Today, Bungie held a two-hour long (including pre-show) Destiny 2 Gameplay Premiere. For the first time, we got a deep look at the world and gameplay of Destiny 2. Here’s what we know so far.
‘Homecoming’ will be the opening mission in Destiny 2’s cinematic story campaign. Commander Ghaul, the Cabal leader of the Red Legion, has wrecked The Tower, captured The Traveler, and taken all the Guardian’s light. Oh, and he also took all the vaults. He’s going to Scrooge McDuck dive into all your exotics just because he can. This sets the stage for Destiny to hit the reset button and introduce Destiny 2. Older players will continue the fight and try to regain everything they’ve lost. New players now have a point where they can hop in and not feel instantly overwhelmed.
Destiny 2 will maintain the same 3 classes from the original, but introduce new sub-classes for each. Dawnblade will let Warlocks rain destruction with a solar sword. Sentinel will allow Titans to role-play Captain America, and throw a void shield around. Finally, Arcstrider will have Hunters channel their inner monk with an arc staff. The Vanguard Guardian trainers who once inhabited The Tower have all split and are now in different locations. Here is the information provided on each:
- European Dead Zone – The largest destination yet featuring a lush forest, abandoned town, a cave system below the surface, and a Red Legion military base to explore and contest.
- Titan – One of Saturn’s Moons where Commander Zavala is regrouping at the hands of Ghaul. There is no land on Titan. Instead, players explore a series of Golden Age platforms surrounded by a rolling ocean.
- Nessus – a strange and unstable planetoid that has been fully consumed by the Vex where players will find Cayde-6 is caught up in his own adventures in a stunning landscape of sheer walls, lush canyons, and creepy Vex caverns.
- Io – A moon of Jupiter, where Ikora Rey has gone in search of answers. Io is the last known site the Traveler visited during the Golden Age, it’s now occupied by our enemies.
These new locations will be able to be explored freely, not just during the story. While patrolling, players will be able to drop into several game types. Public Events return and allow players to run into a nearby event and assist on the fly. Adventures are shorter story-based missions that provide background. Finally, Lost Sectors are enemy dungeons concluding in a boss protecting loot. New Strikes, Crucible (4v4 PVP) maps, and one Raid will be available at launch. Players will finally be able to jump to between these activities without having to travel to orbit first.
Guardians will have 3 weapons slots; Kinetic, Energy, and Power. Based on current language, we can guess what these weapon types likely mean. In current Destiny, most standard primary weapons deal kinetic damage, so Kinetic is likely the replacement for primary. Energy weapons are likely weapons which contain the arc, solar, and void damage type. This leaves power weapons as the heavy hitters, such as the new grenade launchers and mini-guns.
Clans will now be a part of the game, instead of a weird offshoot that needs to be managed from a browser. Clans will be able to customize banners, view their rosters, and take part in a new feature called “Guided Games”. This new feature will allow clans to match up with individual players for a temporary group to complete the Trials, a Raid, or a Nightfall mission. Solo players will be able to browse through the clans in need of assistance and pick one that suits them. It’s a selective looking-for-group system, which is a huge improvement on the lack of matchmaking available in Destiny. Bungie is aware of the problem and noted that only 50% of players were able to experience end-game content in Destiny. They hope that this system will allow players to enjoy everything the game has to offer, while avoiding toxic situations,
The huge takeaway from this Gameplay Premiere was the announcement that the PC version of Destiny 2 will be sold and run through Blizzard’s Battle.net, (I think we’re back to calling it Battle.net because they sure did). This is huge news and makes perfect sense for Destiny 2. Activision is the publisher, and they already have a strong PC platform with Battle.Net. In a FAQ post that went up after this news broke, Blizzard stated that rather than create a new social client, it made more sense to provide their platform to their sister companies for this release. They also noted that Blizzard servers will only be used for authentication and social interaction and that all Destiny 2 servers will be maintained by Bungie.
- 4k Resolution Support (3820×2160)
- Uncapped framerate
- Full mouse and keyboard support with custom key mapping
- Text chat
- Adjustable Field of View
- Detailed PC settings screen
- 21:9 monitor support
This was a pretty solid showing for Destiny 2. There was a strong focus on making the game accessible to new players. Bungie also aims to improve the experience of creating a random group so that all types of players get to play everything Destiny 2 has to offer. The gameplay itself was nothing groundbreaking. It was more Destiny, which is totally fine by me. With new content and some quality of life improvements, I’m ready for more Destiny.
Destiny 2 is scheduled to release September 8th, 2017 for Playstation 4 (with timed exclusive content) and Xbox One. There is currently no date set for the PC release.
