GaminCounselor

Renegades is Bungie's cash in on the Star Wars franchise in attempt to attract new and old players back to destiny 2. It successful stands above the previous Edge of Fate expansion which was seen as an absolute failure. Granted alot of the hate came due to the portal and Renegades does nothing to change that. Renegades removes the constant need to use the destination "mechanic" yes, it's a mechanic similar to hell diverse or similar to scorestreaks in call of duty. Labeling them abilities is a deceitful way of avoiding having to create real tangible abilities for supers that you can take and use in the rest of the game removing bungie's need to have to balance anything new. However, unlike EOF, Renegades does not force you to have to use these mechanics and allows you to play how you wish. If you love star wars, then this story will feel 100x's better than Edge of Fate but if you do not care about Star Wars then this is simply just a better experience with plenty of issues awaiting you. Renegades is one of the longest campaigns in recent years even compared to The Final Shape which was Bungie's last massive DLC. However, Renegades follows the same sinful pattern as EOF and forces you to repeat activities over and over again creating a very mundane and repetitive experience that has asking yourself "are we there yet?" in regard to the ending of it all. The activities themselves have do the most generic and uninspiring tasks that Bungie has leaned on for years. Such as stand on and capture this platform multiple times or collect motes & dunk them, and last there is an intel activity that requires you to go around and collect intel only allowing you to get a max of 3 stacks which give you a total of 15% per dunk which half way through it all you are stopped and have to fight yellow bar enemies to progress creating a very long and drawn out experience that is not fun. The saving grace for any of these bounty hunt missions are the fact that you have a large crowd of enemies to slaughter allowing you to simply turn off your brain and let the adrenaline run its course. The exotic mission provided a similar vibe as The Whisper secret mission and it was a pleasant surprise to see it in the middle of the campaign causing me to actually be surprised which is something exotic missions have failed to achieve recently. Though i do believe it's being over-hyped by many people making it seems like its the best exotic mission we've had when its simply just better than the most recent ones. The story is a kitbash of star wars and Destiny 2 Red war. You wanted Red war back right? well we have ghaul 2.0 and the almighty 2.0. It is lazy the same story, a cabal leader who is upset with the previous cabal royalty and wishes to take over, trying to achieve attacking the last city by using a super weapon ship from space. Having to drive around and destroy different components to stop the evil plan. Bar for bar it is red war with a splice of star wars by having to escape with the secret plans that disclose this big secret. Dredgen Bael is by far the most unappealing villain as they shamefully copy everything that was wrong with Kylo Ren with his whiny cringe teenager angst behavior. Only being exacerbated by the realization that he is just a rich kid with daddy issues and instead of being a dark guardian. The entire time Bael is seen as weak, incapable, and never has a shining moment in the story after the first cutscene with having a jedi sith stand off with the new praxic order warlock whose name i keep forgetting because they are just that forgettable of a character. I'm not kidding, their existence is simply there to be the generic jedi character. Drifter, Eris & the newly introduced ghost Blue are the highlight of the entire story. The relationships between the three are well developed and expressed in humor, drama, and suspense that actually makes you care about them. The nine are shoehorned in as the plot device of why Dredgen Bael is able to achieve half the damage he's done in the campaign serving as a proxy host for the nine. Even though he's not chosen by them to be a host. The nine story is again the weakest part of the entire campaign leading me to believe that the fate saga is a miss and lacks the real intensity and creativity as the light and darkness saga. A Saga that started out weak and continues to show weakness and disinterest from the community is not going to be able to end in the same manner as the final shape did. Loot is to be expect, most weapons are a miss even with the star wars theme; however the new legendary forerunner, a special 180 handcannon is one of the best new additions and feels amazing to use, along with the immersion breaking praxic blade (its a one for one lightsaber). The praxic blade is incredibly strong and will absolutely be nerfed in the future. Unfortunately even star wars isn't enough to save destiny 2 nor bring new life to a declining franchise.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]