As a long time fan of the Destiny franchise, I’m all too aware of how hit and miss each expansion and season can be, and after the amazing season of the Chosen I was excited to see if Bungie was going to keep the momentum going. Unfortunately, while not terrible, so far Season of the Splicer feels just a bit bland once you get past the plot.
The Good
Season of the Splicer opens with disaster. The Last City on Earth has become trapped in an unending night sustained by Vex machinations. With no easy way to shoot our way out of the problem, Ikora reaches out to an unexpected ally to help save the City. The Fallen Kell Mithrax, a former enemy turned ally and, as we learn, a Sacred Splicer capable of communing and controlling machines. Able to cut a path into the Vex consciousness, he offers us a means to take the fight to our foe. In return for his aid Ikora offers to settle his followers within the city walls, sharing humanity’s last bastion with one of its oldest enemies. This sets in motion a clash of wills as Lakshmi-2 of the Future War Cult begins prophesizing disaster, rallying an increasingly paranoid city towards violence.
There’s a lot of good to say about this story. While not quite as engrossing as the preceding Season of the Chosen’s storyline, the fact that I come out of each weekly story mission wanting to punch Lakshmi-2 just a bit harder than before is a sure sign that the writers have done their work well. A good villain is a hard thing to write, but Lakshmi-2 has the perfect blend of blind arrogance and genuine belief in her cause to keep my blood pressure high while still being believable. The story also gives Saint-14 a place at the front as we learn how the Fallen see one of Destiny’s most legendary warriors, one who forged his legacy hunting down the very people we are now seeking to ally with. The stylized monochrome cutscene where Mithrax recounts his people’s perspective on ‘the Saint’ is as gorgeous as it is chilling, recasting a beloved hero into a homicidal bogey man in a manner that draws attention to the unspoken horror and faint grim darkness of the setting. And, then finally, there are the Fallen themselves.
Mithrax is the most obvious Fallen character to look at in this expansion, though I’d say he’s not as interesting as I’d have hoped. He is all the same a solid character. While no Empress Caiatl, his good-natured wisdom and history with the player makes him a welcome addition to the plot. The addition of his adopted daughter, Eido, was a bit more interesting from my perspective, as while we never meet her, the audio recordings we find suggest a thoughtful and intelligent character. In addition a good number of minor Fallen characters appear in various bits of lore, revealing a plethora of fascinating new residents of the City. Fallen NPCs have also been added to various social spaces, working and socializing alongside humans. It’s an addition I hope remains after this season’s end.
Finally, while not a raid player myself, the return of the Vault of Glass is still a great thing and it stokes my hopes that one day we will see my favorite game mode from Destiny 1, the Prison of the Elders, return.
The Bad
The main issue I have with Season of the Splicer is that it comes after the incredible Season of The Chosen. Compared to Battlegrounds and the Presage, Season of the Splicer’s seasonal activities feel weak to me. Part of it is that I find Vex to be the least interesting of the four main enemy groups, but more than that, both of the seasonal activities offered so far feel just a bit bland. Override is an okay game mode, but it feels rather repetitive in a way Battlegrounds didn’t. The initial stages before entering the Vex network not only get boring after awhile but also feel static for a few reasons. Unlike Battlegrounds, which randomly selects the map each game, Override switches only locations at the weekly reset. You also spend a lot more time in the starting area, working through waves of enemies and overly simplistic puzzles until you enter the Vex network, as opposed to Battlegrounds that had you carving your way through enemies all over the map. Battlegrounds also featured a lot more in the way of variety in terms of objectives to complete, be it killing enemies or guarding locations. All of them involved at lot of shooting, but with the map rotation added in to the mix it helped tone down the predictability.
The other main activity revealed so far is Expunge, which I have little in the way of nice things to say about. While certainly more varied in terms of gameplay, these small infiltration missions feel even worse than Override. There is no sense of pressure (save for my mounting blood pressure when continually dying to jumping puzzles) and the neon-hellspace of the Vex dimension rapidly grows boring to navigate. The Labyrinth version, which sees players traverse a far too large jumping puzzle section is the worst of the lot, but even the less tedious ones don’t excite me too much. To Bungie’s credit, Expunge does have its interesting moments here and there, but the blandly predictable Vex, area design, and overreliance on jumping puzzles in certain sections leaves the mode on the bottom of my to-do list. In addition, the new ‘Corrupted’ versions that dropped hardly do the game mode any favors. While only the Labyrinth version has received the ‘upgrade,’ I can honestly say that the addition of Taken enemies and obstacles is fairly terrible and the loot system feels underwhelming. The addition of more enemies and invulnerability phases in the boss fights also feels like a cheap way to up the difficulty.
All that said, the season’s storyline isn’t over and certain elements of the plot, hidden Triumphs, and other miscellaneous details leave me hoping that there might be some sort of epic capstone activity to finish off the storyline, something more along the lines of Presage or the Season of the Hunt’s Harbinger mission that’ll let the season end on a more exciting note. This could save the season if done right, but if it forces us to tromp through the neon-shaded Tron-like nightmare that is the Vex consciousness, I suspect I’ll be groaning before long.
There’s also sour notes in the background worth mentioning. The new transmog system is an absolute disaster, being overly complicated and ridiculously impractical. It wasn’t something that I was personally looking forward to, so the whole mess hits me a bit less hard than it might others, but it’s still frustrating to see Bungie screw up so badly. All things considered it’s fairly depressing since there were hopes that such micro-transaction-focused shenanigans might come to an end once Bungie was an independent studio once again, but this scandal makes me worry a bit about the future.
Conclusion
Season of the Splicer is at its best when it comes to plot, and while I have some hopes for the seasonal activities going forward I can honestly say that the ones on offer now are a miss for me. All in all three stars for a good story and some solid potential, and a prayer that it’ll be better by the season’s end.
Buried Under Books and Cats 