Destiny 2 Renegades results in a generous surge on Steam, but even Star Wars mania can't bring back the highs of my favorite FPS

The new era of Destiny 2, spearheaded by June's Edge of Fate expansion, hasn't exactly gone to plan for Bungie. I was extremely excited for a fresh Destiny experience post-Light and Dark saga, but so far it's failed to hit the mark. Looking across the last four or five years as a whole, I'd still proclaim that Destiny 2 is my 'favorite' shooter, but since Edge of Fate arrived, players have massively leaked from the game - myself included, in recent times. However, a Star Wars-themed expansion sounds like just the ticket to renew interest, and to an extent, Destiny 2 Renegades has done just that, with a healthy Steam spike on launch day and plenty of praise for certain aspects of the new campaign. However, that spike is still a long way off where Destiny 2 should be.

Renegades is unlike most Star Wars crossovers you see across some of the biggest and best multiplayer games. You won't find any like-for-like characters here - Darth Vader isn't going to appear as a dungeon boss, or anything of that nature. Instead, Bungie is looking to tell a canonical Destiny 2 story but with the officially licensed themes of the Star Wars universe. There are lightsaber weapons, armor sets and enemy types that more closely resemble Star Wars' aesthetic, and there's even a new Cantina-inspired social space. Personally, this approach feels like the right one - you're not sacrificing years of world-building and lore for the sake of crowbarring in iconic characters and locations from another IP, but you can still give Star Wars fans something to smile about.

Following Destiny 2 Renegades' release yesterday, December 2, there've been some positive signs. After slumping to concerningly low Steam player counts throughout October and November, there's been a surge for the new expansion. On launch day, a concurrent peak of 71,278 players was recorded, which is the best it's been since early August.

However, this falls below the peak achieved by Edge of Fate earlier in the year (over 100,000 players) and is slightly lower than those achieved by Episode 2 and Episode 3 of last year's expansion cycle. It also pales in comparison to the player peaks achieved by the Witch Queen, Lightfall, and The Final Shape expansion drops over the last three years, all of which recorded peaks of more than 290,000 players.

It's a similar story in terms of player reception for Renegades - there's good, and there's not so good. I'm not very far at all into it yet, so I'll reserve personal judgement for now, but I'm seeing a lot of praise for some of the new buildcrafting additions, the campaign's narrative, and the quality of its cutscenes. It's not being hailed as an all-timer, but it seems to be an enjoyable expansion which, more often than not, strikes the Star Wars and Destiny balance well.

However, this currently isn't being reflected by its Steam user score, which sits on an underwhelming, 'mixed,' 59% score. From what I can tell, this is a bit of an unfair reflection - I'm seeing brief complaints about microtransactions and Bungie being 'lazy' for leaning on Star Wars, but most of the more fleshed-out, considered reviews appear to be positive ones rather than negative.

While it's reassuring to see that Renegades isn't a total disaster (if it was, I think my final droplets of hope for Destiny 2 would evaporate), but it doesn't feel like a moment of massive reinvigoration either. If peaks of around 70k are sustained for the next few weeks, I'll eat my words on that, but chances are high that they'll quickly fall back down, as is the typical trend. Either way, it's at least a moment for me to get back into what is, deep down, my favorite shooter.