“Also, there will be a ton of loot!”
May 20, 2017 10:39 AM   Subscribe

Destiny 2 [YouTube] [Trailer] “Humanity’s last safe city has fallen to an overwhelming invasion force led by Ghaul, the imposing commander of the brutal Red Legion. He has stripped the city’s Guardians of their power, and forced the survivors to flee. You will venture to mysterious, unexplored worlds of our solar system to discover an arsenal of weapons and devastating new combat abilities. To defeat the Red Legion and confront Ghaul, you must reunite humanity’s scattered heroes, stand together, and fight back to reclaim our home.”

• Destiny 2 PC exclusive to Battle.net [Game Industry]
“Battle.net is going beyond Blizzard. The Overwatch and Hearthstone publisher today said it is opening up its digital distribution platform to Destiny 2, the upcoming first-person shooter developed by Bungie and published by sister company Activision. The PC version of Destiny 2 will exclusively support Battle.net (although physical copies will be sold at retail), which will integrate its established social features like chat and party formation while allowing Bungie to run the game on its own servers. Similarly, Bungie will handle "gameplay customer service" while Blizzard takes care of issues specific to the Battle.net platform and storefront.”
• Destiny 2 is the PC's next big obsession - the guns, quests, and features that convinced us [PCGamesN]
“Not all that was playable on the show floor, but I did get to spent quality time with the game’s first campaign mission, a Strike, and several rounds of Countdown. The important thing to note about all of them is how cohesive the entire package feels; unlike shooters such as Battlefield, where the campaign feels entirely divorced from its multiplayer, Destiny 2 is clearly designed as a complete experience where the stitches between components are meant to be invisible. You play as the same character in all areas, and so your familiarity with their skillset and gear is fundamental to every area of the game. That’s not to say the modes feel samey - a Strike is clearly not a campaign mission, and neither are anything like the absurdly pacey PvP - but they all feed harmoniously into a whole. ”
• Destiny 2 is the Game We Originally Wanted [Nerdist]
“Most of us can agree that Destiny‘s release was far from perfect. Its lack of an enticing narrative (or any at all, actually), repetitive missions, and annoying RNG loot drops drove a lot of players away. Of course, that was never the case for yours truly. It wasn’t until after I put 300+ into the game that I finally decided enough was enough. With that in mind, I already had a laundry list of improvements I wanted to see in a potential sequel. Thursday’s stellar keynote address answered a lot of my concerns, but unfortunately not all of them. Here are my takeaways after an afternoon of going hands-on with the campaign (PS4), PVP (PS4), and Strike (PC) from the highly anticipated Destiny 2. There’s finally a real campaign–Praise the Traveler! I played the same 10-15 minute-long mission shown off at the keynote called “Homecoming” and well, watching the Tower crumble was definitely intense. While the gameplay felt pretty familiar, the increased NPC chatter that surrounded me, on top of new scripted moments, made it clear that Bungie heard everyone loud and clear and added a robust campaign.”
• Destiny 2: What we know [Polygon]
1. The story will be more cinematic.
2. Once again there will be four "planets".
3. There will be a lot more to do on those worlds.
4. No more returning to orbit.
5. No new classes, and three subclasses are being replaced.
6. Weapon loadouts are changing, but not much else on the gear front seems to be.
7. The crucible will feel more intimate and strategic.
8. The new guided games feature is Bungie's alternative to matchmaking.
9. The PC version will be available exclusively through Battle.net.
10. There's good news and bad news about the PC version.
• Destiny 2 STRIKE: Inverted Spire — 20 Minutes of Warlock Hands-On Gameplay [YouTube]
• Destiny 2 - Official Gameplay Reveal [YouTube]
posted by Fizz (32 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Not sure if I'll ever play but I gotta admit those trailers grabbed my attention. Mostly because of Nathan Fillion's performance, though. Not sure if that would translate into enjoyment of the game.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:51 AM on May 20, 2017


So good.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:53 AM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


So before you let the hype train leave the station there will be PS4 exclusive content (and for those people who have XBox1 Destiny 1, do you have Echo Chamber yet? Two, maybe three years after it released as a temp PS4 exclusive?). PvP is supposedly now only 4v4, which doesn't sound that great but isn't a dealbreaker. What is a dealbreaker is P2P multiplayer, at least on PC.

