Yesterday at E3, my Kotaku Splitscreen co-host Jason Schreier sat down with Bungie’s Luke Smith, game director on Destiny 2. They hit a wide variety of topics including what The Darkness is, how the game’s open world levels will work, and why they’re taking away Jason’s Sunsinger res.
If you’re into Destiny, you should really listen to the full conversation—it’s in the video up top, accompanied by some year-two gameplay by yours truly.
You can also listen to it in podcast form below, starting at 23:35:
I’ve transcribed a couple parts of the conversation that I found particularly interesting, which you can read below. I’ve made edits for clarity and readability.
On What “The Darkness” Is
Jason Schreier: First thing I have to ask you about: I saw this Game Informer article. In it, you said that you guys will not be talking about The Darkness in the game.
Luke Smith: Yeah.
Schreier: And your explanation was, I believe, something about how it’s not time to reveal that, or you’re focusing on something else, correct?
Smith: Yep!
Schreier: Tell me the truth. Is it because none of you have any idea what “The Darkness” actually means?
Smith: So, I think that at a point, just totally candidly? We had no idea what it was. Straight up. We had no clue.
Schreier: Good! I’m glad you’re being candid today.
Smith: We didn’t know what it was, and we, for a period, we chose [that] we’re going to lump all the races [in together], and you see this in the tooltips in the game. “Minions of the darkness.” And we had taken all the races and said, “Ah, they’ll just be The Darkness.” But that’s not what the IP deserves. It’s like, literally not.
Schreier: I’m glad you’re admitting this.
Smith: And so what we’re doing with Destiny 2 is, we are deliberately telling a story about the Light. And what it means to be chosen. And as such, we’re in the process of removing the term “Darkness” from the game.
Schreier: I like that.
Smith: Because when we’re going to talk about Darkness next, we need to know what it is and have a plan for it. And we do.
On How The Open World Maps Will Work
Jason Schreier: Something we haven’t seen a lot of and didn’t see a lot of at the event is the open world stuff. I have heard that EDZ is really cool. EDZ—the European Dead Zone—is something that has been in development for many, many years now. Tell me about it. What is cool about it?
Luke Smith: So I think what’s cool about the layering of activities that we’re doing is, it starts with the map, first and foremost. Which, I’m not gonna say a map is some tremendous innovation. For us, the map is a product of a ton of work! [laughing] Like this is something that, this just is not a core competency of our studio. This is a competency and a proficiency we’ve been building. The map is like a fundamental element of building a layered suite of activities that can come on top of that.
Schreier: And by the map, you mean actually having a physical [in game] map.
Smith: There’s a map. And from the map, you can track different activities to do, adventures, you can track public events when they show up on your map.
Schreier: Can you fast travel around?
Smith: There’s gonna be some fast travel options that you’ll unlock.
Schreier: So I won’t have to go online and google “Dreadnaught Map” every time I wanna know where something is?
Smith: No, you actually will not have to do that, yeah.
Schreier: That’s incredible, what an innovation. [laughs]
Smith: [laughing] One of the things that we’re doing with Destiny 2 is, we’re trying to unhide a bunch of that fun. You know, instead of finding the fun on reddit, let’s find the fun in the game.
Schreier: Sure. Sure. Even with matchmaking now, or semi-matchmaking.
Smith: With Guided Games, yeah.
Schreier: Guided Games. And Guided Games, someone had asked me to clear this up: are Guided Games available for all types of raids? Just heroic raids? Just normal raids?
Smith: Just normal. Just normal activities.
Schreier: So heroic raids, and challenge modes, and stuff like that, gotta find your own group.
Smith: I don’t know exactly how the challenge mode layers are gonna work there, but yes, the normal tier activities will be Guided Games, and the heroics will be find your own, still.
Schreier: Interesting. Good to know. So as far as the layers of the map, so we saw some of that stuff, the dead… what is the name?
Smith: Lost Sectors. I think Dead Sector, is that an old game?
Schreier: Dead Sector, yeah, I think so. All these video games names just blend together in my mind.
Smith: Just blending together, yeah.
Schreier: What other stuff can people find on the map? Will I actually be able to go and explore and find interesting things in the world?
Smith: We hope so. That you’ll be able to go and explore and find, like, stuff to scan, learn more about. We know that players in Destiny are always looking for, in a bunch of ways, excuses to spend time in the world. And in [The Taken King] we had some scannables that you could find in the world and learn about, and in Destiny 2 we have way more than we’ve ever had.
We have the Lost Sectors, there’s gonna be more events, we still have Silent, we have an event class that we call Silent, which is basically when a bunch of monsters show up and start doing stuff, we have more of those.
We have… what is… we have a name for it internally, but… sometimes, each week we have an activity called a Flashpoint, which we haven’t talked about really, yet. But the Flashpoint is basically like a featured destination, a featured location. And then there’s a whole class of stuff that shows up when it’s the Flashpoint. So that’s unique, treasure maps to go find, special monsters that show up….
Schreier: So it sounds like you guys are throwing some Diablo III in here.
Smith: I don’t wanna go so far as to say it’s like Diablo III. I wouldn’t draw that comparison. But we wanted to, with Flashpoints, to have an opportunity each week to focus players on a single location where they can just go solo, hang out, and then get a super powerful reward from it. Like the equivalent of an unknown reward from Nightfall. Which, you know, powerful for your character, super important.
On whether there are private Crucible matches this time around:
“We do not have private matches at launch.”
On whether they’re going to have ranked PVP at launch:
“We’re not doing ranked PVP. We’re seven, eight weeks away [from finishing]. We have an idea of something we might do. I don’t wanna commit to it here because I’m not sure it’s gonna happen. If we don’t get it for September 6, there’ll be something, some way of players showing off their prowess to other people. Which is ultimately what a ranking system is. We’re working on something.”
On the possibility of raids that require players to fill traditional MMO roles:
“I think we’ve done a really good job of creating a cooperative raid game that doesn’t rely on the trinity—tank, healer, DPS. And I’m really satisfied that we’ve done that. I’m happy with that. Now let me get to the second layer of the question I think you’re asking, which is, there are other fantasies that Destiny could be providing, like support fantasies, and things like that. Do I ever think we’ll add more of those? Yes. In the long run, we will.”
On whether Titan Bubbles are indeed still in the game:
“Yes. Everyone thought they were gone. For a while, I thought they were gone, too. And I think that the Titan Bubble has this amazing property of, it’s like a mistake you can put in the world [laughs], or it’s something amazing you can put in the world as a player. And, it’s like, you’re physically altering the gameplay space in a way that I think is pretty exciting. It’s one of the things the Sentinal can do [in Destiny 2].”
On why they did away with the Sunsinger’s resurrect ability:
“Because I think that the challenge of choosing when to resurrect is not as interesting, because it ends up, your super bar just is always full. Waiting is not gameplay.”
There was a bunch more interesting stuff in the full interview, so give it a listen. We’ve still got two more E3 episodes of Kotaku Splitscreen in the works, featuring several more interviews with the people making the games from the show. Stay tuned.