“Destiny 2’s” new story is heading back to the Reef, developer Bungie announced during Tuesday’s Twitch broadcast.
“We want this release to have a different tone and a different vibe,” said Steve Cotton, game director for “Forsaken.” “A barren landscape with the asteroid vibe and, like, tumbleweeds. I mean, that just sounded cool.”
The “Forsaken” storyline will be a Western-style tale of revenge beginning with a prison break in space. Cotton said that Cayde-6 has been filling this prison with bad guys that are “really bad, so when it breaks things can happen to all of the worlds.” The developers said that much of “Forsaken’s” action will take place in a new region of the Reef called the Tangled Shore. The new part of the Reef is a collection of lashed-together rocks and asteroids that is very otherworldly and full of pirates, assassins, and thieves.
The Tangled Shore is a lawless frontier that has been completely taken over, they said. The most malevolent force there is the Scorn, which are very aggressive enemies that charge and push players. Then there are the barons, which the team describes as the top dogs of the Scorn. One developer said it is like the reverse of the “Magnificent Seven” and that players will be hunting down these criminal barons. Barons include a massive melee character and a sniper.
The new environment and campaign will be released as part of the year-two “Forsaken” expansion on Sept. 4.
A new raid, the Dreaming City, will also ship as part of the update.
The new raid is an attempt by Bungie to get back to the epic adventure where players are going out to slay a big monster. The new raid will have more bosses than any previous raid created by Bungie.
One of the key differences with this raid is that the Dreaming City is actually an in-game destination, the Awoken homeland.
“It’s like if the Vault of Glass and the Dreadnaught had a baby or they were twins,” Cotton said. “Then you took those twins and you put them on the doorstep of Peter Jackson, he raised them as his own, and then that’s the Dreaming City.”
The Dreaming City has lots of hidden corners, puzzles to solve, and the place itself is affected by the raiders. The Dreaming City players see at launch won’t be the same Dreaming City they see weeks later, they said.
“Warmind,” the second expansion for “Destiny 2,” was released last month. Both “Warmind” and the previous DLC event, “Curse of Osiris,” were developed in large part by the Activision-owned studio Vicarious Visions.
“Destiny 2: Forsaken” launches on Sept. 4 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.