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Destiny: The House of Wolves Review
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on 2015-06-01 at 17:58 (3729 Views)
First off, let me apologize for the lack of reviews of late. I’ve unfortunately been crushed by the responsibilities of life and haven’t had much time to play games lately, much less beat or review them. Of course, that all changed earlier this month when I took a hacksaw to my schedule and carved out time for Destiny’s second expansion, House of Wolves. Back when I used to write about Final Fantasy XI, apart from missions, expansions were some of my favorite topics to cover. They introduced new content to experiment with, new areas to explore, and new mechanics to discover. You can imagine my excitement when Destiny’s first expansion, The Dark Below, approached back in December. Unfortunately, The Dark Below was widely seen as a disappointment and did not meet my high expectations. Thankfully, House of Wolves does not suffer the same fate and has almost universally impressed players.
House of Wolves builds upon the interactions with the Awoken Queen and her forces in The Reef, encountered during the original story missions on Venus. After receiving her assistance, the Queen told players that she would call upon their help when the time came. That time has finally come as the House of Wolves, the Fallen house which previously served the Queen, has rebelled and returned to its former Kell, Skolas. The Queen opens the reef to the guardians and tasks them with hunting down Skolas and his allies. House of Wolves' story follows as players chase after Skolas, cutting off his allies, preventing him from forging new allegiances, and ruining his plans. Although the story follows the format of many of Destiny’s missions (go to a location, hear instructions over the radio, proceed to the next location, fight enemies, etc), it is a far more engaging and enjoyable story than The Dark Below. Not only is the story more coherent and better developed, but the missions take players to a number of exciting locations; some of which players would not expect to venture into during a story mission.
Part of the success of House of Wolves undoubtedly comes from the integration of the game’s two main NPCs, the Queen’s Emissary, Petra Venj, and Variks, the sole Fallen still loyal to the Queen. Both characters are far more emotional and involved than The Dark Below's Eris. House of Wolves also has a better narrative structure. Although players are essentially directed from one mission to the next, each mission feels like it is building on a campaign against Skolas and his House. Additionally, unlocking House of Wolves' later content requires completing the missions, unlike The Dark Below which peculiarly gave players access to the expansion's endgame content immediately. That said, it is still strange to traverse these missions solo, especially after Petra’s claim of her love of “field work.” I know Destiny hasn’t branched into the realm of fighting with NPC allies, but I can’t help feeling that doing so would help the story and missions feel more unique and grander. And it’s not like Bungie does not have experience with this.
During one of Destiny’s early trailers, players got a glimpse of what appeared to be a purple-hued social space. However, after discovering it during the story, players were disappointed to find that The Reef was not a location which could be revisited. Many were unhappy and clamored that Bungie had created a place and was holding onto it till a later date. House of Wolves finally allows players to revisit The Reef and provides Destiny with its second major social space. There’s no doubt that the groundwork for The Reef was established long ago. However, I also believe that Bungie's decision to not immediately give players access to The Reef was not driven by a desire to charge players for access later (in part because all players, even those who have not purchased House of Wolves, can access The Reef), but because the area needed to serve the story. Those of you who played Final Fantasy XI in its early days leading up to Chains of Promathia might remember that the initial trailer featured a teaser for what would eventually become Sea. While the area may have been finished earlier, it did not serve the story to provide players access to that area till many months later. In the same vein, access to The Reef waited until the story called players to return to the area. While the Reef is home to a collection of Destiny’s newest NPCs and many other useful characters (a Cryptarch, bounty tracker, etc), the faction merchants and the Gunsmith, who can now reforge weapons, are only located in The Tower, meaning that The Reef has not led to the same exodus that Whitegate once inspired back during Treasures of Aht Urhgan.
