SIGN OF FOUR

While our visit naturally focuses on Destiny 2’ s PVE component – and on putting worried minds at rest – the Crucible PVP has been the subject of an even more substantial overhaul, with the player count reduced from 6v6 to 4v4 across the board. The UI has been redesigned, too, to show each combatant’s chosen subclass and how close they are to having their Super available, while Power ammo spawns can only be picked up by one player, rather than the whole team. The change has mostly been aimed at making a competitive game that is easier to understand, learn from and improve at than the often chaotic 12-player action of the first game.

That’s fair enough, but it causes a mathematical problem, and brings with it a certain sadness. Aside from the Doubles PVP mode, all activities in Destiny

1 were playable in teams of either three or six. Finish a sixman raid, and you could split into two three-man fireteams and chase other PVE objectives, or head into Crucible with a full six. That’s no longer going to be the case. “We knew that by changing the team size, some of these things wouldn’t work as well as in Destiny 1,” says lead Crucible designer Lars Bakken. “But even though the ease of moving between activities was great, the core problems that were festering at the centre of the Crucible were unfixable. There was no way to attack them.” Now, should you decide to move from raid to PVP, two players will be left hanging; for all that Smith and the team want players to have more conversations in

Destiny 2, that doesn’t sound like a particularly fun one to have.