A LIGHT THAT NEVER GOES OUT
It’s time to give Destiny a second chance to make a first impression, writes ANDREW WHITEHEAD
Broadcasting live across the internet from a private airport hangar in south Los Angeles, the world finally got its first glimpse of Destiny 2. Bungie used their time to send a clear message to everyone watching around the world - they’ve listened to their community. It was a not-so-hidden way of addressing the reception of the first Destiny, which many critics and players agreed failed to meet expectations.
Over the years expansions and updates improved Destiny considerably, with final expansion, The Taken King, being a welcomed soft reboot of sorts. Destiny may have stumbled out of the gates, but finished strong. Still, at its core were a number of design issues that couldn’t be simply swept under the rug, which is why the series needed a fresh start. Sometimes you do get a second chance to make a first impression.
LET’S TRY THIS AGAIN
This desire to get players onboard quickly with Destiny 2 is apparent from the opening moments of the first campaign mission entitled Homecoming. The Tower, a gathering spot for Guardians and an iconic structure looking over the Last Safe City on Earth, is under attack from a new threat known as the Red Legion. Led by the self-righteous commander Lord Ghaul, the Red Legion are fueled by the belief that the Traveler, the city-sized spherical being that hovers over Earth, chose the wrong creatures to receive its Light.
“We’re going to introduce to to a villain that you’re going to love to hate,” said Steve Cotton, Bungie’s World Lead. “He’s more complicated than you think he’s going to be, he’s motivated, but he’s also conflicted. He really wants to take the Light, but he also wants to be chosen by it.”
Within minutes of their arrival, the Red Legion lay waste to humanity’s final hiding place and start to take the Traveler away by force. It’s quite a sight for returning players to see both the Tower and the Traveler being ripped away so violently.
The high stakes action serves as an introduction to the Guardians for new
players. Within the Destiny universe, the Traveler came to Earth and shared its knowledge with us, bringing with it a new Golden Age of technological advancement. It also reanimated fallen warriors as Guardians, bestowing upon them superhuman abilities and access to incredibly advanced technology to defend Earth.
At a ground level, the battle for the Traveler looks brilliant with Red Legion ships filling the stormy skies above and dropping hordes of enemy soldiers into your path. The constant need to press forward gives the fight a sense of urgency that the opening of the original Destiny sorely lacked. In the first game, you were awakened and told you were the hero Earth needed; in Destiny 2 you’re thrown into a battle and shown that nothing you do matters. Humanity has already lost.
Bungie are determined to give the story a more personal feel this time around, which is a direct response to the lore-heavy but character-light storyline of the first game. Though my time with the campaign was limited, I can attest to much I enjoyed fighting the Red Legion as they ripped through the Tower, and how keen I am to see where it leads.
THE VAULT IN OUR STARS
This mass destruction of The Last Safe City on Earth and the Tower serves two purposes, the first is it acts as a reset button to place returning and new players on a level playing field. See, in the midst of all the chaos, those damn aliens destroyed the vaults holding everyone’s gear. Every. Single. Vault. Including yours (if you had one).
It’s not Bungie’s fault your precious gear won’t be here in Destiny 2, it was the Red Legion. Though some hardcore fans of the first game hoping to transfer their gear may be annoyed at this loot reset, it’s a smart move that will ensure new Guardians don’t feel left behind on day one.
The other reason for the chaotic opening is to spread the Guardians across the galaxy, which of course means somebody is going to have to go and round them all up to take on the Red Legion. You know what that means, right? You’re going to take on a bunch of quests. A whole lot of them.
In an effort to streamline how quests work in Destiny 2, you no longer have to return to home base to complete or take on new ones. This is a muchneeded change from the first game’s stop-start way of handling quests that required way too much backtracking and returning to places you literally just left.
Players can also find sidequests, or Adventures as they’re called in the game, strewn about the map. In an effort to move away from levels that feel like they’re populated solely by bad guys and other players looking for loot, maps are now far more fleshed out.
