The next era of Bungie's long-running live-service looter shooter Destiny 2 kicked off on Tuesday with its The Edge of Fate expansion — the first of two this year, and one that introduces a radically different type of location and campaign for players to journey through and experience. So far, however, the DLC hasn't exactly gotten off to the best start.
At the time of writing, user reviews for Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate and recent reviews for Destiny 2 on the leading PC gaming platform Steam are "Mixed," with 382 of the former and 3,138 of the latter posted (many players left reviews for the expansion on the main Destiny 2 page). Ratings on Xbox and PlayStation are more difficult to measure, though most recent Destiny 2 Xbox reviews are negative and the expansion as a 3.79/5 star score on the PlayStation Store.
Additionally, according to SteamDB, the game's peak Steam player count on The Edge of Fate launch day was 99,193 — just short of 100K, and under a third of the 314,634 players The Final Shape had at release last year.
Those numbers weren't just because The Final Shape was the final DLC in the Light and Darkness Saga, either; every expansion since Beyond Light has achieved well over 200K day one players (Forsaken and Shadowkeep are too far back to track), with 2023's Lightfall holding the record of 316,750.
So, what's going on here, exactly? Well, from what I've been able to gather combing through user reviews and impressions across various social media sites, it seems like the general consensus is that while the story — a non-linear narrative centered around the mysterious forces of The Nine, their rebelling emissary Orin, and a new destination in the Reef "shrouded by dark matter" called Kepler — is excellent, there are significant problems with the expansion's gameplay and presentation.
More specifically, players have reacted quite negatively to Kepler overall, with many finding its Metroidvania-inspired design to be annoying to navigate and levying significant scorn towards one new mechanic on it in particular: Matterspark.
This power transforms your Guardian into an Arc-emitting ball that can roll around Sonic-style, squeezing through tight spaces and delivering powerful zaps to enemies and certain objectives.
However, it's been said that this mechanic is used way too frequently, and is paired with puzzles and encounters that don't leverage it in enough engaging ways to ensure it's not repetitive.
It's also reportedly quite clunky and difficult to control, and a number of players have even commented that rolling around in Matterspark form has caused them major motion sickness. Not great.
Kepler's art direction and visual style have also had quite a mixed reception. It's been criticized for being one of the least visually distinct and interesting locations in Destiny, and as a retired longtime player, I have to agree — at least based on what I've seen.
It's largely characterized by a rocky surface with scientific outposts and underground caverns filled with bulbous, fleshy growths; not very different from what we've seen from destinations like the Moon or Titan, ultimately.
The jury's still out in regard to The Edge of Fate's broader game-wide changes to loot and armor, as well as its new Portal feature that allows Guardians to curate which activities they'd like to play in and activate difficulty modifiers for better rewards.
There's also still The Desert Perpetual raid on the way, set to launch on July 19 and give players a new pinnacle six-man activity to overcome for desirable endgame gear.
Overall, though, it doesn't seem like the expansion will be the big win Bungie was surely hoping it would be — especially in the wake of its struggles with its upcoming extraction shooter Marathon, which got delayed after an art theft controversy and negative gameplay feedback from Closed Alpha testing. And that's not good news for Destiny's new dawn.
Of course, a bounce-back can't be ruled out, but Destiny 2's player numbers have been steadily declining over time — and not even a new expansion has brought them back to where they were just a single year ago. There's no getting around it: that's a big problem for the game and its future. Hopefully it's one Bungie can fix.
Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate is available on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One systems, Windows PC (via Steam, Epic Games Store), PS5, and PS4 for $39.99, though you can get it for just $33.49 at CDKeys. The $79.99 Year of Prophecy bundle that includes Rewards Passes and the upcoming December DLC Renegades is also $66.99 at CDKeys, and the $99.99 Ultimate Edition of it with instant access to some Exotics and bonus cosmetics is $83.89 at CDKeys.
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