The brand new period of Future 2, spearheaded by June’s Fringe of Destiny growth, hasn’t precisely gone to plan for Bungie. I used to be extraordinarily excited for a contemporary Future expertise post-Gentle and Darkish saga, however to this point it is did not hit the mark. Wanting throughout the final 4 or 5 years as a complete, I might 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 current occasions. Nonetheless, a Star Wars-themed growth appears like simply the ticket to resume curiosity, and to an extent, Future 2 Renegades has carried out 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 continues to be a good distance off the place Future 2 must be.
Renegades is not like most Star Wars crossovers you see throughout among the greatest and finest multiplayer video games. You will not discover any like-for-like characters right here – Darth Vader is not going to seem as a dungeon boss, or something of that nature. As an alternative, 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 varieties that extra carefully resemble Star Wars’ aesthetic, and there is even a brand new Cantina-inspired social area. Personally, this method appears like the fitting one – you are not sacrificing years of world-building and lore for the sake of crowbarring in iconic characters and areas 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 growth. 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 12 months (over 100,000 gamers) and is barely decrease than these achieved by Episode 2 and Episode 3 of final 12 months’s growth cycle. It additionally pales compared to the participant peaks achieved by the Witch Queen, Lightfall, and The Last Form growth drops over the past three years, all of which recorded peaks of greater than 290,000 gamers.
It is a comparable story when it comes to 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 a whole lot of reward for among the new buildcrafting additions, the marketing campaign’s narrative, and the standard of its cutscenes. It is not being hailed as an all-timer, but it surely appears to be an gratifying growth which, most of the time, strikes the Star Wars and Future steadiness properly.
Nonetheless, this at the moment is not being mirrored by its Steam consumer 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 many of the extra fleshed-out, thought-about evaluations seem like optimistic ones relatively than unfavourable.
Whereas it is reassuring to see that Renegades is not a complete catastrophe (if it was, I feel my last droplets of hope for Future 2 would evaporate), but it surely would not really feel like a second of large reinvigoration both. If peaks of round 70k are sustained for the subsequent few weeks, I am going to eat my phrases on that, however likelihood is excessive that they will shortly fall again down, as is the standard development. Both method, it is no less than a second for me to get again into what’s, deep down, my favourite shooter.
