Return of the (Taken) King.
Long before Destiny 2 hit the high points of Forsaken, The Witch Queen, or The Final Shape—hell, before there was even a Destiny 2—The Taken King was peak Destiny. Aboard the Dreadnought, the titanic flagship spacecraft of the Hive God Oryx, the first game finally hit its stride, providing a compelling villain, an imminently repeatable public event in the Court of Oryx, and the Book of Sorrows: An in-game lore tome that turned Destiny’s melange of proper nouns into a proper mythology.
Eventually, Destiny moved on. Oryx was defeated, sequels were released, free-to-play models were adopted, publishing agreements shifted, and the Dreadnought was left in space: neglected, but perhaps not entirely abandoned. In a lengthy developer livestream that aired earlier today, Bungie detailed what’s coming in next week’s launch of Destiny 2’s Heresy episode, which finally sends players back into the Dreadnought to face new horrors churning in its depths.
For those who haven’t kept up with Destiny, the end of The Final Shape saw the Traveler, liberated from the machinations of the omnicidal Witness, release a series of echoes: globs of unfathomable space magic that have since spread throughout the solar system with a nasty habit of seeking out old foes and imbuing them with terrible power. Unfortunately, it looks like the latest one may have resurrected a certain necromancer-deity.
Oryx, Bungie delicately said in the livestream, is “back in some capacity.” Considering how he once waged a millennia-long campaign of ritual brutality across the cosmos, that’s not great for anyone. Luckily, with the assistance of Eris Morn and the Drifter, players will be returning to a now “peeled” Dreadnought (eugh) to snuff out the resurgent god-king by “fighting fire with fire,” using repurposed Taken energy under the tutelage of a returning Commander Sloane.
The core seasonal activity in Heresy will be The Nether, a 3-person game mode where players will face a randomized series of encounters in Dreadnought patrol zones from Destiny 1 in what Bungie called “a roguelite experience.” Unique to The Nether, players will have boosted defensive stats, but won’t regenerate health by default. To heal, you’ll have to smash open containers for health-restoring pickups, resurrection tokens, and gameplay-modifying “boons.”
The Nether will also have a mode where you can opt out of matchmaking to play solo, so you can sniff out the Dreadnought’s secrets without worrying about your teammates getting frustrated because you’re not speedrunning the activity for optimal loot.
Bungie also said it’s been listening to player feedback about seasonal storytelling and loot-chasing. Rather than taking place entirely in a single hub area you’ll return to repeatedly, Heresy’s story will have a “more bespoke, spread-out delivery,” where players will interact with the ongoing plot and its cast of characters in missions and throughout the relevant areas in the solar system. Fewer chats with a holoprojector, by the sounds of it.
Heresy will feature a “bevy” of new armor and weapons, Bungie says, including a new Strand support frame auto rifle that can unleash Unraveling seekers as you heal your teammates. A lot of those new weapons will feature perks that will synergize with the updates Bungie’s made for Arc subclasses—like aspects that provide the new Bolt Charge keyword mechanic, which discharges a bolt of lightning at a target’s location after dealing enough sustained damage.
Those Arc updates should also play particularly nicely with Lodestar, a new seasonal exotic trace rifle—and Destiny’s first to use primary ammo. Lodestar shoots like a pulse rifle while aiming down sights, and can be charged by dealing arc damage to jolt enemies by hipfiring with its beam.
On the PvP side, as Bungie described last week, Trials of Osiris is getting a rework. The vaunted Lighthouse no longer requires a seven-game winstreak to enter. Instead, you’ll just need seven wins, generally. Doesn’t matter how many losses happen along the way. Seven W’s, and you get to open the special chest to earn some new, pretty armor. Now I might finally play Trials.
There’s also a new dungeon on the way: Sundered Doctrine, which will launch a few days after Heresy on February 7. Following the tradition kicked off with Vesper’s Host, there’ll be a dungeon race where fireteams worldwide will compete to solve Sundered Doctrine’s puzzles and best its bosses first.
And if that all isn’t enough, you’ll also be able to make your Titan look like a stormtrooper with incoming Star Wars crossover cosmetics. Comarketing, ahoy.
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