I'll probably buy this on PC but MAN does it seem like Activision doesn't want customers there.
posted by Slackermagee at 10:59 AM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm more intrigued about the decision to team up with Blizzard and Battlenet. Will be interesting to see how that plays out. I might hold off for a month or two to see how that works before I take a plunge.
posted by Fizz at 11:12 AM on May 20, 2017


So, slight nerd confession time:

Destiny is the game that got me into video games. Before, they just weren't my thing - I had friends who played, and I would occasionally pick up a controller while hanging out with them, but never really got into them. They weren't interesting enough to make the learning curve worth it.

I had a couple of friends who were into it, and they were really welcoming and supportive and we had a hilarious time while I learned how to play. When I started, I couldn't even figure out which buttons to press - I ran into walls, I killed myself with my own grenades, I didn't know how to aim. By the time I stopped playing, because I had to move overseas, I was a murder maniac in the crucible.*

Destiny is a flawed game in a lot of ways, but there is something about it that is just really fun. Playing with friends is part of it, but not all of it. When Destiny got stale, our group moved onto Division, which is in some ways similar - but it just wasn't as fun. I'm not sure I can put my finger on it. I think some of it is that, despite what Destiny got wrong on a macro scale, they got a lot right on the micro scale (e.g. the feel of firing the different weapons).

Saying that I learned to play on this game is, like, such a black mark in the male-dominated gaming community, because of its reputation as a blockbuster game full of filthy casuals. But, it's sticker price was more than worth the enjoyment I've gotten out of it and I've read so many people complaining about it that I feel like defending it. I'm really looking forward to playing Destiny 2 when I get back to the US.

I'm a little bummed about the lack of 6v6 crucible modes though. I'm not pissed off about it, because there are probably reasons, but Destiny is the most fun when it's absolutely bonkers. I'm not really into trying to prove the size of my joystick through super competitive PVP play - I liked Control, Mayhem Clash, and so on.

* Okay that's overstating it a bit.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:28 AM on May 20, 2017 [10 favorites]


I'm more intrigued about the decision to team up with Blizzard and Battlenet. Will be interesting to see how that plays out. I might hold off for a month or two to see how that works before I take a plunge.

It makes sense, given that Destiny is the same kind of "retail game as a service" that Blizzard does. Also with P2P plus no 30% to Valve I'm sure they'll save a lot of money.

The one thing that seems really dumb now was renaming the service from battle.net. if they're going to eventually use it for Call of Duty, battle.net will be a much better name than "Blizzard tech" or whatever.
posted by selfnoise at 11:30 AM on May 20, 2017


The trailers for Destiny games always have a wisecracking component to them (Fillion here, the rowdy friendship crew all fighting together in commercials for the first game), and I only played plain regular pre-DLC Destiny, but none of that humor was in the game. The trailers make it look like Borderlands, but the game itself always takes itself so damn seriously in my experience. Did it lighten up in later additions?
posted by Servo5678 at 11:44 AM on May 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


No, it doesn't really lighten up. There isn't that much character interaction to start with, so that kind of wisecracking doesn't have much of an opportunity to occur in the first place. Fillion's character does some voiceovers for some of the missions, but that's about it.

TBH, I've always found the wisecracking in the trailers to be kind of forced and cringeworthy. The rousing speeches, as well. The writing is ... not really that good.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:57 AM on May 20, 2017 [7 favorites]


No, it doesn't really lighten up. There isn't that much character interaction to start with, so that kind of wisecracking doesn't have much of an opportunity to occur in the first place.

