u/FoundThorn

I love this pairing from a narrative perspective. You both kind of work to bring out the best in each other and it feels the most like a genuine relationship where you grow together as a couple. The scene where Durge is struggling to resist the urge in Act 2 if you choose not to kill Isobel hits so hard after everything you’ve gone through together and really highlights Lae’zel’s growth in how she supports you and is there for you because of how much you mean to her and how much she cares for you.

Lae’zel was already my favorite romance and companion so maybe I’m showing a little bias, but I firmly believe that doing this romance and ending the game where you ride off together into the astral plain works so well for two reasons: You two are going as changed people to go liberate a race from their oppression which is completely against what these characters would do at the start, and it’s a great moment for Durge as they escape the risk of their father’s influence touching them again by going off to a place he can’t reach you.

If you haven’t done this yet I implore you to give it a try. It’s very hard for me to pull myself away from doing this every playthrough because of how satisfying it is for two characters I already loved.

And I mean the absolute top end of Destiny players. Like people who engaged with all aspects of the game at the highest level (Solo Dungeons, went flawless every weekend, deep into the lore, etc.) I say this as someone who grew up playing Destiny from D1 beta when I was 12 all the way up until I quit after Final Shape in 2024. I sunk thousands of hours into the PvE and PvE side of the game.

This game in a lot of ways feels like a hardcore Destiny player’s dream. It fuses the PvP and PvE aspects of the game in a way that allows for such high intensity gameplay and a challenge that many high end D2 players may find appealing after mastering each aspect of that game individually. It even has its own pseudo-raid in the form of Cryo. And while Cryo doesn’t come anywhere near the mechanical complexity of most Destiny raids, the PvP threat still keeps you on your toes enough that it makes up for it.

It also helps that because the game is balanced around PvPvE you’re not constantly having to deal with the cheesy bullshit people would use in the Crucible (broken exotic armor, weapons, and no cheesy abilities either like launch Stasis). In a lot of ways Marathon does what a lot of higher end Crucible players had been asking for over the last decade: a dedicated PvP experience that doesn’t have to accommodate things clearly designed around being used in PvE.

Just my two cents as a former Destiny hardcore, and out of curiosity to see if there are any others like me who feel the same.