Trouble out on the frontier. There’s been a jailbreak out in The Reef, and among the orneriest varmints this aspect of Alpha Centauri are free and inflicting a hill o’hassle. This place doesn’t want a Guardian – it wants a sheriff. Destiny 2 might have had some troubles this previous 12 months, however I gotta admit, I like the concept behind its subsequent growth, Forsaken. A wild western vibe, a contemporary bunch of villains and a few large mechanical modifications on the horizon are due this September, as Bungie introduced at this time on their big debut Twitch stream.
On prime of the standard bunch of latest areas to go to and issues to explode (extra on that in a bit), Forsaken is bringing some fairly main modifications to the sport, initially being a whole rework of the weapon system. Now you possibly can equip any three weapons, so in case you like the concept of rolling with a trio of shotguns you possibly can, though you may need some hassle at lengthy vary. There’s additionally a complete new weapon sort being launched – bows – as a result of each open-world FPS wants bows and arrows for some motive. There’s a brand new set of sub-classes on the best way too.
Fans of the unique Destiny will recognise the title of The Reef – an asteroid belt on the far fringe of the photo voltaic system – however Forsaken’s tackle it’s fairly totally different. It’s a dusty wasteland constructed out of asteroids haphazardly lashed collectively right into a better complete. Nathan Fillion (by which I imply Cayde) went and constructed a jail there, into which he stuffed all the largest unhealthy guys he may discover. As with most of Cayde’s different concepts, this turned out badly and now you’ve acquired a bunch of huge bads known as The Barons and a swarm of lesser villains to shoot.
Outside of looking down these bounty marks across the Reef, you’ll have a couple of new chunks of endgame content material to get into. Of course there’s a brand new raid – The Ascent of Kings – which Bungie say has probably the most bosses of any Destiny occasion thus far, plus some large puzzles, however it apparently ties into a bigger chunk of endgame stuff known as The Dreaming City. Not many particulars on the way it works precisely, however Bungie say that based mostly on what gamers do, The Dreaming City can change from one week to the following, providing totally different areas and enemies.
There’s additionally an fascinating new aggressive playmode, Gambit, that jogs my memory plenty of aggressive shmups like Twinkle Star Sprites on the Neo Geo. Two groups every have their very own area. Their purpose is to kill NPC enemies and money within the tokens they drop at at financial institution. Fill the financial institution and also you summon a boss. Kill that, you win. But you may as well spend tokens to ship an enormous enemy to lock the enemy financial institution down for some time, and even ship certainly one of your workforce to raid the opposition in hopes of stalling them. Parallel PvE – I can dig it.
While all the brand new content material does sound good, I do fear whether or not this can fall into the standard entice of being one other 3-Four hours of story content material backed up by a handful of repeatable situations once more. Kotaku reported that Destiny 1’s growth instruments had been so unfit for goal that it took eight hours to load a single map earlier than work may even begin, and given how threadbare Destiny 2’s present two expansions are, I ponder if that state of affairs hasn’t improved a lot.
Reservations concerning scale apart, Forsaken appears like a reasonably stable growth, so far as new Destiny 2 stuff goes, and the weapon slot alterations alone can be a game-changer. That stated, Bungie are presumably repeating certainly one of their largest errors with the unique Destiny – Forsaken can be a near-full-price launch, coming in at $40 (or $70 with a brand new season cross) whereas promising not far more than the opposite DLC packs. Here’s hoping that what they ship on September 4th justifies the value.
