AdventureDestiny House of Wolves

Diving Into Destiny's 'House of Wolves' Expansion

Today marks the release of the second major piece of DLC for Bungie’s Destiny, The House of Wolves. September brought us the original game, and in December came the first expansion, The Dark Below. But now, Bungie has really let the next batch of DLC bake, releasing over five months after the last pack. With The Dark Below not receiving the warmest of receptions this winter, they didn’t want to make all the same mistakes twice.

And they haven’t, it would seem  .

Bungie’s House of Wolves fixes are many, but first and foremost have started in the promotion and communication surrounding the DLC itself. Bungie has had three separate live reveals debuting new content from Wolves, including one literally focused on the gear upgrading system alone, a big gripe in Dark Below.

But past that, this past weekend, they energized fans with a bounty-hunting Queen’s Wrath event that positively showered players with encrypted engrams that can be turned in today, simultaneously getting players back in the game with new content, and giving them a reason to look forward to Wolves so they could cash in their enormous item collection, as well as earn a prize for completing the Queen’s Wrath bounties over the course of the weekend.

As I started playing House of Wolves at launch today, naturally, that was the first thing I did. I headed to the Reef, the DLC’s new social space, and turned in a solid 100 or so engrams across three characters, receiving two legendary weapons and two pieces of increased-light armor for my trouble and starting the new DLC off on a high note. Turning in a literal truckload of engrams is probably one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done in Destiny, and even the chest farming that yielded that collection is patched (it probably should be), it was a hell of a weekend. But after decrypting and vaulting and dismantling, the real fun begins.

Those who have been following my Destiny coverage will recall that I was invited to play House of Wolves at Bungie HQ a few weeks ago. As such, I’ve already spent some time talking about the Raid-replacing Prison of Elders (which launches today) and new PvP endgame The Trials of Osiris (which launches this weekend), in addition to playing the new Strike and multiplayer maps. I suggest you read those two pieces as a primer, and because I’ve talked about those activities a bit already, I’ll start with the one aspect of the DLC I wasn’t allowed access to, the story missions.

Story has never been Destiny’s strong suit, and even though Bungie listens to feedback in many ways, to date, their storytelling has only worse in time. When I was told that House of Wolves would continue The Dark Below’s “mass voiceover” strategy of conveying plot rather than inserting any new cutscenes into the game, I was a worried we’d see more of the same.

After playing through the entire “storyline” of House of Wolves, though the plot and narration issues aren’t really resolved, I am much more satisfied with the collection of missions this time around than what we saw from The Dark Below. The first DLC had what amounted to two half-missions and one finale. Wolves has five distinct missions, almost none of which feel scarce in the least. The Queen (through her emissary Petra) tasks you with stopping Skolas, the Fallen leader of the House of Wolves, with taking over the other Houses and mounting a threat to her. You track him and his allies all throughout Venus and Earth. Some areas are familiar, but have not been used in story missions before, others are brand new. I’m never a huge fan of retreading old ground, but Wolves uses the terrain in creative ways, like a mission where the final encounter is set in the exact spot you spawn at level one when the game begins.

The missions gave me plenty of time to mess around with my new weapons, a Dead Orbit assault rifle with an insanely high fire rate and magazine size, a world-ending void shotgun which may allow me to finally complete my Thorn bounty, and then the legendary gun everyone gets after the first mission, a new weapon class called the “Sidearm.” I’ve only spent a limited time with it so far, but it seems to be short-to-mid range, and the perks on the one you get from the mission have to do with hurting Fallen specifically. It seems a bit like a less powerful, faster-shooting hand-cannon, and it’s going to take some time and experimentation to figure out where it fits within the lexicon of Destiny weapons.

Back to the missions, though I do resent the fact that yet again, everything is told through voiceover narration, the story is a touch easier to follow as it’s less sci-fi mumbo jumbo and more “this guy is trying to unite all your enemies, take him out” straighforwardness. It absolutely could have been fleshed out better with more backstory, and again, we’ll have to turn to the Grimoire for that, which remains a disappointment. Still, with a lot of new vendor characters and more in-depth story missions, it’s a marginal step forward from at least The Dark Below.

This is also the first time I had a literal “holy crap” moment while playing Destiny’s story. Not because of a particular plot twist, but when I discovered where a mission was about to take place. It’s a surprise I won’t ruin, but suffice to say I think many players will get a kick out of the creativity of the setting.

Elsewhere, I like the streamlined new format of armor and weapons, where no longer will players be groveling for Shards and Energies to increase their light level or damage (or drowning in Shards and Energies, as the case may be). Everything starts one step away from maxed in those areas, and the only way to advance them is through one single piece of Etheric Light, found in high level Prison of Elders rounds, the Nightfall Strike and the Trials of Osiris. The common thread, of course, is that all of these are matchmade activities. It remains to be seen if Solo players have any real path to max level through Etheric light, but for now, it’s hard to see one. This remains an issue, and something I’ve talked about for a good long while now.

This is going to have to be a sort of ongoing review, as there’s only so much I can get done in a short amount of time. Next on the agenda is playing through the Strike and the Prison of Elders again, this time in randomized matchmaking for the latter. Check back in for further thoughts as I continue to eat through the content. All in all, I think players are going to be pretty pleased with House of Wolves, as it’s miles ahead of The Dark Below both in terms of the volume and quality of what it contains.

Stay tuned and refresh for updates.