the slim chance of starting to see the very best, Tier 5—the armor with the highest stat point totals and guns with the most perks, all enhanced. This wholly replaces systems that were designed to respect player time. Systems like craftable weapons to build the perks you want into the gun rather than be left to the luck of random drops, praying to the fickle whims of RNGesus. Systems like power leveling the individual weapons taking a fixed amount of a purchasable currency, rather than a new system that scales cost with level, unnecessarily introduces a whole new monetary economy to tweak and balance. Quality of life changes that were universally praised by the player base have been clawed back in favor of this grind.

There was always an element of the grind in new seasons, until the very most recent when the player base applauded that it was finally gone. Typically, the power limit was raised and you would need to eke up your power, week by week, by playing through some standard activities that rewarded the necessary point boosting engrams. But the biggest difference between this iteration and previous ones is the Tier system. In the past, you might not be at max power, but you could still claim rewards just as good as if you were, even if they didn’t have the highest power number next to their title. They dropped with the best rolls, or best stats. They just needed to be later infused with a max power item those weeks later whenever you happened to reach it. But that’s not the case here, because until you complete a giant portion of the grind, the Tier system ensures very little or even nothing that you are receiving along the way will be as good as what you are working to receive later on. 

But hey, at least as you grind that power you’ll get to enjoy it, for a time anyway, until that December reset, right? All that loot, it’ll help you hit harder. All that high stat armor will shield you from opponents for the weeks and months to come, right? Not so fast, my friend. Because those best rewards, the really great ones, they come from activities that require certain difficulty modifiers that will always scale enemies to a 20, 30, 40 power level delta above wherever you might have clawed your way to. So power level, it really doesn’t matter. You don’t get stronger in relation to the challenge set before you. This wasn’t the case previously. Raise your level and you could level into erasing the early season deltas in solo Lost Sectors, or enjoy a bonus in some activities and still complete them expecting rewards. Now, the game is designed for power only to matter with respects to your reward tiers. You don’t ever get powerful, you just unlock the privilege of facing even harder difficulty modifiers to get better loot. Want the best loot? Get on that grind. Otherwise…don’t bother?

And not bothering is ultimately where I’ve realized I’ve fallen to. Even if I wanted to forget all the quality-of-life systems swept away and engage in the grind, I don’t have the time. The math just doesn’t work out. Power level 200 is fine. It’ll take a week or so of regular playtime to finish the main campaign and a few more casual activists and Bob’s your uncle. But from there…Realistically, if you’re just playing the game normally, it will probably take 100 hours of playtime to boost from 200 to 400; just for your first chance of the best, Tier 5 loot. There are some reports that if you mind-numbingly farm the exact same quickest-to-complete mission over and over ad nauseam you can optimize the grind from 200 to 400 power in 50 or maybe 60 hours—while simultaneously sucking any joy the game might have left right out of it. Either way, it’s another 100 hours to scavenge from 400-450 as drops get increasingly harder to find from there. More hours still when level 500 and 550 power finally unlock in a future September update.

Realistically, I’m a 10-hour or so per week player if I’m really into it. I have a job and kids and only scrape a few hours gaming each night after the rest of the house has gone to bed. I’ve also got other games I would like to play and a backlog a mile long. But even if I tie up most of my gaming week and spend the next 10 weeks slogging the road to 400, that would take me into October, past the next content drop, to even get to those piddly 1-in-20 chances at tier 5 loot. Playing 10 hours per week, I wouldn’t hit either of the power caps before it was first raised and then reset in December. Sisyphus indeed…I would find myself back to 200 power with very few Tier 5 drops to show for the capitulation of nearly all my remaining gaming balance for this year.

And even if I did make the mad decision to dedicate my life to Destiny, I don’t even have the vault space to store the items I pick up along the way. Even with this grind and all this new loot, nothing was changed to alleviate the burdens of so many guardians and their overstuffed vaults. We got 10 years of crap in there, but some of it is crap with memories attached. A lot of it is just guns and armor rolls for a game that has hundreds more rewards than it ever gave players space to collect it. It’s a problem that was hopelessly exacerbated with The Final Shape, when 64 nearly must-have Exotic Class Item rolls were introduced for each of the three character types (192 total if you’re keeping count) along with 40 unique frame-type combinations for a brand-new weapon type, exotic special-ammo swords. I’ve spent hours in the past curating my vault and still have literally only a handful of open spaces there, and I’m not even sure what to do other than delete the lot. But if that’s the solution then what was the point of the last 10 years collecting those guns?

Unfortunately for me, the Edge of Fate just isn’t it. Thankfully for us all, there is help on the way. Game changes and rebalancing is coming. A promised solution to the vault dilemma was long announced and expected to be inbound with Renegades, that December update and reset. The most recent weekly update from Bungie also acknowledges that there “is much more to do to update and improve these systems,” but as of yet doesn’t offer real and lasting solutions. And the latest reporting suggests that Sony may be set to start taking over Bungie as a studio and limit their independence. If that is the case, surely keeping Destiny afloat, the only viable IP the studio has at this point is a major point of order.

