In two days Bungie will lift the veil on Destiny 2, revealing the first gameplay footage via a livestreamed event from LA which you can watch here, starting at 10 am PST. We’ll be on the ground to play the PC version, poke around in the settings, and bring you impressions, but in the meantime you might want to get up to speed with what’s happened so far, which the video above does a great job of.
It’s a warts and all recap, covering everything from Destiny 1’s "troubled" launch, through high points like The Taken King expansion, and all the content droughts in between. What I like about it is that it gives you a great sense of what to expect from the sequel, particularly in the light of the mistakes Bungie made in the past, and the steps it took to correct them.
The video is the work of YouTuber Stefan "Datto" Jonke, one of the community’s most prominent content creators, best known for his in-depth breakdown of the optimal weapons and strategies to use in raid encounters, plus the outlandish challenges he and his clanmates take on during the game’s quieter times.
It’s fair to say Datto has played even more than I have, and in the video he also touches on the travails of trying to make a living from a channel that’s entirely dependent on one game, particularly the tension between his desire for Destiny to adopt hardcore MMO mechanics and difficulty (it should be noted he’s a recovering WoW addict) versus Bungie and Activision’s desire to create a game that’s played as widely as possible.
Given that we’ve already written on this site about how raiding is going to be the most interesting thing about Destiny 2 from a PC perspective, if you have any interest in Destiny 2 I would recommend subbing to Datto’s channel. When Destiny’s first raid, the brilliant Vault of Glass, opened its doors, Datto’s clan got the world’s first completion. Later, his regular raid group would also be the first to solve an insanely convoluted puzzle, ARG-style, that earned them Outbreak Prime, a secret exotic weapon found in the Wrath of the Machine raid. Spoiler: it involved some serious math.
And if that has you intrigued, there’s a lore bomb to be found in our complete guide to Destiny’s alien races, key characters, and story. Yeah, I said story. And for those of you rolling your eyes, believe me: I get it. Destiny was a hot mess when it launched, and it’s entirely understandable that people checked out shortly thereafter. But for those of us who stuck around, a lot of the wrongs were righted, leaving a rich sci-fi world with peerless gunplay for this sort of blockbuster. Hence the excitement about Thursday’s reveal. This is Bungie’s second chance, and the PC is potentially the perfect home for the kind of experience I’m hoping for from the sequel.
Still, at least the studio sounds confident. Its in-house podcast recently came out of dormancy, and though Bungie's cards obviously remained chestside for the most part, the podcast did reveal that the team have builds of Destiny 2 at home and are currently: "Playing the s**t out of the game." Roll on Thursday.
