I am playing Destiny 2 again with the release of its Shadowkeep expansion — and honestly enjoying it quite a lot! Destiny is and always has been fun to play. Although there always seem to be one or two little nuisances — some seemingly obvious errors in every major update — that I just can’t overcome. Shadowkeep is no different. And this time it’s because of the Destiny 2 quest log…
Specifically, it’s because of the bizarre choice to make bounties and real missions share the same 63 maximum slots. I say “choice.” I suspect it was less intentional than that. I suspect it’s the result of Bungie simply changing the once-nebulous “Pursuits” user interface into something just a little more wieldy. Whereas Pursuits once dolloped every last objective together in a hard-to-parse pile, the game at least distinguishes between big quests and bounties. Quests don’t have time limits, and usually provide major rewards like Exotics and campaign progress. Whereas most bounties time out after 24 hours and give, like, Glimmer and stuff.
More Destiny 2 Shadowkeep:
- Destiny 2 Symbol Chests Guide – Open Locked Chests, Hive Symbols
- Dear Bungie, Please Let Me Change My Guy
- Destiny 2 Vex Mind Components Guide – What to Do With This Material
There are just a few problems with the new layout. The most obvious is that it’s still pretty unwieldy. Quests include all kinds of things: from main story missions to consumables you spend on weird secrets. You don’t even always get to decide if these go into your log. Items like “A Small Gift” are basically useless. Yet they receive the same degree of importance as a pistol that spits poison and eats souls. Not to mention Small Gifts automatically appear in your log if you touch them in the world. At which point you have to manually remove them. Every. Single. Time.
So the quest part of the quest log is still a cluttered mess — one you need to babysit constantly, delousing for colonies of tedious blue crap. The next most obvious issue is that bounties get short shrift.
Sure. Bounties are more ephemeral than overarching quests, but they’re hugely important in Destiny 2. Most major questlines require you to complete a certain number of bounties anyway! And the promise of progress in Destiny 2 is that everything overlaps. Working on one bounty (e.g. killing a certain number of Hive) should usually progress another (e.g. killing a certain number of enemies in Gambit). Besides its first-in-class gunplay, Destiny is built on the sense of “gaming” the system like that. Bungie even acknowledges it in dev diaries and blog posts.
Of course, that only works if you have the bounties. But the shared quest limit means that, any time you pick up a major mission, you also reduce your “maximum” number of bounties. The game even shows the total number of bounties you can hold at one time. It just… doesn’t explain why that number can or does change. It’s confusing. We here at Fanbyte thought it was a bug at first. But the developer hasn’t acknowledged it as such, and it does make a certain kind of sense — if you’re a nightmare person.
My New Most Requested Feature…
The third, and most egregious problem is that 63 is a horseshit number. Sixty-goddamn-three? I hate looking at it. I hate thinking about it. Get the fuck out of here, you obnoxiously un-round garbage. You make literally every other integer between one and 99 look bad. I spit on your denominators and curse your common factors.
Again, though, the number that shall no longer be named makes perfect sense. The old Pursuits tab was split into 7×3 grids: a total of 21 possible quests and bounties on every page. Twenty-one times three is… Well, you know what it is. You’re smart! It’s just that presenting the old number in this new way doesn’t make sense. It leaves a ton of dead bounty slots that look totally usable in their own little corner. Only they’re not. At least they’re not if you have a lot of quests.
I have a lot of quests. I’ve been playing Destiny 2 since launch. In that time, I’ve picked up a ton of super long hunts for rare weapons that require a ton of grinding. Some of them reward guns that have already come, been nerfed, and gone. But I want them! Why wouldn’t I? Destiny has swiftly tilted toward being a collect-a-thon for bespoke mega-weapons. All the shooting and the overlapping missions? They’re in service of unlocking Outbreak Perfected, Bad Juju, and other neat things I don’t have, but want!
Sixty-three (shit I said it) slots isn’t enough space for it all. It’s not even close. My bounties are choked with weekly challenges I need to clear. Some of those require me to complete dailies. And now? Now the Shadowkeep story needs me to complete even more bounties. I’m not getting any of that sense of overlap I enjoy.
It seems like a simple thing, an inventory limit. It is! But just think about how disruptive encumbrance is in Skyrim, or Dark Souls, and how much busywork it produces. Now apply that same level of flow-breaking irritation to the entire core loop of a game. That’s where I’m at with Destiny 2 right now. The quest limit is an ugly fly buzzing around my experience — annoying me out of my rhythm at every other turn. I really hope it’s on the docket to get squashed.
