The Halo series is as well known for its epic campaign missions as it is for its awesome selection of multiplayer maps. For well over two d?ecades, both Bungie and 343 Industries have crafted unforgettable campaign experiences, which a?re (mostly) centered around the story of the Master Chief.

We know Halo levels are great, but which ones are the cream of the crop? I've whittled them down to the 10 best Halo campaign missions? of all time - I reckon there are some surprising choices you?? won't expect here.

10. Midnight

• Game: Halo 4

It should come as no surprise to learn that Halo 4's Midnight is the only 343 Industries mission on this list. The mission begins with a Star Wars-esque trench run unlike anything the series has seen before, almost resembling Star Fox in its gameplay approach.

It then moves to an intense, non-stop combat sequence as Halo 4 hurtles towards its conclusion. Combined with Neil Davidge's thundering track, "Arrival," this sequence arguably does a better job of making you feel like an unstoppable Spartan than anything else in the series. It's 343's best work in the series' campaigns, topped off with an emo??tional climax involving Cortana.

9. Mombasa Streets

• Game: Halo 3: ODST

It's a little cheeky to call Halo 3: ODST's Mombasa Streets a mission. It's more of a hub for you to wander and get lost in t?he streets of New Mo?mbasa, solving the mystery of the rookie's missing squadmates.

Mombasa Streets oozes atmosphere at every turn, more so than any level in the Halo series. Marty O'Donnell's piercing saxophone soundtrack creates an overwhelming feeling of loneliness, while th????e dark of the night makes it feel as though danger awaits around every corner (and it does). There's even an AI embedded into the city's technology, which directs you away from danger by lighting up street signs.

8. Assault on the Control Room

• Game: Halo: Combat Evolved

By far Halo: Combat Evolved's longest mission, A??ssault on the Control Room is proof that variety is the spice of life. This level allows you to use every single vehicle in the game, including the Scorpion for the first and onl?y time. Every weapon, too, except for the shotgun.

It's this variety that makes Assault on the Control Room stand out among other Halo missions. Like it or not, you're forced to take part in every ??different combat style here - vehicular, long-ranged, and close-quarters. It finds a delicate balance perfectly.

7. Halo

• Game: Halo 3

Halo 3's final mission, Halo, earns its spot here based on the thrilling Warthog finale alone. As the game (and Bungie's entire trilogy) comes to an end, you must comman?deer a Warthog through an epic run of obstacles.

Moving through the level, the entire Halo installation is collapsing around you. Explosions, falling floors - go too slow, and you're doomed. It's a perfect throwback to Halo: Combat Evolved's own Warthog run in The? Maw, but be??tter in every way.

6. Coastal Highway

• Game: Halo 3: ODST

Bungie really nails a final mission, huh? Halo 3: ODST's Coastal Highway largel?y takes place on the titular highway. Throughout, you protect t?he slow-moving Elephant from defending Covenant forces, while the chaos of the Battle of Earth erupts around you, perfectly capturing the sense of impending doom.

It culminates in one final standoff at the entrance of the Uplift Nature Reserve. You and your squad face waves of incoming Covenant forces, like an intense game of Firefight. It's one final stand while awaiting rescue, capping off a near-perfect Halo mission.

5. Halo

• Game: Halo: Combat Evolved

It's another level called Halo. In another Halo game. It makes sense, I promise. Halo set the standard for what the series' level design looks like at its best, with a vast open mission that sees you rescuing marines from various structures across the map. It's a great mix of Warthog gameplay and close-quarters combat, introducing you to various Halo: Combat Evolved mechanics early.

If the previous mission, The Pillar of Autumn, set the expectation that Halo: Combat Evolved was going to be yet another corridor shooter (as was prevalent in early 2000s FPS games), then Halo shattered it immediately. It represents a near-series best for Halo campaign missions right at the very beginning.

4. The Silent Cartographer

• Game: Halo: Combat Evolved

The Silent Cartographer opens with a blast. An iconi?c beach scene that, I promise, felt more impressive then than it does now. For many players, The Silent Cartographer's opening was the moment they realized they were playing something truly special.

The rest of the level rules, too, offer great variety between short outdoor vehicle sections and well-designed interior combat encounters. But the opening assault on the beach as you ?storm out of th?e Warthog is the centerpiece here.

