If you missed the Destiny 2 livstream yesterday then you missed a hell of show. Bungie showed off gameplay from Destiny 2 and it looks incredible. So much was covered in terms of what the goal is with Destiny 2 this time around. Here’s what we know. We know that the tower and vault have been destroyed by the Cabal and the leader of the Red Legion Dominus Ghaul (We know his first name now). Why it was destroyed wasn’t known immediately. Well, today we found out that it was because Ghaul is jealous of the light of the Guardians and the fact that the Traveler chose the people of Earth to bestow the light upon. With Ghaul being that angry, it’s an all out war and the Red Legion is who we’re up against. That’s the crux of the story.
Bungie gave us a treat in showing off the first 9 minutes of the “Homecoming” mission which takes place directly after the Cabal assault. It showed us new weapons like a mini-gun, grenade launcher and some odd looking rocket launchers. We finally got to see Ikora, Zavala, Holliday and Cayde-6 get busy and join the fight. You can catch that first mission 22 minutes into the livestream if you missed it and want to watch it. Bungie discussed a number of things today but what exactly? Let’s break it down.
Subclasses
Subclasses are the reason you pick your character. You have the Warlock, Titan and Hunter. Each with unique abilities and supers. In Destiny 2 we see that there are new subclasses and new supers.
Titan – Sentinel
I personally favor the Titan above the other guardian types because of their power, armor and ability to defend and the Sentinel super showed the new abilities of the Titan. The Titan now has the ability to wield a Captain America style shield that helps the Titan mow down enemies up close or at distance by being able to throw the shield and bounce it off of enemies for multiple kills at a time. The Titan can also use the shield to defend itself from gunfire. It’s safe to assume that this is part of the new defender subclass since the Titan was covered in a void glow.
Hunter – Arcstrider
The Hunter exudes speed and unique fighting ability and the new Arcstrider super accentuates what the bladedancer was by now giving the hunter a bo staff. Based on what I saw the Hunter’s fighting skills are vastly improved showing sick weapon handling and gymnastic style moves when that super is enabled. The blueish glow tells me that this is the Arc super for the Hunter.
Warlock – DawnBlade
I guess the self-res is gone and it was replaced with an offensive style super in the solar category with the Warlock Dawnblade. The Warlock has a big ass sword that he uses to throw forth powerful solar flares while airborne or it can be used as just a kick ass flaming sword. Either way. The Warlock is deadlier than before.
Gameplay modes
The gameplay modes in Destiny were glaring issue that needed to be addressed probably more so than anything else in the game. Destiny players suffered through repetitive gameplay with almost no payoff and it made for at times a very boring game and an expensive one if you consider that not all of the expansions were very good for $30 a pop.
This time around Bungie appears to have listened to the community and addressed some annoyances with the gameplay. I can’t say to what degree they resolved the issues but at the very least it looks like they made every attempt to not have Destiny 2 become what Destiny is now.
Campaign mode has a new cohesive story and not the convoluted story that we had to decipher in Destiny until the King’s Fall expansion put it all together somewhat. This campaign looks to follow one story and a common goal.
Gone are some of the annoyances of the campaign mode. Going into orbit is no longer mandatory. You can go anywhere on the new Destiny map from wherever you are and travel from planet to planet or destination to destination within a planet.
Three new planets appear within the Destiny universe for you to explore aside from Earth (Nessus, Titan and IO) and each has a unique set of missions relating to each of the Guardian leaders. Not only that, the existing worlds that we already knew from the first Destiny are now expanded for more open world gameplay. The EDZ (European Dead Zone) is one of those areas that we can now access and explore on Earth that we couldn’t previously go to. We aren’t sure what else has been opened up but I imagine that changes have been made to each of the planets we visited in the first game to add to the open world. This is a good thing. We’ll see more in the coming weeks as we get closer to E3 and probably even more during E3.
