Home Features Destiny 2: Forsaken – 11 new facts we learnt about the ambitious expansion from Bungie at E3 2018

Destiny 2: Forsaken – 11 new facts we learnt about the ambitious expansion from Bungie at E3 2018

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There’s a sense of optimism in the air for Destiny 2 fans right now. While Curse of Osiris and Warmind may have been band-aids for Destiny 2’s most grievous wounds, Forsaken feels like a complete replacement of Destiny’s limbs that’ll help fine-tune the cosmic toybox that Bungie created. Change is coming, and it’s going to be pretty substantial with the launch of Forsaken in September.

A darker story, an emphasis on fun over balance and an honest effort to get players reinvested in the hobby of Destiny, Bungie is going for broke with its most ambitious slice of content yet. While there’s still a lot that needs t be revealed and explored once it launches, design lead Lars Bakken still had plenty to tell me at E3 last week about the massive changes on the horizon:

Forsaken is a story with real consequences and stakes:

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LB: We ask ourselves, how do you tell a good story? How do you tell a story that captures the player’s attention, but also is powerful and meaningful. You can’t really tell a story without real stakes, real risks on the line. Killing Cayde was something that we had talked about for a long time. It was something that we were interested in pursuing, and it also helps kick off the story for us to tell this much darker and grittier tale in Forsaken.

Prince Aldren doesn’t see himself as the villain:

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LB: The funny thing about Aldren, is that if you were to talk to him, he would say that the things that he’s doing is that they’re correct. From his perspective, this killing of Cayde, meeting up with the Barons and going out and doing what he’s doing, he believes that he’s on the side of the right. And that’s what makes him such a complex and interesting villain.

Familiar faces and new characters will flesh out Destiny 2: Forsaken’s cast in the wake of Cayde’s death:

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LB: You saw Drifter in Gambit. He’s one of the new characters. There’s going to be some returning characters, some new characters. Petra is coming back. Drifter is a bit of a mystery, especially for everyone in Destiny. He’ll slowly over time, he’ll become familiar but he does have his own agenda. He’s sort of looking out for himself and he’s doing this thing which is great for you in terms of training in Gambit, but you don’t fully understand what he’s after yet.

He is a character that you will not only interact with in Gambit mode where he’ll tell you what you’re about to fight and how the teams are doing, he will also be in the Tower and you will go and talk to him and you will go get missions from him and bounties.

On setting the tone for Forsaken:

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LB: From the initial moments of what Forsaken was going to be, I believe the high-level tagline was “Exploring the lawless frontier”. From the beginning, before we even started working on anything else, that was what we wanted in terms of tone, character, story, the destinations you’re exploring.

If Forsaken was a spaghetti western, it would be this film:

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LB: It’s almost like a reverse Magnificent Seven!

New Exotics will continue to be absurdly powerful:

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LB: Expect to see some things that you haven’t seen before. One that we all hint at, there’s one specifically tied to Gambit intro trailer that we released. That’s currently my favourite, I won’t tell you its name but it’s very cool, very powerful. It’s good at Gambit!

The new Skorn enemies are going to shake combat up:

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LB: So the Skorn are like a dark magic resurrected version of the Fallen that have come from the bowels of the Prison of Elders. So when they come back, there’s a whole cadre of these types of guys. The Ravager is the one who doesn’t have a traditional precision damage locator. His head is completely missing, and he runs at you and he has this metal sensor that’s on fire that he’s swinging at you. He’s going to attack you with it, and his crit spot is the sensor itself, it’ll blow up if you hit it.

He’s literally running at you and looking to attack the whole time. That’s just one version of the way we’re looking to change the way that you fight the Skorn, but there’s a whole selection of new guys for you to fight.

Forsaken wants players to reinvest in Forsaken as a daily hobby:

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LB: If you were to talk to Steve Cotton, who’s the creative lead on Forsaken, he would say that we’re really diving back into the hobby. Having players reinvest, not just reinvest on a weekly cadence but a daily cadence with things like bounties and multiple overlapping progressions in the form of Triumphs. There’ll be hundreds of things for these players to do.

Not only will you have really good daily rituals and talking to different vendors to get daily bounties, you’re going to have your collection right in front of you that shows you how much of the legendary weapon and gear that you don’t have yet, so you’re going to have all these things that you’re going to be chasing after.

Bungie is going to continue breaking their sandbox:

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LB: If you watch the Vidoc that we released a couple of weeks ago, Dave Samuels who is one of our effects artists, he’s the one who always making noises! He said something internally that we talk about all the time, we’ll play with a new Exotic and this might break the game, but that’s OK! We talk about that with the new Supers, the new Exotics, the new Mod system that’s coming in, the weapon slot changes that totally breaks the game in an interesting way and we’re going to try and make it something that’s broken and really fun for the player.

Nine new Supers to play with:

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LB: I can tell you that we’re going to have nine in total in Forsaken. If you know how the nodes work right now in Destiny 2, you know that you have a top half and a bottom half. If you think about every one of the energy types (Solar,Void and Arc), Each of those is going to get a third type for every class. The three we’re showing at E3 right now, is the Solar Warlock’s Well of Radiance where yu push down this huge sword into the ground and it’s like healing and a damage rift but times two and it’s for your entire fireteam.

For the Titan we’ve got Thundercrash, where you effectively turn yourself into an Arc missile and you can control yourself in the air and just smash into something at the end. For the Hunter we’ve got Spectral Blades. When you pop them, you have two Void knives, you’re invisible, you can see through walls, it’s ridiculous.

The new raid is just an introduction to the Dreaming City:

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LB: It’s the first time we’ve ever made a destination that’s specifically built around the endgame. So not only does the Raid happen there, the Raid is sort of your introduction to the Dreaming City and everything builds off that. The other really cool thing about the Dreaming City is that it will change over time, it’ll be doing some things that players won’t expect and won’t even know to look forward to.

Destiny 2: Forsaken arrives on September 4, and I can personally confirm one of its new additions is almost too good: The delightful Gambit mode.

Last Updated: June 21, 2018

7 Comments

  1. Kromas

    June 21, 2018 at 15:55

    the twelth thing we learned. They don’t care about their players. Only money. EA will do anything to milk it out of their fans at this point. Oh I mean Activision.

    Also my brain can’t spell 12th.

    Reply

  2. Kromas

    June 21, 2018 at 15:55

    the twelth thing we learned. They don’t care about their players. Only money. EA will do anything to milk it out of their fans at this point. Oh I mean Activision.

    Also my brain can’t spell 12th.

    Reply

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