3. Metropolis

• Game: Halo 2

Metropolis is the only Halo 2 mission on this list, but it's number 3 for a reason. It's a short level, but one so action-packed you can't ignore it. You start Metropolis on a bridge with a Scorpion, blasting your way across it with ease. Is it challenging? No. But it's awesome, and isn't that what really matters?

After the bridge section, you find yourself in the inner city, the Metropolis, if you will. Most players make their way through the city in the provided Gauss Warthog, em??phasizing Metropolis' vehicle-heavy gameplay. Then you board a Scarab! It's the definition of "s?hort and sweet."

2. The Ark

• Game: Halo 3

The Ark is Halo 3 at its best. Starting out with a sniping sequence, it then moves from one chaotic vehicle setpiece to another. Not to mention the epic Scarab fight, which, by the end of this colossal mi?ssion, feels more like a reward than a challenge.

The highlight of The Ark i??s the landing of the enormous Forward Unto Dawn frigate, which descends upon you while blowing away everything in its path. As it casts its massive shadow over you, it's immediately clear you'r?e witnessing one of the coolest video game moments ever. If you know, you know.

1. The Covenant

• Game: Halo 3

That the two mission run of The Ark and The Covenant make up the top two spots on this list is a miracle. The latter half of Halo 3?'s campaign is remarkable, and The Covenant is where it all peaks.

From Warthog gameplay, Hornet combat, and a great mix of tight hallway gunplay and open battlefields to fight on, The Covenant has it all. It all culminates in that fight against two Scarabs simultaneously, resulting in the best setpiece the series has ever produced. Forget the Halo ??series - The Covenant is one of the?? best FPS missions ever made.

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Episode: Revenant is the Stasis season Destiny 2 players have been waiting for. Now, players can put together their most biting builds and shatter foes with frosty wrath. It's not that Guardians are deciding to start using Stasis just for the fun of it, but Bungie put a focus on the Subclass in Episode: Revenant through the Artifact Mods available and updates to the Exotic armor repertoire.

Players haven't really ever had a season to enjoy Stasis, as the Subclass wasn't super attractive following its launch in the Beyond Light expansion. Bungie has been steadily improving Stasis since then, and the Class and ability updates preceding Episode: Revenant were some of the biggest yet. ??These came alongside the aforementioned Artifact Mods and Ex??otic changes to position Stasis in the best place it's ever been.

Episode: Revenant Artifact

Episode: Revenant has an Artifact with great opt??ions to support a Stasis build. While each build and Class may focus on different things, the Stasis-focused Artifact Perks are general enough to work well with most Stasis builds. As such, players should enable One With Frost, Wind Chill, Crystalline Converter, Armor of Eramis, Hail the Storm, Brain Freeze, and Served Cold. Of note, Served Cold allows Stasis Shards to provide Class ability energy on top of melee energy, and Wind Chill grants Frost Armor with rapid Stasis weapon precision hits.

Warlock

It is time to put away those Osmiomancy Gloves. In Episode: Revenant, Warlocks can grant themselves and any nearby allies full stacks of Frost Armor whenever they cast their Healing Rift. The Rift will create a Stasis Freezing blast, generate Super energy for each ally buffed, and regen Class ability e??nergy if used close to enemies. All that extra Super energy will allow Guardians to use Winter's Wrath frequently, which will, in turn, provide more Frost Armor, buff Shatter damage on foes, and increase Stasis weapon damage.

Subclass

Before jumping into the gear, Warlocks will want to make sure they have their Stasis Subclass set up in a way that makes the most of the entire build. While the melee ability is static, and the grenade choice can vary based?? on other loadout choices, a Healing Rift will provide an accessible health source and play into additional features once we add the Frostpulse Aspect. Frostpulse creates a Stasis shockwave that Freezes enemies after casting a Rift. Iceflare Bolts is the other Aspect of choice, spawning homing and Freezing projectiles after Shattering a Frozen target.

For Fragments, Warlocks will want to stick with Whisper of Rime, Whisper of Chains, and Whisper of Refraction. The trio offers increased Frost Armor effectiveness, Sta??sis Shard generation while Frost Armor is active, and Class ability energy on defeated Frozen/Slowed enemies. The other Fragment is a little more fluid depending on playstyle, with Whisper of Fissures being a fun choice for ?AOE mayhem or Whisper of Chill for even more Stasis Shards.

