On what the BRAVE Arsenal offers

Destiny 2: The Final Shape is officially one month away. The long national nightmare is almost over; Destinyplayers will finally have something new to complain about that isn’t executive tomfuckery at Bungie or the possible threat of a closure from Sony. But “almost” isn’t “totally,” and a month is a long time to sit and stew in one’s juices, especially considering the previous five months of doing exactly that. So Bungie has given the players the Destiny equivalent of a Final Fantasy XIV patch content drop: a miniature campaign and mode of play called “Into the Light” and “Onslaught,” respectively. 

Into the Light is essentially about the player saying goodbye to the Vanguard, to the Last City, and to everyone who has helped them along their path to finally confronting the Witness inside the Pale Heart of the Traveler. You talk to Eris Morn and Suraya Hawthorne, Ada-1 and the Drifter; you track down Archie, the adorable EXO-dog we found during Season of the Seraph, as he romps around familiar, if disused old haunts throughout the system. Each moment is sentimental but brief, amounting to a single text card detailing your interaction with these characters the way a Dungeon Master might during a weekly TTRPG. 

Onslaught, on the other hand, is all about the action. In its most basic form, “Onslaught: Playlist,” it is a 10-wave siege-breaking operation conducted in various key points near the Last City and the Cosmodrome. It takes about 10 minutes and is for more casual play. Its more challenging iteration, simply titled “Onslaught,” is a 50-wave run with a legend mode where enemies get progressively more difficult and eventually your ability to freely respawn is restricted (on legend mode, this happens immediately). You have to defend a point called the ADU from these waves of enemies, and you do so not only by shooting them, but by shoring up actual defenses, like tripwires, decoy sweeper bots, and Scorpius Turrets on loan from Cabal Empress Caiatl. In order to beef your defenses up, you have to collect scrap, and that is where the shooting real good comes into play. 

Onslaught is a lot of fun, but the difficulty curve is a bit steep, especially if you’re just casually stepping into a round. In order to do legend Onslaught, you have to actually craft a build that can handle large numbers of trash mobs mixed with high-level targets while staying alive consistently and cleanly. It’s also a bit samey, switching back and forth between just three or four locations and really only using Fallen and Hive mobs as fodder. The question then becomes, “why would anybody play this for a month straight?” And the answer is honestly one of the more brilliant/devious implementations of FOMO I’ve ever seen Bungie pull out: The BRAVE Arsenal.

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The BRAVE Arsenal is 12 high-level weapons from various points across Destiny‘s timeline. There are five kinetic weapons: the Hung Jury SR4, a Dead Orbit-derived scout rifle originally locked behind Nightfall rewards starting in Season of the Splicer; Blast Furnace, a pulse rifle from the Black Armory days; Succession, a sniper rifle from the Deep Stone Crypt Raid; Midnight Coup, a hand cannon originally earnable during the Leviathan Raid back in OG Destiny 2; and the Mountaintop, a breech-loaded grenade launcher earned by resetting your Crucible rank with Lord Shaxx back in Season 5 (this grenade launcher absolutely dominated the Crucible for a HOT minute). 

The four energy weapons in the set are: Elsie’s Rifle/No Time To Explain, a Void pulse rifle first introduced as a campaign completion reward in Destiny back in 2014 and reintroduced during the Beyond Light expansion in 2020; the Recluse, an Arc submachine gun with a brutal reputation in PVP, originally earnable starting in Season 6 with the completion of the “The Stuff of Myth” Crucible Triumph; Forbearance, an Arc breech-loaded wave-frame grenade launcher earnable in the Vow of the Disciple Raid; and Luna’s Howl, a Solar hand cannon Crucible Rank reset reward from Shaxx all the way back in Season 4.

Finally, the three power weapons include: Hammerhead, a Void machine gun first introduced with the Black Armory in Season 5; Falling Guillotine, a reward sword with massive AOE damage from the Season of Arrivals season pass; and Edge Transit, a meme grenade launcher earnable in the world starting in Season 4 (the reason this one is a “meme” weapon is because it wouldn’t fucking stop dropping as loot in every goddamn activity during Season 4 and for a while afterwards). 

