More Destiny 2 Details Revealed

While I was in New York City there was a major Destiny 2 reveal event. After my return to Colorado I went online to read up on the new details about the game that developer Bungie gave out and today I’m going to give my thoughts on some of the announcements I care about. I will not be saying anything about Destiny 2’s story, as I’m trying to go into the game with minimal story details.

Grimoire Cards are gone. Hallelujah. In my opinion the Grimoire Cards were one of Destiny’s most egregious errors, as they contained interesting pieces of the game’s lore, but in order to actually view them you had to go to Bungie’s website or download the Destiny companion app. I’m really quite mystified as to why Bungie ever thought the Grimoire cards were a good idea in the first place, but I’m glad that they listened to player feedback and are doing away with them. According to Bungie, all lore in Destiny 2 will be in the game itself. I could not be more satisfied with this announcement.

Destiny 2’s framerate will be locked at 30 frames per second on consoles—that is, on the consoles currently on the market (no details were given regarding Destiny 2’s performance on the upcoming Project Scorpio Xbox). Even PlayStation 4 Pro will be locked at 30 frames per second, though it will run Destiny 2 at a 4K resolution. According to Bungie, the PlayStation 4 Pro’s CPU simply isn’t powerful enough to run the game at 60 frames per second. It’s not that big deal to me that Destiny 2 will be running at 30 frames per second on console, seeing as how Destiny ran at 30 frames per second and I had absolutely no issues with its performance, but it would have been nice if Destiny 2 could find a way to get to 60 frames per second on console.

Jumping from one mission or planet to another will be done without going into orbit in Destiny 2. In Destiny you had to go to your ship in orbit to launch the next major activity and although it wasn’t a massive time sink it did strike me as an unnecessary middle step in-between the things you did in the game. Cutting out going into orbit will be a small, but welcome time saver.

Weapons slots have been redesigned to supposedly allow more player choice. Instead of a primary, secondary, and heavy weapon slot, there will now be a kinetic, energy, and power weapon slot. The energy and kinetic slots can potentially hold the same weapons, so it sounds like you will now be able to hold two primary weapons. This might be a useful feature but I’m going to have to wait until I play Destiny 2 to give a concrete opinion on the new slot system.

All game modes in Destiny 2’s multiplayer will be 4v4. As a gamer who is a fan of big team battles like the kind you find in games like Battlefield, this is a little disappointing. Then again, I don’t play a lot of multiplayer, so this won’t affect me too much.

There will finally be matchmaking for Raids—sort of. A new system in Destiny 2 called “Guided Games” will allow clans to be paired with solo players to complete Raids, as well as Trials. As a solo player myself, I never got to experience any of the Raids in Destiny, so I’m really glad Bungie is creating a way for people like me to play them.