So, I've made it no secret, for those who know me, that I play Destiny on a somewhat religious basis. As in, I play it every week and have cleared most of the content and am probably floating around a 95% completion of the game. So naturally I logged on this week to the PS4 preload exclusive of the Destiny 2 Beta. And really all I can say is that I'm honestly amazed so far, and not in a bad way.
The Beta offered up 5 things in total, two of them were timed/limited access, the rest are open access for the duration of it. We got exactly what was shown at E3, 2 multiplayer modes and a strike on open access, the first story mission "Homecoming" on limited access, and a new social space dubbed "The Farm" on a timed trial for an hour on Sunday. While the content wasn't quite up to what I would have liked (I sincerely wanted a small patrol area to get a real feel for the size of the game, though the strike did do a good job of this), it was still valuable content. The strike, The Inverted Spire, centered around the Red Legions attempts to retrieve Vex weapons technology from one of their minds hidden beneath the ground on Nessus. A rather long strike that starts in what I'm assuming is a patrol area, and it was rather smart of Bungie to not give us access to sparrows during this or I would have never actually finished it, though I did encounter some pikes and was able to explore a bit. The strike shows off how massive Destiny 2 really seems to be, at least if this strike is anything similar to others that we currently see in Destiny right now.
The walk/descent to your destination is quite significant and shouldn't be taken lightly as you needed to traverse literal giant drills to get where you're going. Another thing that really spoke to how committed Bungie is to Destinys long term viability is how alive this time around feels. When we loaded in I experienced a couple of different things at different times, from the previously mentioned pikes, to battles between Fallen and Cabal, or Fallen and Vex, and even Vex and Cabal occurring at different places. The only ways out of the landing zones that I checked were blocked off by walls to prevent players from going to far (or so I'm guessing), but I still had my thirst for curiosity quenched.
Crucible was another matter completely. While I like the idea of 4v4, I do wish that 6v6 could still remain a thing or even get bumped to 8v8. Crucible in the Beta was offered in two modes on two different maps (I can't remember their names but nothing really striking stands out about them, they are fun though). Casual was control, while competitive was the new game mode Countdown. Countdown was really interesting and reminded me A LOT of Call of Duty, but more hectic and more decisive, especially for the attacking team. I can really see it being the new norm in Trials, dubbed Trials of the Nine in Destiny 2. While fun, I did find myself having a lot more fun during the strike.
Finally the last large thing offered was a new social space known as The Farm. A genuinely open space, with lots of little things to explore and fun to be had, it was nice trying to guess who would be where. There is a small soccer field in which players can play a rocket league esque game to 3. The Vanguard have a barn, and Tess Everress has a weird tent thing. Oh and a holographic engram which was cool. There was also what appeared to be a new type of sparrow like vehicle, which would be kinda cool just to open up options for travel.
Overall the beta was very well done and definitely has me excite for what's to come. I hope that it is not a standalone sample because what I saw has true promise.
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