Vex Offensive: Final Assault – Not Much to Talk About

After weeks of conflict with Vex minds in the Black Garden, the Vanguard have finally led a final assault on the Undying Mind. Titan scouts are reporting high levels of… well, nothing much.

The assault on the Black Garden, the close to this season’s PvE activity called Vex Offensive, kicked off this week. Players had speculated about cutscenes and revamped D1 strikes, but the final assault left many Guardians underwhelmed.

The conclusion to the season-long activity has players squaring off of the Undying Mind, a menacing Vex Hydra from Destiny 1. The mission is sort of a carbon copy of the existing activity, but with a few new lines of dialogue from Ghost about how there are millions of copies of the Undying Mind out there.We get to plunk down that portal Ikora put together (irresponsibly) in the Tower, which creates a new animation for starting the final encounter. After the new boss fight (with the same mechanics), players can get a new emblem and finish up their seal.

The whole Vex Offensive was, in essence… meh. It’s a fun little match-made activity that lets players get a peek of the Black Garden without jumping into a raid. The weapons are easy to grind for, and I love the leafy designs. Who wouldn’t want to rip apart enemies with a salad?

It’s not much to talk about, but what is more important is the fact that this was Bungie’s first attempt at live world events. Since Shadowkeep, the developers have expressed a desire to turn Destiny 2 into an evolving world, and we’ve seen this with little bits of the portal being built every week. But the problem is that it doesn’t feel significant. The main activity was enough to pique our interest, but after grinding out all of the weapons, it loses its appeal. Admittedly, it is hard to cater to the lofty desires of the all-powerful hype train, but everyone was expecting at least a cinematic to follow the Undying Mind. Unless Bungie has some clever bait-and-switch planned… that’s all folks.

However, we do have some time left in the season, so there still may be room for Bungie to have some crazy twist. Our Ghosts mention how there are millions of copies of the Hydra, so we may get some achievement when Bungie decides that we’ve eradicated all of them. In the end, the Vex Offensive was a lukewarm activity. Maybe with a little more variation and a more definitive ending the Undying Mind would have gotten a better reception, but all we can do now is give Bungie feedback on what did and didn’t work.

Image Source: Gamespot