I think though that this might be different as Destiny 2 is supposedly going to have a more robust campaign. I never played the first, did the first even have a campaign?
posted by Fizz at 12:04 PM on May 20, 2017


Destiny was such an odd little game. It improved markedly after The Taken King, but still, the story sucked, the gameplay was repetitive, the promised MMO-stuff never existed. And yet, the core loop of the game - the pure basics of moving around and shooting - were so tight and felt so great that my girlfriend and I still dumped well upwards of a hundred hours in to the game. It remains one of my favorite PS4 games, despite the fact that its many flaws really should have sunk it.

I'm very much psyched for 2.
posted by Itaxpica at 12:24 PM on May 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


I always wanted to play it, but my only gaming platform is a PC. Hoping I might be able to get a copy of 2 and play.
posted by Samizdata at 12:31 PM on May 20, 2017


I never played the first, did the first even have a campaign?

The snarky answer is no, but it did have a series of story missions, whose basic theme was: go to these planets we lost and where no one has set foot for ages, find items you need for your war, and kill villains. The story linking these missions together exists, but is pretty weak. It feels more like they tried to come up with a story to link the missions together, instead of writing the missions to fit a story.

One of the really frustrating things about it is that there a lot of potential for the storytelling to be a lot better (the world has some depths to mine), but they just whiffed.

the pure basics of moving around and shooting - were so tight and felt so great that my girlfriend and I still dumped well upwards of a hundred hours in to the game

Yeah, this is exactly how I feel about it. It was just a pleasure to play moment-to-moment, even though when you're done you're like, ... "wait, seriously, that's what this mission was about?"
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:36 PM on May 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


Destiny was a really good deathmatch game with a really, really terrible f2p grindfest attached to it. I stopped playing when it started giving me drops I needed to buy an expansion to use. I'm never playing a Bungie game again.
posted by empath at 12:40 PM on May 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


Lack of dedicated servers caused a bunch of issues in Destiny 1. It was understandable because the game was essentially a fork of Halo 1 tech. Bungee had years and a lot of money to get a real backend infrastructure up and running. If every bootleg f2p Chinese MMO and arpg can have a dedicated server infrastructure then there's no excuse for bungee to drop the ball on what is now a very affordable feature.

The fact that they are still using P2P archetecture implies they are still sitting on some iteration of their Halo1 era code and that is a frankly confusing decision.

I guess I'll have to wait for the GDC/gamasutra postmortem to be proven wrong.
posted by kzin602 at 1:10 PM on May 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm kind of casually interested in this. One of the Titanfall 2 YouTubers I follow is a huge Destiny fan, and some of his excitement for the sequel is bleeding over into curiosity on my part. The idea of a fun shooter that isn't hyper-competitive appeals to me as something I could dip into once in a while, whenever the mood strikes.

What is a dealbreaker is P2P multiplayer, at least on PC.

Yeah, that's a bit sketchy. Apparently, it's mainly an issue for PvP, which is not at all what interests me about a game like Destiny. But I'd be more comfortable, I think, if there were some real infrastructure backing things.

It makes sense, given that Destiny is the same kind of "retail game as a service" that Blizzard does.

Also, Destiny 1 was published by Activision, which is owned by Activision-Blizzard. So it's kind of a no-brainer in-house partnership move when you look at it that way, especially since Blizzard has a good pedigree for both MMOs and, since Overwatch, FPSes.
posted by tobascodagama at 1:43 PM on May 20, 2017


No, it doesn't really lighten up. There isn't that much character interaction to start with, so that kind of wisecracking doesn't have much of an opportunity to occur in the first place. Fillion's character does some voiceovers for some of the missions, but that's about it.

Huh, this wasn't how I felt at all. Both Filion's character and the Ghost were good for levity (I particularly liked the Ghost's indignant "they were trying to knock us off that PLATFORM!"). I only played The Taken King and later, though.

The cutscenes/story were abject nonsense, though.
posted by asterix at 2:00 PM on May 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


Mostly because of Nathan Fillion's performance, though.

