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Games

An Ode to This Beautiful, Hypnotizing Red Tree in ‘Destiny 2’

It’s even better at 60 frames-per-second.

Having already messed around with the limited beta of Destiny 2 last month, there wasn't much reason to boot up the PC version, which went live this week, except to see how it runs on my machine. As it turns out, Destiny 2 runs like a dream, but once I'd moved past the aesthetic shock of watching the game run at twice the framerate, it became clear why I had a good reason to play some Destiny 2: I needed to see what my favorite red tree looked like.

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The single player component of the original Destiny was bad enough to bounce me off the game for more than a year, until the release of The Taken King. I've been encouraged by what I've seen of Destiny 2 so far, and while it's impossible to comment on whether the rest of the game will live up to the needed bombast and spectacle in the opening mission, the amount of time and attention Bungie's put into making the missions feel more alive is noteworthy and gives me hope.

You can point to all sorts of reasons for why the missions carry more weight—how the rain rips through the sky, bouncing off everything; the subtle lighting that gives atmosphere to an innocuous hallway—but the one I couldn't stop staring at was a tree. It's a good looking tree, and more to the point, it combines all those elements I was speaking to earlier in a piece of the environment that otherwise calls very little attention to itself. I'm sure someone spent a lot of time making it look nice.

No joke, I've probably spent five minutes look at this tree. It's hypnotizing.

Here's how it looked in July, as captured on my PlayStation 4 Pro:

And here's how it looks now, as captured by my PC at 60 frames-per-second:

Now, it's an even better looking tree!

The wait for the PC version will be a very long one, indeed.

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