Gear

The build comes to life with the Exotic gauntlets Ballidorse Wrathweavers. It now provides Frost Armor to Guardians in range of the Winter's Wrath Super shockwave. Frost Armor is also granted via a Frostpulse Rift, which rewards max stacks to any al?lies in range. As if that wasn't nice enough, Super energy is rewarded whenever Warlocks provid??e Frost Armor to allies.

All of those features function well together, but Ballidorse Wrathweavers also provide increased Stasis weapon damage to anyone buffed by it and increased Shatter damage for anyone doing enough damage to enemi?es Frozen by the Warlock's Wi?nter's Wrath Super.

Weapons aren't as crucial to the build as a proper mod and subclass setup. Still, an Exotic Stasis primary weapon like Wicked Implement will take advant??age of the Stasis weapon damage buff and reward extra Super energy.

Stats and armor mods

Outside of the Ballidorse?? Wrathweavers, players will want to ensure the mods equipped on their armor support Class ability regen as much as possible without skimping on Resilience or Discipline. With that in mind, Guardians want 100 Resilience an??d then as much Recovery as possible. From there, any extra stats can go into Discipline for grenades.

• Head: Harmonic Siphon and Dynamo
• Arms: Momentum Transfer and Bolstering Detonation
• Chest: Damage resistance
• Legs: Recuperation, Absolution, and Insulation
• Class item: Reaper and Distribution

Titan

Titans finally have some Stasis skills to show off, following massive changes to both standard Class features and the Stasis Subclass specifically. Now, Titans can become the focus of the whole room, capturing enemy attention before Shattering them like an unstoppable bowling ball, ??knocking down pins of Stasis Crystals. Titans will be nigh unkillable w??ith constant Frost Armor and lots of devastation at close quarters.

Subclass

Guardians will want Rally Barricade, Shiver Strike, and Duskfield Grenade for the Stasis Subclass. Shiver Strike is the only melee option, but it's been reworked to be reasonably solid. Rally Barricade offers the fastest Class ability cooldown, and Duskfield Gre??nade can Slow enemies on a whim, both of which can help the overall build function.

For Aspects, Diamon?d Lance is a no-b?rainer, offering ranged Freeze and Frost Armor with a slam. The other Aspect to take is Tectonic Harvest for easy Stasis Shard generation, which will grant Frost Armor, melee energy, and heal Titans when collected.

With the two Aspects chosen, Titans will get five Fragments to play with. Whisper of Rime, Whisper of Reversal, Whisper of Refraction, Whisper of Durance, and Whisper of Fissures all work together well. The Fragment combination puts an enhanced slow effec?t on enemies whenever they deal or receive melee damage and defeated slowed enemies grant Class ability energy. Frost Armor is also improved alongside Shatter damage, as Titans will make lots of Stasis Crystals.

Gear

For gear, players can choose between two playstyles. The safer option in high-end PvE content is the Ic??efall Mantle Exotic. Icefall Mantle grants Frost Armor from rapid Stasis kills and heals the?? Titan with each stack or refresh of Frost Armor.

The Exotic also replaces Rally Barricade with a unique Class ability that creates an AOE Freeze effect and grants the user full stacks of Frost Armor. Alternatively, players can take the Cadmus Ridge Lancecap for a spin to wholly lean into Diamond Lances. The Exoti??c lets Diamond Lances create Stasis Crystals, and rapid precision damage or precision kills spawn Diamond Lances. 

Titans can get a lot of use out of the reworked Salva??tion's Grip E?xotic grenade launcher. It can charge a shot to create several Stasis Crystals, and regular fire deals increased damage to Frozen enemies and ??Stasis Crystals. The weapon can also reload itself by destroying multiple Stasis Crystals. Otherwise, players will want a primary Stasis weapon with the Headstone Perk to ensure Stasis Crystals are plentiful.

Stats and armor mods

Titans using this ?setup will get a little extra stat boost from the selected Fragments, but stat priorities should still seem familiar. 100 Resilience is the priority, followed by Strength and then Discipline.

