Did you miss the big Destiny 2: Forsaken "combat reveal" livestream that wrapped up earlier today? No worries if so—you can catch the whole thing, featuring gameplay design lead Josh Hamrick, senior sandbox designers Claude Jerome and Greg Peng, plus community manager David "Deej" Dague talking about all the upcoming new hotness, in the embedded VOD below.
The full video will eat up just about an hour of your time, covering everything from weapon slot and ammo changes, which will bring an element of Destiny 1-style loadouts to the field of battle, to amped-up melees (brace your face for one-hit-kill shoulder charges). We also saw the completely revamped weapon mod system, expanded Masterworks which can now be leveled up more incrementally, and live-fire demonstrations of some of the new abilities and supers (and their associated perks), which the group said will help counterbalance the harder-hitting firepower that's coming in Year 2.
If you don't have that kind of time to sink into it, we've got you covered. Here's our in-house Destiny 2 expert Austin Wood with some thoughts on what's been revealed:
The new weapon system was the high point of today's PvP-focused stream. It's exciting to see snipers and shotguns back in the primary and energy slots, especially with bows, fusion rifles, reworked trace rifles, and single-shot grenade launchers right alongside them. The new PvP special ammo economy is also interesting: you spawn with two rounds for your special weapon, or one round for each if you're running two shotguns or what-have-you, and players drop special ammo on death. It seems like you automatically pick up green ammo bricks by walking over them too, which is nice.
Supporting the new weapon system is a suite of new mods, which we caught a glimpse of today. I'm hopeful that there are plenty of mods we still haven't seen, but some of the ones shown today are promising. Mods that give improved in-air accuracy, extended magazines, and improved radar speed are going to make for much more exciting builds, and not just in PvP. We could also do with some more information on how to acquire new mods. For now, all we know is that when you dismantle a weapon, you get the mod it came with. Surely the gunsmith has a part to play there that will make modding weapons more deterministic.
It's clear from the matches played on stream that precision damage is a big part of the increased time-to-kill. Kills are faster across the board, but to hit anything resembling Destiny 1 speeds, you're going to need to land headshots. Mid-fire hand cannons are a three-shot kill with one headshot, for example, and bows are a two-shot kill with one headshot. I'm also pumped for the return of two-hit melees. No more awkward patty cake fights.
Destiny 2 director Luke Smith rounded up some other key takeaways on Twitter:
2/4Icarus mod doesn't make Cozmo good at shooting in the airBow is a two tap: 1 crit 1 bodyMod system overhauled (no longer grants Power)Armor Mods buffed further to reduce cooldownsAugust 7, 2018
4/4Rift Healing increased to account for faster time to kilEmpowering Rift damage increased and now increases precision damageAugust 7, 2018
Jerome also addressed changes made to the Ward of Dawn super, which Titan fans were sad to see absent from the stream:
One more change coming in #Forsaken I forgot to mention on stream...Ward of Dawn: - Ward of Dawn will be significantly harder for enemies to destroy - Allies inside of the Ward of Dawn have a stronger overshield as well as buffed Melee damage pic.twitter.com/tAIKyoAXPsAugust 7, 2018
