Hardcore Gamer went hands-on with the PS4 and PC versions of the upcoming game and if what we played is anything to go by, Bungie may have a real winner. While Destiny 2 may not change the minds of those opposed to loot shooter or MMO-lite mechanics, it will make those who were disappointed by the original game very happy. Destiny 2 is bigger, better structured and packs a more powerful punch.
The other side of the loot pool is the now titled “Illuminated Engrams” (previously Bright Engrams) which drop all sorts of cosmetic goodies and sometimes an exotic ship, sparrow or Ghost. Bungie is sticking to their guns with how these engrams function — aside from the debacle of XP gain — a minor complaint comes against it. With so many new cosmetics, mainly shaders, why can’t these items be locked like armor or weapons? Why can’t they be deleted in mass? Having to systemically break-down shaders one by one is tedious and a waste of time. No one wants to sit around and delete 65 bland shaders, “wooo, look how much fun I’m having.”
The mission takes you through a bunch of rooms and corridors of the Tower you’ve never seen before, teams you up with Cayde, Savala, and Ikora for small objectives of the mission, and has a few mini bosses that you’ll fight your way through before taking on a sort of final boss. There’s also a point where Amanda Holiday takes you up to a Red Legion ship to take it down. I won’t go into too much more detail, but what I can say is that it was much more fleshed out than most of the original Destiny story missions. It’s more reminiscent of a Call of Duty campaign mission in that it had other friendly characters doing things and talking to you as you go through the waves of enemies and various other objectives. Destiny just had the ghost talking you through more simplistic story missions that were repetitive and this is different and exciting because you don’t know what’s going to happen next.
[JH]: So, that’s kind of outside the scope of where we have our involvement. We’re super dedicated to story, and the high-level development decisions based on classes or specializations happen amongst other teams. We try our best to have a good narrative wrapper around that decision-making. Our involvement in the PvP is to develop a strong character in Lord Shaxx.
Destiny is a game with strong lore that does a poor job of presenting it to players. Though Bungie vastly improved the game’s story elements in The Taken King and Rise of Iron, it’s with Destiny 2 where the developer is looking to make it’s biggest strides yet. Featuring a full-fledged campaign, Adventures that tell their own sidestory and new lore items, the story team in Bellevue, Washington have had their hands busy. We got to sit down the Matthew Ward and Jason Harris, members of the Story and Cinematics team to discuss Destiny 2’s plot.
A new set of class specific abilities are being added as well. These abilities stay the same no matter which subclass you choose, and are generally meant to help your teammates. Titans can plant down a shield, https://Www.destiny2focus.com/articles/queenbreaker-in-2025-still-my-go-to-heavy-for-epic-dps.html Warlocks can cast an area of healing and Hunters get a dodge roll similar to the one that was part of the Nightstalker subclass. The first two are activated by holding down the circle or B button and the Hunter’s roll is done by double tapping it. They are all a nice addition to each class’ set of abilities and are super tactical. They were all incredibly useful in both PvE and PvP.
That’s Protheon’s big mechanic. Once you get him down to a certain damage point, he drops out the floor beneath you and lands you in a new arena. He does this three times throughout the fight. The difficult part about Protheon is that he plays floor’s lava with you. When he gets pissed enough, he’ll slam his fist on the ground and burn the entirety of the floor, which forces you to jump up on some small platforms. All this does, however, is put you in the line of sight of Protheon, who has two different weapons with which to take you down. It’s a tough fight, but it’s interesting and different, and that’s what we want. I will say, however, that the rest of the strike is pretty mundane. Save for the couple of interesting set pieces I mentioned earlier, it’s kind of simple. It doesn’t have many interesting mechanics, but it is short, so running it over and over as you grind will at least be quick. So again, if all of the strikes in Destiny 2 are short and simple but also take you through a new and interesting setting with a neat boss at the end, then sign me up for more.
Other (obvious) additions to Destiny 2 are the new subclasses and extra abilities. I’m a Titan main, so most of my time was spent with the new Sentinel class, but I also got to check out the Dawnblade Warlock and the Arcstrider Hunter. All three are similar in a lot of ways to their previous subclass, but with more aggressive tendencies. The Arcstrider is almost identical to Bladedancer, save for the super, which gives you some mad bow staff skills. Dawnblade gives you a flaming sword and the ability to essentially fly around the map as you swing fiery blasts at everyone. That’s instead of Sunsinger, which brought you back to life and gave you unrestricted access to all the melees and grenades you wanted. Instead of Defenders and their Wards of Dawn, Sentinels will get a Captain America shield that they’re able to throw around and smash into people with. So while I think that the new subclasses are less tactical than the original ones, they grant new and interesting game mechanics to players. The new supers are about taking out as many baddies as you can, and in that case, all three are extremely successful.