It’s been quite an eventful week, with plenty of new trailers, gameplay reveals, and a few spoilers… so let’s review everything we learned!
Trailer Roundup
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Destiny 2 Pre-Load
As of this week, Guardians who have pre-ordered Destiny 2 on Xbox One are able to download the game’s file. It clocks in at 29.15GB currently, with a day one patch expected.
As for PS4 players, it was originally expected they would be able to pre-load the game beginning on September 3, however a tweet from Bungie on 8/21 mentioned the game would be available to download the following week; perhaps it will be available even earlier than the expected 9/3 in that case.
PC Beta
Good news for PC players who never got to experience the D2 beta in July: the PC beta will be kicking off exclusively on Blizzard’s Battle.Net service on August 28 for early access with the open beta beginning a day later on August 29. The beta will continue until August 31.
PC players will get to experience most of the same content that console players experienced in the beta, but there’s will be one new addition: Javelin-4 arena for Control. The sandbox improvements will also be active for this beta, giving a more ‘retail’ experience.
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Clan Functionality
Bungie has opened up the ability to create your Destiny 2 clan on Bungie.net.
We also got our first look at Clan Banners, the items that will be replacing our Artifact slot from D1. They also offered some interesting new details with their reward perks as you rank up:
- The battle standard for your clan. As your clan levels up, this banner unlocks new clan perks each season.
- Gain additional Glimmer when looting engrams.
- Increases public event rewards.
- Improves rewards from eliminating Cabal enemies.
- Increases the chance of receiving reputation tokens when completing Nightfalls, Raids, and Trials.
- Increases chance of receiving an engram when completing playlist activities with a clan member.
An interesting thing to note: seasons. How will those be working in Destiny 2? Is it solely PvP focused or will season’s encompass all of the available activities? It’s all pure speculation at this point but we don’t have long to wait in order to find out!
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Locked Loadouts
In regards to the announced ‘locked loadouts’ feature, we got confirmation from Luke Smith that this feature will not be a factor while raiding in Destiny 2. This was done so as to prevent players from finding a new drop, quitting out to equip the item, and then rejoining the raid.
Locked loadouts will be applied to Nightfalls though, which are now timed activities, so that will present some new challenges. Hopefully the timed aspect of it won’t negatively affect solo players.
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Exotics
We got some new Exotic information confirmed courtesy of PC Gamer. The first new piece of gear was an Exotic helmet for Warlocks called Eye of Another World which will highlight priority enemy targets with a red outline and speed up the recharge rates of your grenade, melee, and Rift ability.
The second confirmed Exotic that we saw was a Pulse Rifle called the Graviton Lance that causes Void damage in three-shot bursts, with the third shot receiving increased recoil along with a rather large damage boost. With every enemy that you kill with the weapon, it creates a miniature black hole that travels onwards, causing even more damage. Now that sounds exactly like what Exotics should be: unique, cool as hell, and incredibly fun to use.
On top of this, MynameisByf released a video that appears to show a Void Hard Light!