• Head: Harmonic Siphon and Heavy Ammo Finder
• Arms: Impact Induction and Focusing Strike X2
• Chest: Damage resistance
• Legs: Stasis Weapon Surge, Absolution, and Recuperation
• Class item: Reaper and Distribution

Hunter

While Hunters benefit from the more significant Stasis changes abound, they'll likely want to fall back on an old favorite build centering around the Duskfield grenade. Hunters will litter the battlefield with Duskfield grenades, providing Frost Armor to allies within its enhanced range and debuffing enemies caught within. Stasis Shards and Orbs of Po??wer will also track to Hunters, decreasing all ability cooldowns.

Subclass

Players will want Gambler's Dodge, Withering Blade, and Duskfield grenade for the Stasis Subclass setup. Gambler's Dodge can be used to refund a Withering Blade whenever needed, and the melee ability provides another source of Slow. Duskfield grenade has greater importance to the build, working with the Touch of Winter Aspect and the Exotic armor piece of choice to greatly improve its effects. The other ??Aspect for this build is Grim Harvest, creating Stasis Shards whenever Slowed or Frozen enemies are defeated.

For Fragments, players will want Whisper of Rime and Whisper of Chains to make the most of Frost Armor whenever it's available. Whisper of Durance makes Slow effects and Duskfield grenade last longer, creating more Stasis Shards, which will be automatically collected thanks to Whisper of Conduction. Finally, Whisper of Shards allows Hunters to shatter the Stasis Crystal ?formed after using a Duskfield grenade to boost grenade recharge rate.

Gear

If it isn't clear by now, Hunters will use the Renewal Grasps Exotic for this build. The gauntlets increase the size of the Duskfield grenade's effect and? reduce damage from enemies inside. The Duskfield effect also grants Frost Armor to the Hunter and allies within its radius.

As for weapons, Hunters will ideally want something that can create Stasis Crystals, so they are not wholly dependent on the small Crystal created from Duskfield grenades. Verglas Curve can work well for this purpose, and the extra Super energy from kills is lovely, too. That said, it may feel less effective?? in more challenging content. In that event, Wicked Implement is a less flashy but reliable alternative.

Stats and armor mods

Like all Classes, Hunt??ers will want to reach 100 Resilience first. From there, the focus should shift to Discipline and then to Mobility. Thankfully, some of the Fragments provide some stat boosts, so players will have a little help reachi?ng their goals.

• Head: Harmonic Siphon, Dynamo, and Heavy Ammo Finder
• Arms: Bolstering Detonation X2 and Momentum Transfer
• Chest: Damage resistance
• Legs: Invigoration, Absolution, and Recuperation
• Class item: Reaper and Bomber X2

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Destiny 2 is in the midst of its yearly Festival of the Lost event, acting as a Halloween celebration for the game. F?estivities run through November 19, adding event-specific content and rewards for its duration. While Festival of the Lost hasn't dramatically changed since it swapped the Haunted Forest for Haunted Lost Sectors four years ago, 2024's event does alter a few things with an aim to make the Halloween celebration more accessible.

Festival of the Lost is an event that dates back to the original Destiny. The Festival has seen its share of changes over the years, but the general gameplay loop still revolves around collecting Candy as a currency. Currently, Candy is used in tandem with Eerie Engrams to purch??ase rewards from the event coordinator, Eva Levante. That said, some of the best rewards featured throughout Festival of the Lost can only be earned by participating in the event. And even better rewards are availabl?e if Guardians are willing to shell out for some microtransactions.

How to start Festival of the Lost

Festival of the Lost has no content or entry requirements; the event is free to all Destiny 2 players. Eva Levante has taken up residence at the center of The Tower, and a visit to her is all needed ??t?o start getting spooky in-game. Eva will task players with an event introductory Quest called "Classic Carving." 

Classic Carving will teach players what Festival of the Lost offers and how to participate. By completing the Quest, Guardians will earn a Masquerader's helmet, and that's required to earn Candy. New Masquerader's helms can be obtained via Eva or Haunted Lost Sectors. While the default look is Master Rahool, players can change the appearance to any other mask earned ??across previous Festival of the Lost events.

The Classic Carving Quest will eventually instruct players to enter a Haunted Lost Sector. These are the main activity offerings for Festival of the Lost, and an Expert difficulty becomes available after completing Classic Carving. At the end of the Questline, Eva will reward players with a decent roll of the Arcane Embrace shotgun, the newest Fes??tival of the Lost weapon.

