Iron Banter: This Week In Destiny 2 - A Review Of Solstice 2022

gamespot.com:

Just about every week brings something new to Destiny 2, whether it's story beats, new activities, or interesting new combinations of elements that let players devastate each other in the Crucible. Iron Banter is our weekly look at what's going on in the world of Destiny and a rundown of what's drawing our attention across the solar system.

Solstice is probably my least favorite of Destiny 2's annual events. The summertime celebration originally kicked off alongside the Moments of Triumph, marking the end of a Destiny year and helping players commemorate all the cool stuff they'd done with a nice set of glowing armor to boot--but it tended to be a heavily grindy event that lacked the fun personality of Halloween's Festival of the Lost or The Dawning of the holiday season. Solstice also tends to be an intense grind, and if there's one thing I'm not a fan of in the Destiny games, it's grinding content over and over.

For 2022, Bungie made some significant changes to Solstice, however. It altered the way its special event armor works, adjusted the special EAZ location and the events that take place there, and introduced a new «Event Card» system, both for ticking off objectives and for earning premium rewards as part of the event. Solstice looks very different in 2022, and now that it's over, we can take a look at the three-week summertime celebration to run down what worked, what didn't, and what we might expect from additional annual events as Destiny 2 goes forward.

Overall, my impression of this year's Solstice was that Bungie identified some significant problems that hold the event back and addressed them to make it better. The biggest and most important of them: Solstice armor.

Armor earned during the Solstice event is