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-Mild and Darkish saga, however to this point it is did not hit the mark. Trying 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 latest instances. Nonetheless, a Star Wars-themed growth seems like simply the ticket to resume curiosity, and to an extent, Future 2 Renegades has performed simply that, with a wholesome Steam spike on launch day and loads of reward for sure points of the brand new marketing campaign. Nonetheless, that spike remains to be a good distance off the place Future 2 ought to be.
Renegades is not like most Star Wars crossovers you see throughout among the largest and finest 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 an alternative, Bungie is seeking 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 strategy appears like the precise 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 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 yr (over 100,000 gamers) and is barely decrease than these achieved by Episode 2 and Episode 3 of final yr’s growth cycle. It additionally pales compared to the participant peaks achieved by the Witch Queen, Lightfall, and The Remaining Form growth drops during the last 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 will reserve private judgement for now, however I am seeing a number 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, nevertheless it appears to be an satisfying growth which, most of the time, strikes the Star Wars and Future stability nicely.
Nonetheless, this at present is not being mirrored by its Steam consumer rating, which sits on an underwhelming, ‘blended,’ 59% rating. From what I can inform, it is a little bit of an unfair reflection – I am seeing transient complaints about microtransactions and Bungie being ‘lazy’ for leaning on Star Wars, however a lot of the extra fleshed-out, thought of critiques look like optimistic ones moderately than adverse.
Whereas it is reassuring to see that Renegades is not a complete catastrophe (if it was, I believe my closing droplets of hope for Future 2 would evaporate), nevertheless it would not really feel like a second of large reinvigoration both. If peaks of round 70k are sustained for the subsequent few weeks, I will eat my phrases on that, however likelihood is excessive that they will shortly fall again down, as is the everyday pattern. Both manner, it is at the least a second for me to get again into what’s, deep down, my favourite shooter.