Festival of the Lost Event Card

The Festival of the Lost Event Card is a collection of Triumph-like challenges with unique rewards. Play??ers can optionally pay to upgrade the Event Card, unlocking additional themed cosmetics. The Event Card is accessible from the Quests tab in ?the Director or directly via Eva Levante. Event Card challenges aren't required to earn the Festival of the Lost Title, Ghost Writer, but some objectives can overlap.

The rewards earned through Event Card challenges are one side to the earnable loot for Festival of the Lost, with weapons, Festival masks, Sparrows, and various currencies available alongside the optional upgr?aded Event Card rewards. 

Haunted Lost Sectors

Haunted Lost Sectors aren't new to Festival of the Lost, but the process of completing them has changed a bit. In years past, players would need to complete other activities to earn Spectral Pages, which would then get converted into Manifested Pages after a successful Haunted Lost Sector. Now, Spectral Pa??ges are out of the picture, and Guardians can earn Manifested Pages directly by completing Haunted Lost Sectors or other activities while wearing their Masquerader's helm.

The number of Manifested Pages earned in a Haunted Lost Sector depends on the group's performance. The activity places green summoning circles throughout the Lost Sector. When players stand in the circles long enough, a ??Headless One miniboss spawns and must be eliminated. A Lost Sector boss will appear after 10 Headless Ones are slain or after enough time has passed. It shields itself at 50% health, and players must defeat more Headless Ones that drop shield-destroying pumpkin bombs. If players finish the Haunted Lost Sector with more than 10 Headless Ones eliminated, they'll receive the maximum amount of Manifested Pages.

Manif?ested Pages are spent in The Tower at the Book of the Forgotten. This is a collection of short little lore entries with spooky undertones. There are four Volumes of Tales of the Fo??rgotten. The older entries only cost one Manifested Page, while the latest Volume four can run up to nine Pages per entry.

Guardians can earn high-stat rolls of the Masquerader's helm from running Haunted Lost Sectors, and Expert Haunted Lost Sectors will reward a Masquerader's helm with a better chance at favorable distribution of the high-stat? roll. Of course, the regular Haunted Lost Sectors have matchmaking, while the Expert version does not. As mentioned before, players cannot attempt an Expert Haunted Lost Sector until after they've completed the Classic Carving Quest. This simi?larly applies to alternate characters.

Festival of the Lost: Eva's loot

Eva Levante has a few new treats for 2024's Festival of the Lost. In addition to the usual Grab Bags and Festival of the Lost weapons, targeted Exotic armor makes a return from 2023's event. Alongside traditional Exotics, each Class' Exotic Class item is a??lso available from Eva throughout 2024's Festival of the Lost.

How to earn the Festival of the Lost Memento

Like last year, earn??ing a Festival of the Lost Memento has a bit of a hidden process around it. Playe??rs must complete three secret objectives to gain the Twilight Triumph, rewarding the Memento when it's claimed from the Triumph menu. Each task involves a Festival of the Lost mask unlocked from 2024's Event Card; some are more involved than others. That said, once you know what to do, each objective can be completed quickly. The Twilight Triumph tasks are as follows:

1. Complete the Hocus Focusing challenge on the Event Card and equip the rewarded Tower Staff Mask Ornament. Talk to Eva at The Tower; she'll offer The Mystery of the Missing Bags Quest. Talk to Saint-14 to resolve the Quest.
2. Complete the Heads Will Roll challenge on the Event Card and equip the rewarded Cursed Thrall Mask Ornament. With the mask equipped, Guardians must get 100 kills with explosive weapons.
3. Complete the Candy Corner challenge on the Event Card and equip the rewarded Finalized Ghost Mask Ornament. Guardians must get 50 sword kills in Expert Haunted Lost Sectors with the mask equipped.

Once all three objectives are complete, players can claim the secret Triumph and earn a guaranteed Festival of the Lost Memento. The Triumph will also reward the Spectral Carapace Emblem. After that one, players can continue to earn additi??onal Festival of the Lost Mementos by focusing Eerie Engrams with Eva Levante.

