Finally, we were able to sneak in a match of Countdown, a new multiplayer mode in Destiny style Star Wars game 2. The mode is essentially Search & Destroy. One team is tasked with planting a bomb, and the other is tasked with defusing it. If an entire team is eliminated, however, the round ends. The first team to win six rounds is the victor. It’s a neat mode for those who like these types of multiplayer modes. For those who don’t like it, modes like Clash will return. Unlike Destiny, however, all multiplayer modes will only support eight players, down from twelve.
As for graphical fidelity, Destiny 2 offers more than enough to make PC users happy. Outside of being able to enable windowed fullscreen with upwards of 4K resolution, we are given a Field of View slider, Anti-Aliasing, SSAO, Texture Anisotropy, Texture & Shadow Quality, and Depth of Field selection. In addition, there’s environment, character, foliage and shadow detail distance, as well as Light Shaft, Motion Blur, Wind Impulse, Internal Render Resolution percentage, HDR for those with HDR screens, Chromatic Aberration and Film Grain. There’s even the option to display your FPS. Whew. As we mentioned, there’s a lot of options to go through, along with a VRAM Usage meter at the top to get a better grasp of your hardware capabilities. The ability to play Destiny 2 at 60 FPS is a game changer, especially if you can play it at a higher resolution such as 1440p or 4K. This feels like a game that’s made for it, and you won’t want to go back afterwards. Overall, the developers have done an amazing job bringing this to PC from a visual standpoint.
A series of new locations on Earth, Titan, Nessus and Io replace the locales from the Destiny 1 era, and are mostly huge improvements. The open areas may not necessarily be bigger but are filled to the brim with more geometry, exploration, and activities. Returning activities like Public Events have been revamped to offer more engaging encounters, and new activities like Adventures allow players to dig deeper into the lore of the world. New Faction Leaders populate each destination, but they feel lonely and out of place. Exploring the open areas still feels too empty as the player count has not been increased, nor are there any other NPCs to interact with. Faction Leaders are a great start, but it’s disappointing that there isn’t more to the open areas other than to mine Lost Sectors and Public Events, walk up to a flag to initiate an Adventure or kill infinitely respawning enemies.
We want to continue experimenting and evolving Eververse to improve player experience, and give more paths to earn Eververse rewards. Please give us your feedback once Season 3 begins, as we’re dedicated to improving these systems moving forward.”
All activities in Destiny 2 can be played cooperatively, but the real test of a Fireteam’s comradery comes in Strikes, which Destiny 2 provides plenty of. There are five Strikes in Destiny 2, and each is meticulously crafted to test a Fireteam. They’re far more exciting than the Strikes in vanilla Destiny and dole out some quality loot. Those looking for a challenge and some of the top-of-the-line loot will want to try the Nightfall, however, which is unlocked later in the game.
The strike displayed just how big of a leap the sequel is over its predecessor. The Inverted Spire is an exciting mission from beginning to end, showing off the design philosophy that will hopefully permeate the entire game. The maps were far more open, allowing us to approach the battles in certain ways. At one point, we had to cross a huge battlefield with Vex and Cabal battling in the craters. While there will be a lot of returning enemies, there will also be plenty of new ones. For example, the Cabal have War Beasts, doglike creatures that aren’t afraid to get in close and maul unsuspecting Guardians. Even the returning enemies have some neat new abilities. The Cabal Phalanx now has the ability to put down a bigger shield for a small amount of time, meaning you’ll have to jump over and walk around if you want to get them.
It’s a bit nerve-racking that lore, while mentioned, didn’t come up that much, other than story content. With such a serious overhaul to story, gameplay and the two combined, it’s odd that Bungie would leave out what they’ve done for Destiny lore access to the player base. They introduced a number of needed fixes (maps) and while these are already a drastic improvement to the core Destiny game, lore seems out of reach for the moment. It’s not to say that Bungie won’t talk about it later, but still. While not showcasing access to lore, it’s most certainly there. For lore nerds like myself, Destiny 2 already looks to be a dream come true.
Many familiar faces filled the screen as the hour of Destiny 2 played out, characters any player could recognize (Holiday did look slick flying that ship.) Destiny 2 means introducing new faces to the fold, folks that may have been there the whole time, but Guardians were to busy running around the galaxy to pay attention too. At least, that’s what I like to think. Getting down on the people’s level though, actually coming down from their Tower, Guardians will hopefully see firsthand the struggles that the Last City had to go through on a daily basis. New places and new faces means new content. Guardians always had a pretentiousness about them. I enjoyed my Guardian, but it felt like we were all on a high horse policing the universe without a care for those we were actually supposed to be protecting. This isn’t a new concept, though, even having been written into the lore. It’s known that children are told stories at night about Guardians to frighten them. Protectors or a something worse? Guardians are undead soldiers after all, Zavalas haunting speech while returning over and over again, shook me. My guardian has done this exact thing, but actually seeing the impact and hearing how twisted it sounded made me feel like one of the children that lives in the Last City.
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