Each of these genuinely iconic weapons were either incredibly sought-after or incredibly notorious among players, even though many of them have been replaced by new loadout metas, combat strategies or simply better weapons in their archetype. But the sentimental value of each can’t be denied – even for Edge Transit. They’re weapons that defined Destiny 2 in a lot of ways—for better or worse. And their appearance now, at the end of the road, has afforded Bungie the opportunity to really play up the finale-ass drama of this whole affair; it’s alsogiven players a reason to not only come back, but to stick around.

Into the Light has introduced a new social space, the Hall of Champions, where you can go to talk to Shaxx (instead of his usual spot at the top of the Tower), get bounties, and earn rewards. As you level up your Rank with this version of Shaxx (he’s also still stationed at the Tower), you’ll earn pinnacle relatively-high-stat Parade gear from a special section of chests. The room also features a new side-vendor, Arcite 99-40, a former combat frame who briefly provided players with Crucible bounties and rewards at the beginning of Destiny. Arcite is the true VIP here, because he handles the BRAVE weapon missions: 12 missions that correspond with each BRAVE Arsenal gun’s archetype. None of these weapon missions are especially difficult to accomplish, but they are long, with each involving the player landing hundreds of precision kills or rapid-fire kills in quick succession. Onslaught, naturally, awards bonus points for these missions. Each mission awards a specially curated version of each weapon that marks its distinction from the “normal” rolls by having a special “limited time” ornament and perks selected by Bungie devs themselves. In other words, the Recluse you earn from doing “Recluse Endangerment” might not be a god roll, but it’s pretty damn close and it looks different even from the other BRAVE Recluses floating around. 

I’ve written 1050 words up to this point, most of it preamble, to say this: after several hours of grinding, I’ve finally completed each of these goddamn missions. And now I have to ask myself whether or not it was worth it. 

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In a cosmic sense, the endeavor of asking oneself whether it’s worth it to spend several sustained hours playing the same 15 minutes of a Lightfall campaign mission to gradually chip away at ten or eleven different weapon challenges just so one could get some holofoil guns as a reward… is kind of pointless. We all die and I’ve spent a day of my life I’ll never get back doing this, but that kind of condemnation can be levied at every other thing we do. I wanted to do this; therefore, on some level at least, it’s inherently worth it. What complicates things is the fact that I’ve written thousands of words in the past on whether or not playing Destiny 2 is worth it to begin with, and the sum-total of my work in this regard skews toward the negative in the final calculus. I have been very down on this game, especially in the last two or three years; after all the fiery criticism I’ve thrown towards the game, am I really falling for a nostalgia trap in the final moments of this game franchise’s “first” arc? 

Y’know, like, kind of?^[1]I’m also going after the “Superblack” shader, for what it’s worth; I just need to reach the pinnacle of Shaxx’s vendor rank before June 4.

Putting all of this aside for a second, I actually do think Into the Light is worth doing. I think it’s a great mini-campaign for new and returning players to indulge in, even as the rest of the game is a hot goddamn mess. If you’re new, haven’t played for awhile, or quit at some point during the past year, Onslaught and Arcite’s BRAVE missions are a great way to not only get a set of quality weapons before The Final Shape, but they’re also excellent crucibles to help players improve their skills with all weapon types and get to know more complex aspects of the game like loadout management and buildcrafting. 

Of course it isn’t going to hold your hand at every step; Destiny has literally never done that, even when it’s made strides to make the game easier for new players to comprehend. There are still clunky and confusing parts of the game that require subscribing to several different YouTube channels to learn about, like subclass verbs and gear modification, and at this point Bungie is literally never beating the “just watch MyNameIsByf’s six-hour explainer on what the fuck is happening in this video game” allegations, but unlike the slow and convoluted New Light new-user onboarding campaign, Into the Light and Onslaught are about as plug-and-play as Destiny 2 has ever been. 

In fact, I think it’s a way of engaging with Destiny 2‘s fraught and fractured history with the least amount of attendant baggage. It helps set The Final Shape – and beyond – up as a sort of fresh start, a blank slate. Whether or not Bungie will have the chance to actualize the new, fresh vision of their game this all implies remains to be seen, but for my part, I’m satisfied to start anew with my BRAVE Arsenal and Parade gear in hand.