Blogs
on December 6, 2025
What we want to do is make every player in Destiny feel essential. We want every single player to feel like a superhero that gets to save the day at some point during the match. As a support player, I’m guilty on many occasions of hanging back and scoring assists. In Destiny 2, I’m going to be provoked into being a hero and helping my team of four in the competitive landscape.
(Mild spoilers for the first mission of the game ahead) The Beta begins by throwing you into the first mission of the game, called Homecoming. A short cinematic shows your character and his or her ghost flying towards a massive cloud. They look at one another confused, mutually deciding to fly through the smoke to see what's going on on the other side. When they emerge, the City is being bombarded by the Red Legion of the Cabal, led by Ghaul, the main baddie of Destiny 2's campaign. When you drop into gameplay for the first time, it's on the edge of the Tower and you fight your way to the top. You're equipped with a good amount of weapons, including assault rifles, sub machine guns, hand cannons and a few Power weapons, as well as your new class abilities, which we'll talk about later.
Having done every previous raid in the first Destiny, it was exciting looking forward to the first raid for Destiny 2. What would it be thematically? How would it operate with challenging a fireteam of six? What would the loot be? Would it be so fun that it would call Guardians back for multiple run throughs? And then Leviathan dropped. It looked spectacular, challenging and unlike any raid seen yet. It was a freaking massive space fish eating a planet; it screams ominous!
It was the third week which meant the Gauntlet room was up first; a room I hadn’t encountered yet. The mechanics were explained and I felt good with the ease at which this seemed like it could be done. The Gauntlet room only echoed what the world-firsters had stated; those seeking to guide others through the raid were going to have a hell of a time. A certain party member who also was a seeker wasn’t talking much throughout the two hours spent trying to get coordination down. They kept wandering off, not listening and generally being unhelpful. It ended with them dropping out of the fireteam never to return even with party invites thrown their way. It was time to call it quits. Defeated the third seeker and myself thanked the Clan that had been the guides for their time and parted ways.
From there, we got to try one of Destiny 2’s new strikes, The Inverted Spire. This mission took us to Nessus (one of the new worlds) to break into a Red Legion dig site and figure out what they’re up to. For the strike, Bungie unlocked a variety of different weapons for us to try out and there have been quite a few changes. Weapon classifications have been revamped to give players more options. The main slot now houses Kinetic Weapons, which include Auto Rifles, Pulse Rifles, Hand Cannons and Scout Rifles. The second slot now houses Energy Weapons. These are the Fusion Rifles, Handguns and, new to Destiny, Submachine Guns. Finally, in the third slot, we have Power Weapons,which are your Machine Guns, Rocket Launchers, Sniper Rifles and Grenade Launchers (also new to Destiny).
You talk about the four-people having different and important roles in the Crucible. I’m curious as to why you didn’t add a fourth class. Every match will have at least one duplicate class. Doesn’t that defeat the idea that each player has an important role to play?
Destiny 2 looks substantially better than the original game. Models and textures are more detailed, the worlds are bigger and more varied and the cinematics are top notch CG. It’s shaping up to be a stunning package on PS4 and PC. While the PS4 build we played was running on PS4 Pro, it wasn’t easy to discern any upgrades due to the size of the screen we played on. PC players, on the other hand, are in for a real treat. On PC, we did notice that pop-in was far less severe and it was nice finally getting to play Destiny at 60 frames-per-second. Unfortunately, the console version still runs at 30 frames-per-second.
The action continues after a short cutscene (yes, there are cutscenes in missions now). We’ve boarded the Cabal capital ship and need to take down the shields. The level ended in the shield generator room where we were introduced to Destiny 2’s main antagonist, Ghaul. Large and menacing, Bungie claims that he’s a more complex villain than, say, Oryx, but he didn’t come across that way in the demo. Hopefully, we’ll see another side of him in the main game.
Mercury sits happily at the top of the destinations menu like it was there all along. Brother Vance welcomes Guardians with open arms to the Lighthouse (only reserved for vault management tips the best of PvP in Destiny), waiting for Osiris' return. Like everything else to follow though, Mercury quickly proves that it is a veiled guise for a rather bland play space. It's small while giving of the illusion of unlimited potential. It only has one public event, and while covering much more ground than other public events, it’s still the only one (plus sparrows don’t work). At least the other destinations have multiples. The Infinite Forest is a clever trick, that has been pulled before, it’s just on a slightly larger scale, not confined to a space like the Prison of Elders from House of Wolves in Destiny. It’s doing the same thing though, just changing the facade.