Bungie’s newest Future 2 showcase was an enormous blowout for its upcoming enlargement, The Closing Form. Although the studio’s been comparatively mum on the enlargement, which can shut out the ten-year story the studio’s been telling for the reason that first Future launched in September of 2014, it lastly revealed a few of its hand, together with a brand new subclass, enemy faction, and an thrilling new class merchandise that threatens to uncork the potential of buildcrafting in Future 2.
Breaking the sport
First up, Bungie led the showcase with the introduction of the latest subclass, which it’s calling Prismatic. As a substitute of specializing in one aspect like earlier Mild and Darkish subclasses have, Prismatic is greatest regarded as Future 2’s reply to multiclassing. Gamers will now be capable of use features of each archetypes of subclasses concurrently and it appears fucking bonkers, dude. That is the type of factor that gamers have dreamt of, however couldn’t presumably be carried out as a result of it will throw the whole lot of the sport into chaos (or so some thought). Nicely, Bungie goes ahead with it anyway, and it appears dynamic and chaotic as all hell.
In anecdotes supplied by Bungie workers through the showcase, the builds sound completely busted. One member of the workforce talked about slowing down enemies with a Stasis grenade, throwing a shuriken into the group to skinny out their numbers, after which throwing one other Photo voltaic grenade that you may shoot to detonate to wash up. One other mixture consisted of unleashing Strand hatchlings, which perform like a pet that pursues enemies, whereas concurrently throwing out a Stasis turret to successfully turn out to be a crowd management machine.
When utilizing the Prismatic subclass, gamers will see two gauges above their weapons and skills that signify each the Mild and Darkish. As you deal injury with Mild or Darkish skills, the gauges will fill, permitting gamers to enter “transcendence” when each are maxed out. Transcendence successfully works like a second tremendous capacity that buffs the participant. Whereas transcendent, every class will acquire a brand new grenade sort that mixes two totally different subclasses, like a Stasis/Void hybrid grenade for Warlock or a Strand/Arc grenade for Titans.
Utilizing transcendence will even restore gamers’ grenade and melee skills, that are sometimes on cooldown, which means that gamers can successfully chain the utilization of each right into a transcendence after which deploy them once more to do large injury. Talking of, transcendence additionally grants injury bonuses that stack on high of ones that gamers may get from different class skills or present weapon perks.
The builders described Prismatic as an “superior subclass the place you’ve extra construct crafting choices, extra potential combos, extra fragments than you usually get, extra fragment slots to socket than you’d usually get,” and it exhibits.
The Closing Form will even introduce a brand new unique class merchandise that steals the perks from different unique gear and combines them into one super-powerful merchandise. This consists of perks for unique gear that was beforehand class-specific, which means that Titans will be capable of steal skills that have been beforehand unique to Warlocks and vice-versa. The unique perks on the category merchandise might be randomized, however Bungie is hoping that the flexibility to mix them with stolen perks will incentivize gamers to pursue unique perks in addition to gear with the intention to make game-breaking combos of skills. One developer acknowledged, “We wish it to really feel just a little damaged.”
A horrifying new enemy
In final yr’s middling Lightfall enlargement, Bungie launched a nightmarish enemy sort known as Tormentors that functioned as mini-bosses all through the marketing campaign, and it’s constructing off of this concept by including an entire enemy faction impressed by them and the Witness, the massive unhealthy on the heart of Future 2. This new enemy faction is named the Dread and they’re abominations. I can’t wait to battle them. Amongst their ranks are a winged “gunbat” known as the Grim, which may suppress participant skills with a screech, and acrobatic “melee bruisers” known as Husks. Killing Husks “the improper method” will trigger one thing the workforce is looking a Geist to come out of them and pursue gamers.
Two different enemy varieties, known as Attendants and Weavers, will be capable of use Stasis and Strand skills on the participant, respectively. The Weaver particularly will be capable of pull gamers from throughout the world, which is one in all many firsts among the many new enemy faction. It’s been some time since Future 2 obtained a wholly new enemy sort, so it’s actually thrilling to see Bungie go all out on a faction that isn’t some type of reskin of an present one.
All in all, a lot of what Bungie confirmed off immediately is the type of batshit stuff I’ve wished from the sport for a very long time. It’s also the type of content material you possibly can actually solely make while you’re nearing the end line and need to throw every little thing you possibly can on the wall. Future 2 usually looks like an incredible fantasy weighed down by the realities of getting to be a sport which must be balanced with the intention to be enjoyable for everybody. The entire chaos on show immediately flies within the face of that want for stability, nevertheless it additionally appears prefer it’s going to make for an exhilarating closing chapter earlier than Future 2 strikes into one other section of its life. Paired with the discharge of Into the Mild immediately, Future 2 is ultimately doing the factor it ought to’ve achieved a very long time in the past: punching the goddamn throttle and refusing to look again.