House of Wolves also features new endgame PvE and PvP content for players who reach Destiny’s higher levels. Before House of Wolves' release, Bungie shocked players by announcing that there would be no endgame raid, but a new three person endgame activity, the Prison of Elders. However, like the Vault of Glass before it, the Prison of Elders is some of the best PvE content featured in Destiny. The Prison is similar to the Firefight game-mode introduced in Halo 3: ODST. Three guardians are pitted against waves of enemies across a number of rounds with various modifiers meant to help and hinder. Additional objectives also force players to develop new tactics and coordinate with their teammates in the middle of matches, rather than hiding back and exploiting the enemy AI. After the debacle that occurred with the Crota’s End raid, I can’t help feeling that Bungie completely retooled the endgame experience of House of Wolves to prevent players from developing strategies which can circumvent the intended gameplay mechanics. The higher rounds also challenge players with rotating bosses which feature some unique and well-designed gameplay mechanics. For instance, one boss will occasionally light the ground on fire for ten seconds, forcing players to repeatedly jump in the air to avoid taking prolonged damage. Of course, during all this, enemies continue to shoot at you and sometimes additional objectives must be completed while working around these new mechanics.
In its early days, Bungie stated that they wanted Destiny to appeal to both PvE players and PvP players. However, apart from a few new multiplayer maps, The Dark Below only really created new PvE content. In another major improvement, House of Wolves has introduced a new endgame PvP challenge known as the Trials of Osiris. This arena gives players who excel at PvP a chance to shine and showcase their skill and coordination. Matches are first-to-five elimination matches which pit two teams of three against each other. Given the importance of coordination, Bungie has wisely chosen to restrict the Trials to preformed teams. The Trials run from Friday to Tuesday and only occur on a single map each week. Players need to purchase a ticket for entry which records their wins and losses and allows entry until they have won nine matches or lost three, at which point a new ticket must be purchased to reenter the Trials. Winning matches on the same ticket opens up rewards which can be purchased in The Reef. One of the best features about the Trials is The Lighthouse; an exclusive social space open to players who go 9-0 in the Trials and which guarantees some impressive rewards. Gaining access to The Lighthouse is challenging and immensely rewarding, something that Destiny’s PvP content desperately needed. In the first week, only around 200,000 players succeeded in going 9-0, and I believe that is an even smaller figure when you consider how many of those players accomplished the task multiple times.
Another notable addition is the introduction of Etheric Light; an upgrade material which allows players to ascend all existing pieces of gear, from the original release of Destiny or The Dark Below, to the current damage and armor caps. Previously, only exotic weapons and armor, the rarest and best piece of gear, could be upgraded, and even that process was fairly complicated. Now, any piece of gear can be upgraded at any time, as long as players can acquire Etheric Light. On one hand, yes, players have been clamoring to upgrade their current gear to keep weapons like Vision of Confluence and Fatebringer relevant. However, unlike Final Fantasy XI which suddenly changed the level cap after many years and then introduced new gear, it did not take me three years to acquire any of my current gear – Destiny has not even been out for a year. While it is nice to be able to continue using some of my favorite weapons, I am a little concerned. Namely, does this mean that some of the weapons which were originally released with Destiny will continue to be the best option, even ten years from now? In a game like Destiny which is seemingly going to increase the level cap with each new release, using new gear with each expansion is almost part and parcel.
Back in December when I chose Destiny as my BG Staff Pick of 2014, I also stated that its first expansion had shaken my faith in Destiny’s longevity. For many players, myself included, The Dark Below was, at best, a minor expansion of the game which raised major questions about future expansions and the direction of the game. Overall, House of Wolves is a much better expansion and shows that Bungie not only listens to its players, but is willing to take steps to improve on Destiny’s deficiencies. Of course, The House of Wolves is not perfect and still suffers from a number of Destiny’s glaring problems – The most egregious being the game’s painful random number generator. That said, I’m more confident in Bungie’s ability now, not just because of the success of House of Wolves, but because Bungie delayed its release, presumably to rework many aspects of the expansion. Also, although some might disagree, I’m convinced that the House of Wolves’ story was retooled after the criticism of Destiny’s original story and The Dark Below’s to the point that Variks is a character that was not previously included. While players have long known that April Stewart would be voicing Petra, the identity of Varik’s voice actor is still uncertain. Honestly, there were parts of House of Wolves which really reminded me of Halo, Bungie’s previous success. Going forward, if Bungie can continue to listen to feedback and improve Destiny, I have more faith in their ability to deliver a product that can last many years.
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