That's interesting. I actually recognized Lance Reddick's voice first and thought, "Wait, why haven't we gotten a TV show with Lt. Daniels and that one guy from Serenity?"
posted by FJT at 2:05 PM on May 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


This...might be one of the reasons I finally installed Parallels last night. We'll see if the MacBook Pro can handle it (on some diminished level, I'm sure, if at all) when it comes out. In the meantime, there's some other stuff I've been wanting to try that was PC-only, so this was a good excuse.
posted by limeonaire at 2:11 PM on May 20, 2017


So... it's all about dealing with unmitigated Ghaul?
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:14 PM on May 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


Here, take my revolver, go in the library and take the only honorable course left to you.
posted by Naberius at 3:13 PM on May 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


I got fooled once. Not again. At least, not until someone reviews the game and says "yes, Destiny 2 will actually be interesting to you if you don't play with friends online and don't intend to spend 600 hours grinding for loot."
posted by chrominance at 4:35 PM on May 20, 2017 [6 favorites]


Also, only played the base game, but when I learned Nathan Fillion did voices in the game, I had to rack my brain to figure out where. Turned out he was one of the faction leaders you talk to for a total of twelve seconds. I'm not even exaggerating very much, you have no reason to ever talk to the faction leaders outside of buying stuff from them. And then don't even talk to you when you do so!

Do not buy Destiny 2 because you heard Nathan Fillion in the trailer. You are setting yourself up for disappointment.
posted by chrominance at 4:38 PM on May 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


The first game originally had a very different and much more involved single player storyline that was scrapped at the last minute. So it's possible that the Fillion character was supposed to actually be important at one stage.
posted by selfnoise at 4:53 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


Fillion has a decent-sized part in The Taken King. There are a bunch of missions where his character is narrating/communicating with you as you go.
posted by asterix at 5:01 PM on May 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm pretty optimistic about D2. I was a day one player of D1, and ended up taking a bunch of breaks and not playing as much in years 1 and 2 as I would like because of various frustrations with the game (not enough loot and not enough story, among other things). Although the story didn't massively improve in year 3, the loot did. Together with mechanical improvements to make the game more interesting (strike scoring, records books), I feel like D1 is ending on a pretty upbeat note. The hints I saw during the reveal suggest Bungie is focused on magnifying the improvements they've already made, with a bigger more coherent campaign, more competitive PVP offerings, and generally more stuff to do.

If anyone wants to play D1 in the meantime, send me a note.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 6:10 PM on May 20, 2017


The whole trailer is a blur. God, I feel old.
posted by Beholder at 7:59 PM on May 20, 2017


Destiny is the game that got me into video games.

Oh jesus I'm old.
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:07 PM on May 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


Oh jesus I'm old.

Quite possibly, but I'm not sure why my comment would make you think so. You do know that there are a lot of people who just don't play videogames, for whatever reason, right?
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 3:38 AM on May 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Destiny was great. But if I had to do it over again, I would wait until all the expansions were out before playing. What drove me nuts was every expansion either needing to reupgrade your gear, or toss it and grind out updated versions. Such a waste of time.

So will be getting D2 probably in 2020 or so.
posted by habeebtc at 1:00 PM on May 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


So before you let the hype train leave the station there will be PS4 exclusive content (and for those people who have XBox1 Destiny 1, do you have Echo Chamber yet? Two, maybe three years after it released as a temp PS4 exclusive?).

Nope. "Timed exclusive" in any other game typically means getting it a month or two later. The Xbox One version of Destiny got the PS4's launch content a full year later, and the exclusive content added for PS4 in later DLC never came to Xbox One at all. And there was no point in buying the PS version later if you started on Xbox, because your progress didn't transfer over. It was rather frustrating.
posted by Sibrax at 2:47 PM on May 21, 2017


I recorded part of the soundtrack for this a couple weeks ago. So I can tell you if nothing else, the music is going to be really cool.
posted by KathrynT at 3:49 PM on May 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


I am useless at multiplayer (and don't have the patience or energy for it, tbh), have a shitty internet connection, a shitty PC, and only enjoy grinding and "special bonus XP & hat weekends" for single player games that I can commit to as and when I choose. This - and stuff like Overwatch - is a game for a very particular type of gamer, and I guess that's not me any more.
posted by turbid dahlia at 10:24 PM on May 21, 2017


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