Okay, I've had time to fully look at all the stuff revealed yesterday and have read some of the discussion on here. Here are my thoughts:
Mercury and story: This campaign looks hella amazing. Osiris and his ghost sound amazing and the premise, as with all Destiny shit, feels intriguing and mysterious as ever. We don't know a lot about what the story is but rightfully so. We have gotten a decent look at the kind of environment Mercury is though and fucking god dammit, it looks amazing. The Mercury visual stylings supplemented by the Egyptian architecture just is so striking. Instantly excited to explore this space.
Infinite Forest: Really cool concept. Also seems like, from the glimpse we get of the Director, that there is some sort of endgame weekly activity associated with the Infinite Forest too. While they did say it wasn't procedurally generated, it seems like it's instead a collection of a huge variety of pre-fab encounters that will fade in and out Vex-style, leading to some sort of hand-produced randomization. I'm totally down for this. Hopefully, it is a challenging space with good amount of replay value. More importantly, it needs to have its own loot pool... but I'm concerned it won't. I have a hunch for some reason. Still, time will tell and till then, I can't wait to see what's in store here next week.
Heroic Strikes Playlist: Exciting!!!! Until you notice the power level requirement is 270 in the DLC world of max 235 PL and that's... not very high? Almost feels like 280-290 would just seem higher off the bat, though what does PL even mean anyway so whatever. It's nice to have a reason to play strikes now, considering that it also seems there's a weekly milestone for running the heroic strikes playlist too. Doesn't seem like there are modifiers but I can't tell for sure yet, but would be disappointing otherwise. Perhaps the most disappointing thing is that I don't get the sense that there will be exclusive loot to get from the heroic strikes. They didn't mention it and it's still part of the Zavala Vanguard pool of activities. Hopefully we're closer to strike loot at some point soon? But until then, while the heroic strike playlist is a step in the right direction, what am I getting out of it beyond another shot at powerful gear?
Vex Weapons Sidequest: Post game weapon forging to get special Osiris weapons is an awesome idea and the visual indicator on the wall in the Lighthouse is hella cool. I do hope, however, that these weapons aren't a substitute for the location weapons. The wording during the stream made it seem like these were the destination weapons, which makes me wonder what's gonna be in Vance's loot pool. We'll see for sure but tying cool weapon unlocks to an endgame series of quests is a really good idea.
And of course...
Raid Lairs: First, is it immensely disappointing that we won't have a theme specific raid on a theme specific location? Like VoG, CE, KF, WotM? Yes. Mercury looks so amazing and the Vex so cool that I really wish we were doing something that region. That said, there is nothing inherent to the Raid Lair concept that is wrong or bad. Shorter raids based off the main raid? Fits my lifestyle. COMPLETELY new set of encounters and bosses in a COMPLETELY new, unvisited part of the map? Okay, awesome yet. Brand new loot pool? Fuck yes.
For all intents and purposes, Raid Lairs are brand new raids. They just reuse some of the already made environment content. Functionally, brand new. So, it's a little difficult for me to get too mad. Content like Raids take a long time to design and make. Everyone talking about Crota's End and how we've had this precedent needs to remember what a shitshow Crota's End actually was and how, ultimately, it was just so disgustingly disappointing. That's what happens when you rush a Raid. And that's just encounter design. Think about all the work in art and world design that takes time and resources. These things take a lot of work and it seems like, with the expansion of other content in the DLC and Infinite Forest, Bungie made the call to allocate those resources elsewhere while still giving us a raid of some sorts.
I like this decision. While, YES, a Vex lore based raid on Mercury would always be preferable, I also want new exciting Raid content and challenges and this is that. Yes visually, it's gonna look like aspects of the Leviathan (though we don't even know this for sure, nor do we know for a fact that the Cabal are the enemies, they probably are of course) but if in execution, it's all new, no complaints from me.
I get why people are disappointed in the Raid lairs concept. I am too, to some extent, but I can't really stay disappointed seeing that we are still getting, basically, a fresh raid.
Overall, Stream 1 got me really hyped. While I've spent less time on Destiny 2 of late, due to a very bsy schedule, Curse of Osiris Stream 1 has spiked my interest all the way back. This looks like a huge step up in expansion ambition and it feels unique, while still existing in the D2 foundational structure. Excited for next week's activity stream.
