Destiny 2 gameplay reveal - notes and speculation (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Saturday, May 20, 2017, 00:53 (2526 days ago)

So that gameplay reveal was pretty great. I'm really impressed with the cinematics, packing WAY more characterization and drama into this preview of the game than has been in the pre-TTK destiny releases combined. I went in with a grain of salt, and I'm coming out quite impressed.

Some notable things that were largely missing from Destiny 1, but are clearly present in Destiny 2:

- You get to fight alongside the NPCs. HOW WAS THIS NEVER A THING??? Anyway, it's awesome to see that you can use Zavala's defender bubble as part of a fight. Including friendly NPCs in encounters will add a new dimension of complexity to encounter design and I'm really excited for it. Plus it gives you real gameplay moments with the key NPCs, which is how you make players care about those NPCs. Well done and very smart.

- Setpiece moments. My god this was beautiful. Actually hurling the spawn orbs of enemies from the background into the foreground is a stroke of genius. Large scale destruction of parts of the tower happening ahead of the player ("in the background") as they move through the level, and then later fighting on top of that fallen part of the tower... it's a page right out of call of duty's best playbook. In Destiny 1, the ONLY setpiece moments, seriously, were when the very first ketch dropped in and flew over you, and when you raised the satellite dish on earth. There weren't any others in the entire vanilla offering. Even the xpacs were few and far between with those big, epic feeling background action moments. I honestly can't think of any off-hand, but there must have been some, right? Right?? Destiny 2 goes even farther, though. They have the backdrop of a full-scale invasion, and then the NPC you're fighting with goes super saiyan on a spaceship, and then JUMPS ON TO IT and RIDES IT DOWN! Holy god, it's glorious. Later, you get a cutscene that bridges the gap between foreground and background, and essentially flips the camera. Now you're on the enemy flagship with the destruction of the tower in the background. This design really makes the world feel alive and visceral. I'm very impressed. This is orders of magnitude more advance and savvy design that anything we saw in the last two years.

- Gunplay tweaks looked great. Having slightly snappier guns with slightly beefier enemies has resulted in a feeling that is more like Halo 3 or Reach's enemy interactions than the often floaty gunplay of Destiny. I'll grant that the player was sprinting a LOT in the gameplay reveal, which certainly helped to connect the moments together, but the actual gunplay seemed very well paced to keep the adrenaline flowing without feeling too slow or so dangerous that you had to completely back off. In fact, there's a point in the demo where the player nearly died, and then activated their super which immediately restored a bit of health. Smart. Design. This gives the player a positive feedback loop where, when shit hits the fan, the preferred action is to go nuts rather than disengage and hide. Keep the action moving and keep the players feeling awesome. Also, I really liked the mix of weapons they showed. I now have full faith that the best part of D1, the gunplay, will remain awesome in D2.

- Sound and Video. Mmmmm. That trailer sounded delicious. The fidelity of the visuals was stunning. Those animatics were top notch, and I would not be surprised (especially given the battle.net reveal) if Blizzard's animators lent Bungie a hand with those. And if they didn't, well, Bungie has outdone themselves.

The reviews I've read of the strike were equally impressive, saying it felt more like a raid-lite than like a Destiny 1 strike.

I don't want to say "get hype" but I'm very impressed with what I saw on all fronts.

Now for the speculation:

First and foremost: Did the videos show the traveler being destroyed?!? There were several clips, shown several times, where a planetoid explodes. One clip showed the traveler, in its prison, not only being flown off into space, but also partially breaking apart in the process. AND another video, seemingly from the same exact angle, with a planetoid in the same exact position as the traveler, showed that planetoid being completely destroyed. So that's a thing I'm wondering about.

Other stuff: I love the speculation that the half-dome we see in the videos is the missing bottom of the Traveler. I'd buy that theory. I really hope this game makes me give a crap about the Speaker, because he's the weak link in the plot we've seen so far. We're trying to "save" him, but the fact of the matter is... Why? Anyone notice the dog-beast thing quickly flash on screen in the video? So we get to fight some non-sentients. That'll be nice. The map (and even some of their icons) sure looked a lot like Horizon Zero Dawn... I wonder if they borrowed any elements there? Probably not.