But if the answers are anything like what is going on this week, where the annual Solstice event is offering loot a full tier above your station—Tier 5 loot on every completion* (terms and conditions apply: you must already be 400 power, but that’s better than the 1-in-20 chances outside the event), that’s still not enough because it isn’t a compelling reason for me to get to that minimum threshold of 400 or even 300 power in the first place. Just tossing a few higher tier bones isn’t going to fix what feels to me, and many in the Destiny community also voice, is a broken system.

Acknowledging the issue is a good first step. Correcting it and rebalancing it is the necessary next one. In its current state, with no vault space to even try, and without the time to realistically achieve any goal of the best loot, Destiny 2 is a game that I’m best leaving to wait and see what those changes end up being, and maybe checking back in once that dust settles by December. 

All of these words and I haven’t even mentioned the expansion’s bugs in the campaign (some of which seemingly led to a week-one patch to try and reduce motion sickness for some players), the bugs in the new systems that effect build crafting which become the game’s lifeblood, the bugs in reward mechanics (like having to have your highest gear not just owned but equipped) which lead to an even less-optimized grind, ammo generation changes (there’s less of it now), the jarring nature of the change in voice acting for a major character (because of the SAG-AFTRA strike which is honestly not Bungie’s fault), the (accidental?) disappearance of an entire strike (Sunless Cell), armor stat rolls funneled into archetypes that are mostly sub-optimal, the disappearance of Dungeons (my favorite activities in the game) and even raids (the pinnacle of endgame activities) from being relevant to offer meaningful rewards, exotic armor that’s been left behind in the new armor system, the introduction of tying Guardian Ranks to rewards (facepalm) but doing so rather stealthily and using an algorithm that is completely opaque to the players, etc. Some of these are yet to be addressed even weeks into the launch. But in true Bungie fashion, bugs or exploits that benefit players, like a broken gun that was outputting way too much damage or a particular mission that was paying out too many rewards at the end of each run, were patched or disabled in days. 

So, jumble the bugs into a single paragraph because, while worth mentioning, they’re not the real story here. The story of Edge of Fate is the fundamental loot and progression shift it introduces and whether that shift resonates with you or not. Whether the grind can be a meaningful activity and reason to play in and of itself. Because every bug might be fixed but none of them break the core mechanics of excellent gunplay, movement, and build crafting that remain largely unchanged or at least intact. Destiny is still a shooter and popping alien heads at the far end of a sniper scope, mowing down hordes from the business end of a machine gun, spamming magic grenades and tossing ice shurikens, or razing a battlefield with a devastating super, remain ever present. The shooter is still in there and performing well; it’s the looter part that’s been turned on its head.

Destiny needed a refresh. And I do applaud Bungie for trying something bold with the Edge of Fate. But it’s pretty obvious the big idea was to introduce a loot-based hamster wheel, overturned with difficulty and undercooked with quality and lacking any real new activity. Gone is my weekly to do list. Problem is I rather liked that list: play a bit of crucible, run a few Strikes, maybe a Nightfall or two, jump into Gambit (and yes, I am a proud Gambit enjoyer), and collect my handful of engrams from the lot, maybe seeing my power boost up a few points in the progress and look over any shiny new things acquired. Then finish off my week with solo runs on whichever weekly Dungeon is in rotation. I didn’t even see that much loot from that schedule and rarely anything new I cared about. But it was alright. I was having fun. We had a good thing going.

But now it’s the portal, only the portal and always the portal. Gambit is gone entirely, at least for now. Dungeons offer no progression and are at a fixed power delta penalty. I haven’t even played a crucible match because it is an entirely sub-optimal progression avenue given the extended time each match takes and the piddly reward each would merit. Grind the portal to eke a drop at a time and see power level number go up. Get gear along the way, at first none of it actually better than what you already have, especially armor, but still…number go up. Go up enough and finally you get to the best stuff. Then see number go crashing down to the soft cap, expected to saddle up again in December for a new grind, same as the old grind. Oh, and all that best Tier 5 loot you threw away your gaming life for from the previous season…forced irrelevance as future seasonal bonuses only apply to that season's shiny new weapons and gear.  

What it all fundamentally misses is what made Destiny so appealing to me for so long. It wasn’t the grind. It was never the grind. It wasn’t even the dopamine hit of the drop of new gear. It was always the power fantasy. It was the feeling of jumping headfirst into the depth of a dungeon with the slickest new build from your favorite content creator and the icing of seasonal modifiers taking you past the clouds to feel like a gorram space wizard. Go ahead, fly close to the sun; because the point wasn’t the loot. Not for me anyway. It was the climb of feeling those warm rays as I cut through a solo flawless attempt, maybe even lifted by the seminal Solo Operative modifier. But in this new Destiny, the weeklies have been replaced by the portal, the good loot is just out of reach, and no matter how high you ascend, the power delta will never let you run the fantasy of being that unstoppable force your ghost raised you from death to become. Your destiny is now to be a cog in the grind powering Bungie’s play-time-metrics hamster wheel. Gone are the carefree heights of Icarus. Here be this new laboring of Sisyphus. 

It’s been a long time, and we had a great run. I’ve been plunging hours into Destiny for almost 10 years. But until the dust settles on these new systems and things get worked out, we’re going to need to take a little time off. It’s not me, it’s you.