Small outposts around the map are also filled with their own stories that help flesh out the world while also offering unique activities for players to try out. Want to take a break from shooting? Play a friendly game of soccer with a giant ball. For all its seriousness on the surface, Destiny has never been above having a sense of humour at its core.
Bungie are determined to give the story a more personal feel this time around
I’VE SEEN THINGS YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE
Sitting alongside Adventures are hidden areas called Lost Sectors, which act as mini-dungeons complete with unique bosses and treasure to uncover.
Both Adventures and Lost Sectors are indicative of how much Bungie want players to feel free to explore their worlds and encourage them to spend hours exploring without feeling forced to go back to a centralised hub.
Players can also encounter dynamic Public Events during their travels, which they can join with other players, or bypass completely. Steve Cotton told me of an encounter he had with a Public Event that spiraled out of control while he himself was off doing an Adventure.
“I was [on a] Adventure mission that had me constructing these platforms out of nowhere,” explained Cotton. “There’s guys below doing their own thing, and they can see me building these platforms. And I see them doing the same Public Event I’ve done maybe five or six times already, but I see a Cabal Mosquito fly down and start laying waste to them - and I’m like ‘I don’t remember seeing this when I was doing that’.”
Wanting to lend a hand to his fellow Guardians, Cotton began raining down rockets on the alien attacker and eventually helped destroy it. “But because I destroyed it it set off a Heroic Encounter for that Public Event, so now the whole thing changes. Now those people down there, who think they know what they’re doing, are suddenly fighting Cabal Commanders and new ships are coming in. And I’m up there thinking ‘yeah I did that, you don’t even know’ [Laughs]. So then I jump in and help them finish it.”
Emergent events like this in Destiny 2 promise to offer engaging distractions for players and encourage them explore the environment with greater care than before. Even Cotton said that during his playtests he’d often find himself staying on one planet all night, not once feeling the need to head back into orbit and try somewhere else.
WHOLE NEW WORLDS
Building off the mythology of the first game, Destiny 2 features an array of new planets and regions for players to explore, all of which have been touched by the arrival of the Red Legion in some form. The planet Titan, one of Saturn’s many moons, is one all encompassing methane ocean that’s also home to a number of arcologies built by humans. After the Red Legion invasion, Titan became a makeshift base of operations for Commander Zavala, the Titan Vanguard.
Io, the moon of Jupiter, is now a habitable planet after being touched by the Traveler on its way to Earth. Covered in huge trees and lush foliage, the forest planet is also where Ikora Rey, the Warlock Vanguard, has
retreated to in search of answers to what happened back on Earth.
On the more alien-ish end of the spectrum is Nessus, a planet almost fully consumed by the Vex - a race of ancient cyborgs that are hostile towards Guardians. The Hunter Vanguard Cayde-6 (expertly voiced by Nathan Fillion) hangs out here, spending his days exploring the natural wonders of the planet as they slowly succumb to the Vex’s growing cybernetic landscape.
Finally, there’s the European Dead Zone, otherwise called the EDZ. A devastated region here on Earth that was originally ravaged by the Fallen, an insectoid alien race that appeared in the first Destiny game. Now swarming with Red Legion troops, the EDZ is also home to a shard of the Traveler and as such has become a base of operations for surviving Guardians.
DON’T TRAVEL ALONE
While you can play Destiny 2 as a single-player game, it’s an alwaysonline experience that encourages you to find people to play with to enjoy the game to its maximum potential. One of the bigger issues being addressed in Destiny 2 is how much cooperative
Running in 4K at 60 fps, the PC version will likely be the definitive version of the game
content was locked away from solo gamers in the first game.
The logic back then was players who knew each other were more likely to complete long raids together and not bail halfway through. But the reality was a lot of Destiny players missed out on big end-game missions simply because they didn’t have anyone to play with.
