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Remember shaders in the original Destiny? They were cosmetic items that you could apply to you character's armour, changing its colours whenever you liked. You could use shaders as many times as you needed, equipping them and replacing them to suit your style. That's no longer the case in Destiny 2.

We're really enjoying Destiny 2 as noted in our hands on impressions of the game so far, but this new shader system is a complete mess. Why does it have to be this way? Well, it's probably because of the sequel's expanded suite of microtransactions.

The old, easy-to-use and manage shader system has been replaced with something that's best described as a farce. In Destiny 2, shaders are single-use items that colour only one piece of equipment. That alone seems like a maddening step backwards, but it gets even worse when you consider that you can obtain shaders from bright engrams -- Destiny 2's version of randomised loot boxes that can also be purchased with real money.

As you'd expect, much of the Destiny community is currently up in arms about this -- and rightly so, as far as we're concerned. It wouldn't be quite so bad but for the fact that the first Destiny had a shader system that worked perfectly fine. The bottom line, at least from where we're sitting, is that the previous system has been butchered in order to bolster the appeal of Destiny 2's bright engram microtransactions.

It's a blemish on an otherwise great game (based on what we've played so far), and we're holding out hope that Activison and Bungie see sense.

[source reddit.com, via eurogamer.net]