The brand new period of Future 2, spearheaded by June’s Fringe of Destiny enlargement, hasn’t precisely gone to plan for Bungie. I used to be extraordinarily excited for a contemporary Future expertise post-Mild and Darkish saga, however to date it is did not hit the mark. Wanting throughout the final 4 or 5 years as an entire, I would nonetheless proclaim that Future 2 is my ‘favourite’ shooter, however since Fringe of Destiny arrived, gamers have massively leaked from the sport – myself included, in latest occasions. Nonetheless, a Star Wars-themed enlargement feels like simply the ticket to resume curiosity, and to an extent, Future 2 Renegades has executed simply that, with a wholesome Steam spike on launch day and loads of reward for sure facets of the brand new marketing campaign. Nonetheless, that spike remains to be a great distance off the place Future 2 needs to be.
Renegades is in contrast to most Star Wars crossovers you see throughout a few of the largest and greatest multiplayer video games. You will not discover any like-for-like characters right here – Darth Vader is not going to look as a dungeon boss, or something of that nature. As a substitute, Bungie is trying to inform a canonical Future 2 story however with the formally licensed themes of the Star Wars universe. There are lightsaber weapons, armor units and enemy sorts that extra carefully resemble Star Wars’ aesthetic, and there is even a brand new Cantina-inspired social area. Personally, this method looks like the fitting one – you are not sacrificing years of world-building and lore for the sake of crowbarring in iconic characters and places from one other IP, however you possibly can nonetheless give Star Wars followers one thing to smile about.
Following Future 2 Renegades’ launch yesterday, December 2, there’ve been some optimistic indicators. After slumping to concerningly low Steam participant counts all through October and November, there’s been a surge for the brand new enlargement. On launch day, a concurrent peak of 71,278 gamers was recorded, which is the perfect it has been since early August.
Nonetheless, this falls beneath the height achieved by Fringe of Destiny earlier within the yr (over 100,000 gamers) and is barely decrease than these achieved by Episode 2 and Episode 3 of final yr’s enlargement cycle. It additionally pales compared to the participant peaks achieved by the Witch Queen, Lightfall, and The Ultimate Form enlargement drops over the past three years, all of which recorded peaks of greater than 290,000 gamers.
It is a comparable story by way of participant reception for Renegades – there’s good, and there is not so good. I am not very far in any respect into it but, so I am going to reserve private judgement for now, however I am seeing plenty of reward for a few of the new buildcrafting additions, the marketing campaign’s narrative, and the standard of its cutscenes. It is not being hailed as an all-timer, nevertheless it appears to be an pleasing enlargement which, as a rule, strikes the Star Wars and Future stability effectively.
Nonetheless, this presently is not being mirrored by its Steam person rating, which sits on an underwhelming, ‘combined,’ 59% rating. From what I can inform, this can be a little bit of an unfair reflection – I am seeing temporary complaints about microtransactions and Bungie being ‘lazy’ for leaning on Star Wars, however a lot of the extra fleshed-out, thought of opinions look like optimistic ones reasonably than destructive.
Whereas it is reassuring to see that Renegades is not a complete catastrophe (if it was, I feel my remaining droplets of hope for Future 2 would evaporate), nevertheless it would not really feel like a second of huge reinvigoration both. If peaks of round 70k are sustained for the subsequent few weeks, I am going to eat my phrases on that, however chances are high excessive that they will shortly fall again down, as is the standard pattern. Both approach, it is no less than a second for me to get again into what’s, deep down, my favourite shooter.
