A Smooth Landing

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Yesterday was of course the launch of the PC version of Destiny 2.  After years of rough launches I did not attempt to take the day off because I have been bit hard by that in the past.  However it appears like everything went relatively smoothly and starting about noon I saw friends poking their heads into the game for the first time.  Sure there were some issues, namely that the Clan roster seemed to be non-functional for all but a few people…  but I remember us going through that at the PS4 launch as well so maybe that is one of the more fragile systems.  There is a reported rash of bannings but I am uncertain how big of a deal this really is given that the internet tends to “memeify” everything to raise the sodium levels.  To the best of my knowledge no one that I know got bit by whatever bug is occurring.  It has been blamed on discord or obs or any other manner of software…  but I know folks who streamed all day long yesterday and most everyone I know is running discord…  so I sincerely doubt it is one of those.  After years of seeing players cry foul… only to be busted by devs for doing some nefarious shit I am taking this with a giant truck load of salt.

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I did not make it anywhere near as far as I had hoped to make it last night.  I got a bit of a late start and then had to walk away from screen for a bit to go retrieve sustenance and consume it.  At this point I am up to the start of Io in the quest chain and dinged level 14 just before logging for the night.  I had visions of hitting level 20 and then potentially wrapping up the extremely long tail end of the story tonight after coming back from Rifftrax.  That is just not a thing that is going to happen, however I should be on pace to at least get to 20 on Thursday night.  I have to admit a lot of my evening was spent getting used to the keyboard and mouse controls.  I didn’t want to simply plug a controller into my PC and continue on like I had been on the PS4.  I wanted to get adjusted to playing the PC version, and it took way longer than I had hoped to begin remapping my reflexes.  I was super pumped when I noticed that apparently it kept my keybindings from beta so I did not have to try and remap everything.  It has been weird learning how to do things like the shield throw with a keyboard and mouse, when previously it was just so instinctive.

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Everything comes out so much crisper and clearer on the PC that I noticed something I had apparently never noticed before on the console.  I had no clue that Sloan had a bunch of Warhammer 40k purity seals on her left shoulder pad.  At first I thought maybe this was an addition to the PC, but after checking the PS4 they are in fact there.  The lower fidelity of the PS4 experience just made them not stand out nearly as well as they do on PC because the lighting is massively better.  The game really feels like it was meant to be played on a PC and there are moments where you just have to stop and enjoy the vistas now that you can see clearly off in the distance.  I sat and watched the ocean and the lightning storms for a few minutes while standing around idly on Titan and they were breathtaking.  All in all I think it was a pretty damned smooth launch and the PC version is living up to all of my hopes.  I am going to still take awhile to rewire my impulses because right now I feel way more sluggish with keyboard and mouse than with the controller.  However I guess it is to be expected considering I played heavily for over three years in this world using thumb sticks.