PlayStation and Bungie have announced a new Destiny 2 initiative, in which three of the game's big expansions will be completely free to play. Shadowkeep (2019), Beyond Light (2020), and The Witch Queen (2022), are all being made available. Meanwhile, Lightfall, the game's most recent expansion, is part of this month's PS Plus Essential selection. That's a lot of Destiny 2.
There is a catch, though. All of this stuff will only be freely accessible until the 3rd June, so you've got roughly one month to get stuck in. Base Destiny 2, of course, is free-to-play in the first place.
If you've been at all tempted to give Bungie's ongoing title a shot, and see how it's doing in 2024, this is probably a good time to try it out. The developer will want to attract as many players as it can ahead of The Final Shape, which is set to launch on the 4th June. Everything suddenly makes sense...
Might you be diving into Destiny 2 this month? Lock and load in the comments section below.
[source blog.playstation.com]
Comments 24
Which brings us to another terrible acquisition…
I left off on Destiny 2 somewhere around Warmind or Curse of Osiris. I loved this franchise so much up until that point. I would be sad to not see out the conclusion to a game I started and was so invested in starting ten years ago. So this is the perfect opportunity to get back in. See you out there Guardians.
Question. Is it good as singleplayer content or only coop/mp?
Jumped back in recently to get the final two trophies I need for the Platinum (which will be my 100th!). Glad to have the opportunity to immediately be highest-level and experience a bunch of content I've missed. Just need one more trophy now - not the hardest one - and I'll knock that out today or tomorrow.
Nothing feels as good as Bungie's gunplay, so it's a nice treat to be playing again. Not sure if I'll stay on the treadmill - probably depends on how the Final Shape is received - but in any event, this initiative makes a lot of sense, and I'm sure it'll pull some lapsed players.
@AFCC yes I used to play mainly single player, and you team up in some events naturally for strikes etc. It was a great back in the day that got very convoluted with its systems over time but I think they were stripping a lot out.
Trouble is they stripped out too much including the original campaign and dlc that we all paid for
Just saying Bungie could copy FF14 with their free trial by adding in all expansions before lightfall.
@AFCC I recently tried jumping into Destiny 2 for the first time with a hope to play it solo like a traditional game. On paper I should have loved it, but I found it to be an extremely frustrating experience.
The story makes no effort to catch you up (not even a recap movie) and heaps a bunch of sci-fi goo goo gaa gaa on you that makes no sense to a newcomer.
What's more, there is a very poor sense of direction as to what should be tackled and in what order. This is compounded by the bizarre decision to boot you into a completely different planet/quest/expansion when you startup the game (it doesn't pick up from where you left off). One time i got quite far through a quest, had to log off and when I returned I was somewhere completely different being told to talk to someone that I couldn't identify or find and It took me lots of attempts to get back to the planet i was on previously. I had to guess my way back to the mission I was part way through and found i had to start all the way from the beginning.
Another time I launched the game and it booted me into a new story again. The planet seemed cool enough so i played through the story of the expansion for an hour or so but eventually reached a point where i couldn't progress because I needed to buy a costly expansion that I didn't have. I guess they let you play the opening for free as a taster, but booting a noob into that from launch without telling them is not a good idea. Reading on forums and Reddit, this is an issue that the Destiny 2 community is aware of and very frustrated by as they recognise that it is putting off new players.
Overall I felt that every time I played I wasn't making any progress and while the mechanics were fun and the game was visually polished, it was all i incredibly repetitive and felt meaningless. The world building just wasn't for me either and felt very sci-fi generic.
My advice is don't give it too much of your time if you're not initially hooked. While I hoped it would essentially be Halo for PlayStation, I was left very disappointed and felt it wasn't worth my time or SSD space, especially considering the quality of games elsewhere in my backlog.
So do you claim them and they are free after the date or is it a timed free trail and you then have to buy them I'm a bit confused
@AK4tywill wow I played it at launch for like 2 months, ended the og campaign and then played mostly pvp and what you told me seems worst than the launch game lol what the heck
I guess this is nice, but anyone that wants to get invested in the Destiny universe is still required to watch 2+ hours of Youtube videos to get up to speed. Not sure if it's worth effort, IMO Destiny's plot only works so well to those who have been invested for a long time and have seen how the series has evolved over years.
In terms of the Lightfall expansion lm not seeing it included with the essential games and the expansions store page is saying £39.99.
@soracloud28 general consensus is that Curse of Osiris was the low point. The game had very little in the way of content back then, and is far more expansive and involved now. I will warn though - there is a lot of stuff thrown in your face if you haven't played in awhile, a lot of quests that aren't actually important to the story that the game will give you. If you do jump in, try to do the expansions in the order of release, even though it can be tempting to try to smash out Beyond Light and Lightfall as they both give you extra subclasses (stasis and strand).
@Mortal thanks for the heads up. My brain does much better with linear storytelling and a steady drip of mechanics so I will definitely do order of release and stick to main mission stuff. Cheers!
Oh right destiny is still a thing then
I tried playing it for the first time not long ago and my God, there was a lot guff thrown at me. Didn’t know what was going on. To say I was overwhelmed would be an understatement, I really like the gunplay though.
Anyone know what the install footprint is for this lot? 😬
@Nightcrawler71 Destiny 2 currently takes up a cool 125.1GB on my console.
Okay, there's nothing "cool" about that. Takes up just as much space as Call of Duty!
Horrible experience for newcomers, to think they (Bungie) allegedly sealed the fate of Naughty Dogs game, is another of Sonys commendable moves.
I tried Destiny 2 and I was confused how it was basically still the same game as 1. No idea how to start proceedings for the story of 2 and the attack etc so I was basically moving around that same ground I had been over countless times in 1. Quit, uninstalled, moved on
I still believe Bungie will come good with other games
@BeerIsAwesome Thank you and congrats to you as well!
@Mortal ok thanks 👍 is that with the expansion(s)?
@Nightcrawler71 yeah, all expansions. Thankfully Bungie insist on vaulting old content like the main/original campaign and earlier expansions, to keep the game at a "reasonable" install size.
Good to know, thanks. It’s been quite a while since I’ve played Destiny 2. I remember the gun play being great, but last time I hopped back in I felt overwhelmed with all the currencies, game mechanics etc.
I wouldn't classify Destiny 2 as F2P it's more free to try. You will hit the pay walls after a few days of playing. No story, dungeons or raids unless you pay.
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