Crucibles got a change to its format. All crucible matches will be 4v4 as opposed to 6v6 which should help improve the flow of the game and reduce “lag” that plagued so many players in Destiny. I’m sure there will be new crucible events aside from countdown and it was stressed that the crucible would be a level playing field for each type of player. The top tier players wouldn’t necessary dominate the crucible thus pushing out the not so great players giving them a distaste for PvP.
Countdown is one of the new challenges in the crucible, It’s reminiscent of the Salvage type crucible match in that there is a strategy that is required to be successful. You have to plant a bomb and then protect it. It sounds easy but if you see how it plays out it’s a little more complexed but not hard. Get your team, learn the map and defend the bomb.
Weapons
Weapons are what Destiny is all about and Luke Smith let us know that just like part 1 you’ll be starting from scratch since all of your weapons will be gone since the attack from the Red Legion and Ghaul. The objective is to go out and get your weapons back by doing strikes and missions.
The weapons system has been changed and they are separated by classes or slots. Kinetic, Energy, and Power. It was unclear what they represent but based on how Luke Smith described it, it appears as if you can mix and match the weapons that you like to use the most. You may be able to use three snipers if you want or two rocket launchers and I saw sub-machine guns and mini-guns so with that you would need more options. It would be nice if you could possibly use two exotics. Wishful thinking? Maybe.
Clans
Clans are a big addition to Destiny. It was noted at the keynote that a large number of players were largely unable to enjoy the content that Destiny offers such as the Nightfall and the raids because they didn’t have a group or clan to join up with. That ends with Destiny 2 with the addition of Clans and what Bungie calls “Guided Games”. It’s essentially an in house LFG that allows you to search the community for fire teams that need an extra player or two that you can join into so that way you can get your game on. I can say first hand that not having a fireteam to play with makes Destiny suck because you really can only solo this game to a point. The major elements of the game require a team and having this is major. No more Destiny Tracker and dealing with obnoxious players who don’t want you to join their group. Just make sure you have headphones so you can communicate, nothing worse than playing a team game with six and only 4 are speaking to each other.
Clans are also going to be able to be very personal in that you can customize your emblems, names and I’m almost positive that I heard that there will be unique rewards for successful clans during certain events. There is every incentive in the world to make sure you have a clan and hopefully it won’t be such a clusterfuck to create one like it was in having to go to Bungie.net and deal with that. Hopefully it can be done in game and a simple invite can be sent out to add players you want to rock out with you in your clan.
PC
Destiny 2 will now have PC support. The PC Master Race can now join in the fun and play Destiny and put those expensive GPU’s to work. PC players that meet the necessary hardware requirements can now play Destiny. It was actually being shown off yesterday in demo form at the livestream event. This is a good thing as it opens up the community to a larger audience.
Blizzard Entertainment Also announced a partnership with Bungie and Activision to support PC players with Battle.net to bring the community together, as well give you that 60 FPS. It’s not known is Steam will get any version of Destiny at all but it doesn’t look likely at this point.
First Impressions
My first impression of Destiny 2 so far is that we are getting a refresh of Destiny more so than a completely different game. I don’t think that it’s a bad thing either. Halo never really became anything more than what it was, neither did Metal Gear, Gears of War, Titanfall, Call of Duty or any game with a sequel or a series of sequels. Sequels don’t always have to be brand new never seen before experiences. Games of this type should always stick to it’s core and not deviate but make the necessary improvements. I would rather that bungie fix what needed to be fixed and make the game more playable in terms of it’s overall replay value. It shouldn’t be the people that just love the game that are playing it. New people should be joining in and Bungie should be making sure that they’re pumping out updates substantial enough to keep players interested. THIS was Destiny’s major flaw. To be fair, it’s hard to maintain loyalty in as fickle an environment as the gaming world but the players will be patient if you give them what they want and not what YOU think they want. Just based on what I’ve seen so far it’s appears as if Bungie may have gotten the message but we’ll see. This is only round one and we haven’t seen the Raid, sparrows, exotics, sub-bosses, the social space, the vault, and the list goes on. As I see it, I’ll keep you posted but for now? Good job Bungie.
