Future 2: Lightfall’s announcement reside stream featured an epic cinematic trailer meshed with gameplay showcasing new subclasses, mechanics and areas. However past the usual fare, Bungie’s most up-to-date occasion provided an sudden promise.
This promise, which the Future group has been campaigning for during the last two years, places an finish to future content material vaulting for good. The content material vault has taken every little thing that was playable from 2017 to 2018 of Future’s reside interval and eliminated it from the sport. Not solely was this apply an egregious offense to artwork preservation, nevertheless it robbed gamers of a product they paid for merely three years after launch.
Fortunately, that won’t be the case anymore as Bungie guarantees to “now not sundown expansions.” However even then, a lot of Future 2’s previous remains to be vaulted and Bungie has not commented on whether or not we’ll see it return.
The sins of the vault
Think about buying God of Warfare (2018) on launch day, however someday in 2021, it’s eliminated out of your library with little or no warning and you’ll by no means play it once more. That sounds absurd, proper? Nicely, that’s the best strategy to describe Future 2’s content material vault. Simply three years after Future 2 launched in 2017, the bottom sport and its two DLC had been made inaccessible. The group didn’t take frivolously to this, with many (together with myself) refusing to return to Future till the difficulty will get resolved. Issues continued to worsen earlier this yr when Future 2’s first enlargement, Forsaken, had its marketing campaign gutted.
Fortunately, issues are altering… at the least considerably. Throughout the Future 2 2022 Showcase, we had been instructed that “Future 2 will not be going wherever, and neither are your expansions.“ Hey, that’s nice information! However what about every little thing that’s been taken out? How will that be accounted for?
There’s an enormous hole of content material lacking within the Future franchise. It is a collection that has been reside for eight years now and what was playable between 2014 to 2016 is out there within the authentic Future and something fashionable from 2019 to 2022 is playable in Future 2. The center portion of this collection, which makes up every little thing from 2017 to 2018, is nearly fully gone.
Throughout the livestream, Bungie claims: “We would like this story, since we first communed with the darkness on the moon, to be absolutely playable begin to end.” However till every little thing is playable, this implies nothing. I missed Forsaken in 2018, and I by no means bought to undergo 2017’s Leviathan raid. Till I can do these items, I’ve no plans to leap again into Future 2.
I’m a serial binger and have all the time adored enjoying franchises from begin to end. After I get invested in a sure style or collection of video games, I push by each title in chronological order. It doesn’t matter what collection; even when the video games are wildly disconnected, I refuse to play the brand new one till I catch up. Murderer’s Creed is a franchise I’ve been which means to binge for a great whereas, and even when a brand new one seems cool, I gained’t play it till I’ve performed my method by the entire collection.
Some recommend that Future’s state of affairs will not be akin to single-player video games as a result of it’s an MMO, however no different MMO does this. World of Warcraft’s base sport and each enlargement since 2004 are nonetheless playable within the 2022 model of the sport. Mechanics, character fashions, and a few different issues have modified in fact, however on the finish of the day, it’s all nonetheless there. The one exception to that is when 2010’s Cataclysm drastically modified Azeroth. However even on this case, Blizzard merely modified the content material, they didn’t take away it.
I wouldn’t play Halo 2 with out enjoying Halo: Fight Advanced first. That’s simply how my mind works, and it’s considered one of my favourite methods to have interaction with the medium. In Future’s case, I can not decide to a collection binge, and this has by no means occurred to me with another sport collection. I’ve by no means been trapped fascinated by how I’d like to undergo a franchise but can not due to a scarcity of availability.
Future 2’s Curse of Osiris and Warmind DLC, together with the Forsaken enlargement’s marketing campaign, are nowhere to be discovered. They’re not out there, even to the individuals who bought them. It’s a irritating conundrum and I can’t assist however surprise how Bungie has managed to fall so removed from grace.
The falling of the greats
There was a time period when Bungie was as soon as hailed by many as the very best first-person shooter developer within the trade. From Halo: Fight Advanced in 2001 to Halo: Attain in 2010, the corporate was on prime and had an enormous half to play within the success that Xbox noticed all through the 360 period.
Finally, the corporate determined to maneuver away from Halo and start creating Future, its MMO first-person shooter that was set to vary gaming as we knew it. The hype surrounding Bungie’s first non-Halo mission in over a decade was thunderous, and folks had been anticipating it to blow them away.
However when Future launched in 2014, it obtained lukewarm reception. And ever since, Bungie’s popularity has been nowhere close to as constructive. Some nonetheless stand by the Future franchise and declare it’s one of many best sport collection ever made, however many will dispute that.There’s clearly a divide in the neighborhood in relation to the standard of Bungie’s work.
Tons of little controversies have adopted Future’s historical past ever since its launch, with one of the crucial notable being the “promise” that made individuals imagine this sport would final for ten years. Though that was by no means really promised, followers had been nonetheless fairly upset when Future 2 was revealed, giving them no alternative however to purchase into a brand new expertise.
However probably the most prevalent controversy following Future was its content material vault. If Bungie desires to make amends with a burned group, we have to see a full dedication in direction of restoring what was misplaced. Future 2, Forsaken, Warmind, and Curse of Osiris must be absolutely playable from begin to end, together with their strikes and raids.
To take issues a step additional, I’d adore it if there was a single bundle that had every little thing Future included. Most MMOs perform this manner; it might be nice to only open Future on Steam and have entry to every little thing, from eight years in the past to now, in a single place. Whereas this can be just a little troublesome to perform, I can actually dream.
Backside line
Halo 3 is my favourite first-person shooter ever, however with Bungie’s method to Future 2, I’ve misplaced belief within the firm. Till the aforementioned content material is restored, I’ve no purpose to purchase into Future’s future or regardless of the firm makes subsequent.
We all know Bungie is keen to strip whole games-worth of content material from gamers only a few years after they purchase that content material, so what’s to say they gained’t do it once more.
