Strike Walkthrough
Once you fly in, you’ll fight through various SIVA-enhanced Fallen and Hive battling each other as the Fallen try to take control of a Hive nest here. Watch out for the glowing green traps on the ground, they’ll detain you and slowly damage you – fortunately, a few shots seems to free you.
Next, youll make your way inside the bunker, fighting Fallen and destroying SIVA Nodules as you go to clear the way to the Fallen Splicer Priest at its heart. It’s a visually diverse and maze-like environment, where lots of exploring will undoubtedly happen until you get to know your way around. They mentioned that there are at least three different variations of the strike path, as well as various dialogue and commentary that will change with each playthrough.
Speaking of dialogue, it’s Shiro-4, Cayde’s representative, who guides you through this strike. In a brief aside, mention is made of his prized weapon, the burstfire exotic sidearm we saw in the ViDoc, which is revealed to be name “Trespasser”. Continuing the weapons talk, they also mention that the SIVA pulse rifle’s name is under wraps and the gun itself will be hard to find. This only fuels the belief that it is Raid-related, along the lines of Touch of Malice.
Back to the Strike, you’ll continue fighitng your way through various enemies in the bunker. Along the way, watch out for green gas that slows you down. You’ll also experience some really cool looking silos that require a bit of platforming, though not too much. There are also enemies on various levels to keep things interesting, and a few tricky jumps.
We also see Memory of Timur in action for the first time here. That’s the Iron Lord artifact that turns minor enemies into Allies with a melee. The effect lasts for 30 seconds or until you melee them again, and while allied, enemies cannot be damaged and will attack other enemies.
Okay, back to the strike once again, you’ll eventually make your way to the final encounter after you’ve destroyed enough SIVA nodules. We get an awesome view of the ogre from above, chained in place with glowing red SIVA energy. This thing looks pretty messed up, with half its head missing. Being reanimated by SIVA is not quite as pleasant as Ghost resurrection, it seems.
This is a pretty straightforward arena boss fight, with a few twists. Kovik, Splicer Priest has a SIVA nodule for a head, and likes to teleport and shoot his Ogre Eyeblast Rifle at you from a distance. Meanwhile, the blind ogre angrily follows you around, making it tough to hold down a decent position from which to engage in DPS. The strategy seems to be to have one player keep the ogre’s aggro while the others deal damage, but you also have regular enemies spawning to keep track of so it can get chaotic. Oh, and did I mention that the ogre is completely immune to damage?
Fortunately, the ogre collapses shortly after you take down the Splicer Priest, dropping a pile of Engrams and glimmer as your reward. With this as a Strike boss, what could Bungie have in store in the Raid? We now know that the splicers are turning dead enemies into “living” weapons, rebuilding Sepiks and twisting an Ogre even further than the Hive did, so that opens up all kinds of possibilities for Wrath of the Machine. We can’t wait!
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Rise of Iron News Wrap-Up
In other Rise of Iron news, we’ve also received word from Gamescom that Bungie is looking at Vault space increases down the road, but it’s not something they were able to make happen at launch. We can also see in recent video that Iron Lord Artifacts still have the same orb generation perks as before, in case you didn’t know.
Finally, Edge Magazine released a Destiny-focused issue, with a few new tidbits about Rise of iron and Destiny 2. The salient points include Luke Smith being confirmed as the design lead for Destiny 2, which I think we all really knew was the case. We also learned that Rise of Iron was actually conceived as a new update because they decided that Destiny 2 needed further development before release. It seems that Bungie has learned from the original release and wants to make sure they have enough polish before dropping a new version on us.
They’re also coming out of some growing pains, having quadrupled their staff to keep up with Destiny and split into Destiny 2, Live, and Engineering teams to focus on different projects and aspects of the game. Dropping last gen support has been a huge boon to enhancing the game, as you might guess, and it seems PS3 and Xbox 360 players made up less than 10% of the playerbase anyway.
Specifically addressing Rise of Iron, Edge also learned that Private Matches were a development priority going into Rise of Iron – Bungie was well aware of the community’s desire for this feature, and realized what a negative experience being forced to circumvent normal matchmaking could be for players who wanted to play with friends or compete. Additionally, they’re hoping that Private Matches will help to alleviate skill-based matchmaking criticisms, as players now have an easy avenue to play casual games with friends.