Destiny: Rise of Iron

Alright folks, as expected, we greet you with our obnoxiously late reviews of things you’ve already played. I keep telling myself that I’ll get one of these things done in a timely fashion but then other things of a more immediate priority rear their ugly faces in my general direction scaring me into tending to them first. It’s a form of torture in some countries, I’m sure of it.

Destiny: Rise of Iron is yet another expansion for Bungie’s first person sci-fi shooter. It was released on September 20th, 2016 and offers players a seemingly endless supply of new content in the form of weapons, armor, cosmetics, and the oh, so loved patrol missions. They added a new public space where you and your fellow Guardians can mingle and pet wolves (except not really, you can though watch them go through the same animation loops over and over again). They also added some new Strike goodness incorporating the big bad enemy from the Rise of Iron “story” missions as well as an all new and challenging Raid which I’ve yet to actually have the pleasure of enduring. So, without further ado, let’s dive in!

GAMEPLAY

It’s Destiny...except with more snow than it previously had. And a bunch of oversized twizzlers growing out of the ground. Destiny has always boasted superior gunplay to it’s counterpart shooters *cough* Halo 5 *cough* and Bungie has yet again upped their scale in scenery and set pieces. Everything feels fresh and fun again and it’s nice to revisit that universe with a new and exciting imminent threat to the last great city on earth.

Something Bungie did with Rise of Iron which added a new layer of...er...depth, I guess, to its mission structure was taking players on semi-interesting side missions into territory previously reserved for only the multiplayer game modes. It was fun to return to those environments and shoot up Fallen with a buddy. Alas, the joy was short lived as those missions are few and far between and very brief.

Something else they did was add a sort of tracker for how many things you’ve done in Rise of Iron. It keeps tracks of certain items you’ve collected and missions you’ve completed. It follows the same format the Moments of Triumph followed for their year two transition and it gives you something else to look at in your menus. The tracker really doesn’t add any layer of depth to the game, simply gives you a means for tallying up things you’ve done. Honestly I’m surprised they didn’t throw that in their phone app like they did everything else that essentially does the same thing except for every other aspect of the game. Bungie, why the heck is the Grimoire not in game yet!?!?

NARRATIVE

Alrighty...so...Bungie is making some interesting choices in how they tell their stories with Destiny. I know they know how to tell a good story. Halo: ODST and Halo: Reach are both testaments to that fact. But with Destiny I feel like Bungie is putting a lot of their narrative and story lore in the description of items and little dead ghosts in game which unlock cards in their app which not everyone wants to bother downloading. Rise of Iron is and isn’t an exception to this.

Bungie tells a good story with Rise of Iron, it’s a story of failure and regret for Lord Saladin and that translates sort of well through his character. Then you’ve got your part in all of it, you are the savior of his past woes and you come in to sweep away the SIVA virus-twizzler-thingy in grand fashion with lots of bullets and grenades. You then take your place as an Iron Lord after defeating the virus-thing. It’s cool. I can’t help but feel like it’s missing something though. The Dark Below, The House of Wolves, and the Taken King all had the benefit of having some sort of foundation established in the base game (remember that series of missions which all sort of loosely elluded to other things going on but didn’t really follow through until you got the expansions). Rise of Iron doesn’t have that helping it along. It would be like watching Iron Man 3 without having first seen The Avengers. Some of it is coherent on its own, but you miss out on some parts that feel like they are alluding to something else.

All that being, the story of Rise of Iron is good after you piece it all together. And the final mission makes you feel like a badass wielding their fire-axe of wickedness,

CONCLUSIONS

Destiny: Rise of Iron is a fine expansion to the already expanded Destiny base game, and for the reasonable-ish price of $30.00 you’re getting a good amount of content.

FINAL SCORE

80/100