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The upcoming second act of Echoes, Destiny 2’s present “episode” that continues the story of its newest enlargement, The Closing Form, is altering how the sport dishes out story. As an alternative of a brand new story beat changing into out there every week, as in Act 1, all three Act 2 story beats will likely be out there when it turns into out there on July 16.
Bungie introduced the change throughout its Echoes: Act 2 reside stream, which gave a have a look at the modifications and additions coming to the sport. The pacing of the story is one thing gamers have complained about for a while, in truth. It was one of many main causes many disliked Destiny 2’s seasons, the sport’s earlier strategy to delivering new tales between main expansions.
Seasons would break up tales into weekly tidbits that would normally be completed up inside an hour or two, forcing gamers to attend days for the subsequent installment like a weekly TV present and sometimes feeling artificially drawn out for no good motive. The brand new Episode construction was meant to interchange the season strategy by dividing tales into bigger six-week acts that might change the sport up extra typically. In Echoes Act 1, nevertheless, the story was nonetheless dished out in small bits week by week, making it really feel like a season by one other identify.
Narrative director Alison Luhrs stated on the stream that Bungie heard that suggestions from gamers and agreed. As such, all three of the story beats for Act 2 will drop on the similar time–at the launch of the act–and the identical goes for Act 3. The thought is that gamers can work by the story at their very own tempo; in the event that they need to binge all of it on the primary day, that is as much as them.
The upside of the act construction appears to be that it permits the sport to be much more attentive to what’s occurring within the story. Bungie confirmed off two of Act 2’s new Battlegrounds actions, which happen on Nessus and have gamers trying to find solutions by delving underground. The Battlegrounds function altered places that have been first launched on the finish of Act 1; on the finish of that story, a white Radiolaria lake on Nessus was drained, revealing a complete new space beneath it. The Battlegrounds will discover what’s modified there, with gamers heading underground to seek out out the place all that Radiolaria went, and why.
In accordance with Luhrs, the act may even take gamers again to discover certainly one of Destiny’s “most storied places,” whereas the sport continues to inform the story of Saint-14, who’s struggling along with his id after an encounter with the mysterious obvious villain of Echoes, a being often called the Conductor.
As for the Battlegrounds themselves, they need to see some fairly intense fights. Senior exercise designer Ryan Harris stated the workforce is making an attempt to distinguish Battlegrounds from Strikes by making them extra combat-intensive, with as many as 40 enemies on display screen at a time and new bosses particular to the actions. These embody Vex Wyverns that may come at gamers in pairs and have the brand new habits of teleporting to flank gamers and keep away from assaults. There may also be a boss with, as Harris put it, the largest well being pool he’d ever given one.