The PlayStation 5 has officially made its debut, and players worldwide queued up for hours to snatch up the newest and most powerful progeny of the PlayStation dynasty. Beyond the beckoning of the usual lineup of console-exclusive titles, the PlayStation 5 offered up massive technical improvements over its slower predecessor - namely streamlining load times and game updates. The PlayStation 4 gained a particular notoriety for its copying delays after game updates were downloaded. But while Sony's system architect Mark Cerny claims that the PlayStation 5's beefy solid state drive (SSD) would largely eliminate the copying delays, Destiny 2 seems to have missed the memo.
PlayStation 4's copying delays are a result of updates needing to create new game files that include the old information and saves with the new data from the update. This was meant to eliminate lag in future play sessions where every new change would require the system to find the new patch information, and to minimize the bandwidth needed to receive update files. But the lengthy initial copy time after an update, often an hour or longer, still hit a sour note with players. The only way to mitigate the delay or shorten it was to beef up the hardware, which Sony attempted with performance updates and the PlayStation 4 Pro, but that was a one-time, and admittedly short-term, fix.
A tweet from Screen Rant's own Camden Jones reports that Destiny 2 is still suffering from copy delays, albeit in less time than the PlayStation 4, but certainly more than advertised. PlayStation 5's powerful specs and SSD seemed like the end of long load times and copying delays, but even before the console's launch, its performance issues started to come to light. Reviewers reported everything from overheating to power loss to storage glitches. This isn't particularly uncommon with newly launched consoles and most can be fixed with patches and workarounds. But the console's speed, a big concern for players and something that can't be patched up, isn't quite living up to expectations. Reports show that the PlayStation 5's loading times are just as slow as the PlayStation 4's, and subsequently slower than the Xbox Series X/S.
But the question now is whether the lag has to do with the way Destiny 2 is structured, or if it is an actual issue with the PlayStation 5's hardware. Destiny 2, which was launched in 2017, was already getting too big for its britches, with increasingly slow load times after each subsequent expansion and glitches that effectively ruined gameplay. Players who have made the jump from the PlayStation 4 to the 5 have also reported screen lag in comparison to other titles, since Destiny 2 is still running at 30 fps and won't be updated to 60 fps until a patch is released on December 8, and that they didn't experience near the same copy delay time with other transferred titles. At face value, it looks more like Destiny 2 just wasn't prepared to make the jump to the new generation, and is suffering as a result. To that end, Cerny's reassurance that copy delays would be largely eliminated on the PlayStation 5 seems to be on the money - for everything except Destiny 2.
While the PlayStation 5 is definitely suffering from a few icebergs on its maiden voyage, the issues with Destiny 2 seem to be attributed more to it being an unruly passenger who wasn't quite prepared for the trip.
Destiny 2 is available on all platforms.
Source: Camden Jones