$59.95 | PC, XBS/X, PS4/5, Stadia | bungie.net
If does one thing right – and, in fact, it does many – it’s that it brings a sense of consistency and stability to the game. It adds new features,. That rare sense of continuity allows The to instead stand out in a more meaningful way: by being ’s best expansion. Finally, that future is here. The centrepiece is the campaign, which for the first time in ’s history is itself a compelling reason to recommend this expansion. Previously, campaigns were little more than a path into the endgame – a handful of short missions, linked by rigidly templated repeatable activities and open world busywork. Here, though, it feels like the main attraction. Each of its eight lengthy missions is full of personality, progressing the story through a series of standout encounters and the occasional surprise. It starts as you assault a Cabal base on Mars – recently returned after being, er, borrowed by the Darkness – in order to fire yourself out of a cannon onto the titular Witch Queen’s ship. From there, you discover a portal into her Throne World, a sort of spooky alternate dimension made into a physical manifestation of its owner’s personality. The gunplay is great too, of course. That’s always been one of ’s great strengths, and the campaign’s encounter design capitalises on it well. I’ve heard that, on normal difficulty, campaign is no pushover. But I played on Legendary – a new difficulty mode that hard caps your power level below the mission requirement, and adds new modifiers and challenge elements. It feels well-tuned for anyone with a decently filled Vault and a working knowledge of armour mods. Plenty of harder encounters forced me to engage with ’s buildcrafting in a way that’s rarely the case outside of the hardest endgame activities. It gives the complexity of the many ability systems, weapon perks, and mods a chance to shine.