Bungie is tackling this issue in two ways - the first way is by supporting clans in-game. Players can now create and manage clans, complete with custom banners, invitations for new members, and rewards that will be shared among all members regardless of time played.
The second way Bungie are building their Destiny community is through Guided Games, which allows solo players to sort through clans, find one that suits them, and temporarily team up with them to go on raids and share in the loot. In an effort to keep the online toxicity to a minimum, there’ll be tools in place to ensure hardcore and casual players can easily identify who they should be playing with.
The Crucible, Destiny’s playerversus-player mode, is also making a comeback in a new four-versus-four format across all modes. Updated HUD elements will clue you in on which players have their supers ready (sort of like Ultimates in Overwatch) and who has found power ammo for their strongest weapons. There’s also a new game mode called Countdown which sees two teams alternating between planting bombs at set locations to win the round, or defending those locations by eliminating the opposing team.
My first game of Countdown was a disaster. I was on a team that played as individuals and we lost to a well organised group of what I can only assume were Destiny veterans. Game two went a lot better - my new group knew how to attack when we had the bomb, and how defend when we didn’t. We saved up our supers, didn’t leave bomb planting spots unguarded, revived fallen allies - it was tense down to the wire game, but we won in the end.
There’s a lot of little changes to the Crucible that returning players will appreciate that are too specific to go into here. But I will say that as someone who never thought the player-versus-player content in Destiny was much fun, what I experienced in Destiny 2 felt like a big improvement.
Understandably though, for a lot of players the big drawcard of Destiny 2 will be the cooperative player-versusenvironment content. On offer at the reveal event was a three-player Strike mission called The Inverted Spire, which saw myself and two other players trekking across the cybernetic planet of Nessus to fight a giant
mechanical beast hidden inside ancient underground ruins.
Designed to be a tightly focused experience you can complete with a couple of friends, this one mission took around twenty-five minutes to finish and was the highlight of my time with Destiny 2.
PREVENTING PC PORT PITFALLS
When the first Destiny was released, making both current and previous generation console versions of a game was still the norm. But with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 out to pasture, Bungie have turned their focus to the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4 Pro, Xbox One, and for the first time, the PC.
David Shaw, head of the Bungie’s PC development team, said their primary goal is to have people talk about the game and not about missing features. “One of the things we put a lot of effort into is making sure we came out of the gate as a legit PC game,” explained Shaw. “At launch we’re focusing on the things we think are most valuable [to PC players] that really give it that PC feel.”
True to their word, out of the box Destiny 2 supports a variety of resolutions, including 4K, as well as 21:9 monitors, text chat, adjustable field of view, and an uncapped framerate. “We’ll have a bunch of different knobs and dials on things like texture detail and foliage detail,” explained Shaw. “We’ll have all these different things that’ll allow players to go for the best possible [look], or turn things down and say ‘all I care about is those ten pixels that are that guy’s head’.”
Though no firm plans have been announced, Bungie have said its very likely Destiny 2 on the PC will miss the September 8 launch date locked in for the console versions. Release issues aside, I can assure you that the PC version is incredibly impressive. Running in 4K at a smooth 60 frames per second, the PC version will likely be the definitive version of the game.
ENOUGH SPACE FOR EVERYONE
When Game Director Luke Smith took to the stage in that steamy airport hangar to show off Destiny 2 to the public, he told the crowd that Bungie wanted this sequel to “represent a chance to welcome new players into our world.” And after spending some time with the game, I have to say they’ve rolled out quite the welcome mat.
I was never a huge Destiny player, having played the first game for only a short while and never touching the expansions. It was a good game for sure, a very good game, but not a great one. But the hard lessons learned from Destiny’s rocky lifecycle now serve as a solid foundation for its follow-up.
Destiny 2 is the fresh start the series deserves, so ignore that that big 2 at the end of the title because this isn’t a sequel in the traditional sense. It’s a new beginning. A chance for players new and old to get in on the ground level and experience Bungie’s vision as it should be - engaging, challenging, uncompromising, and above all, fun.