Eververse Festival of the Lost cosmetics

The Festival of the Lost Event Card and Eva rewards represent the unique event swag that can be earned through participation, but the Eververse Store has plenty of additional options for cold, hard cash. Guardians can purchase additional mask Ornaments, Emotes, Finishers, Ghost flair, and even full Halloween costume transmogs. These offerings are av??ailable for S??ilver (real money) for the most part, though each year's Halloween costume is also available for Bright Dust.

The post Destiny 2: Festival of the Lost 2024 event guide appeared first on Destructoid.

As you're undoubtedly aware if you play Destiny 2, a minor controversy has been afoot over the past couple of weeks. The Weightgate, as it's come to be known, suggests that there have been s??ome serious RNG Perk weighting problems that Bungie's been overlooking, but the fix is coming soon.

More specifically, Bungie has not only acknowledged that something's up with the way certain Legendary weapons drop but also promised full-fledged reparations to all players. The fix is dropping on November 5 as part of Hotfix 8.1.0.4, and it's a real doozy. Not only should this resolve any and all Perk weighting in the future, but it also comes with a real treat: an assortment of top-??tier god roll Legendary weapons that were affected by the RNG problems.

A fix for Destiny 2's RNG Perk weighting problems is coming, but don't forget to claim your fancy new god roll guns

Even though Bungie initially said that there was "no perk weighting active for any legendary weapon perks in Destiny 2," this was quickly refuted by the?? community's research on the matter. It doesn't seem like anything m??alicious was afoot, but rather that there might've been some interlocking RNG systems messing about with one another. Whatever the case may be, the community's insistence on having Bungie look into it has borne fruit, and build 8.1.0.4 should no longer be affected.

With that all out of the way, Banshee-44 is about to become the most popular kid on the block for a little while. To apologize for the RNG shenanigans, Bungie is set to provide all players of Destiny 2 with an opportunity to stock up on some of the best weapons we could've wished for. Here's the full li??st of curated Legendary weapons coming to B??anshee-44 on November 19:

• Rose Handcannon: Fluted Barrel / Accurized Rounds / Slideshot / Explosive Payload / Smooth Grip / Handling Masterwork
• Multimach SMG: Polygonal Rifling / Tactical Mag / Attrition Orbs / Kinetic Tremors / Reload Masterwork
• Indebted Kindness Sidearm: Smart Drift Control / Tactical Mag / Loose Change / Voltshot / Velocity Masterwork
• Compass Rose Shotgun: Corkscrew Rifling / Light Mag / Snapshot Sights / Slideshot / Handling Masterwork
• Adept Hothead Rocket Launcher: Hard Launch / Impact Casing / Tracking Module / Clown Cartridge / Reload Masterwork
• VS Chill Inhibitor Heavy Grenade Launcher: Countermass / Spike Grenades / Envious Arsenal / Bait & Switch / Reload Masterwork

These are remarkably potent almost across the board. I expect the VS Chill Inhibitor, in particular, to be a popular choice among those who only intend to pick up one or two of these weapons. At the same time, I also highly recommend picking up all of the featured weapons just because they're fancy, curated rolls we might not have a chance ??to claim ever again.

There are some caveats to keep in mind here, too. Firstly, since some of these are Dungeon drops (like the VS Chill Inhibitor) it should go without saying that they'll only be available to players who have the appropriate Dungeon key. Further, you'll also need to have completed Ves??per's Host at least once to be able to claim them.

The second big caveat is that these guns won't be around forever. Banshee-44's inventory will only? have them in stock from November 9 until December 3. Certainly, that's plenty of time to farm more than enough resources to claim all of them, but it's still only a limited-??time deal. And a pretty generous one, at that.

"Our goal is to get you some per??k combinations that were a bit harder to earn due to the bug. We do not currently have a planned deadline for acquisition, but we recommend picking these weapons up at your earliest convenience," explains Bungie in the featured Twitter post. So, this isn't worth dawdling about: claim the aforementioned curated rolls as soon as possible and enjoy them!

The post Destiny 2’s ‘Weightgate’ is finally being resolved, god roll guns given out to everyone appeared first on Destructoid.

There's a hidden Quest tucked away into Destiny 2's Festival of the Lost Halloween event this year. And while it's nothing that will reward players with a secret Exotic mission or a new weapon, it's a cute little romp that adds a little e??xtra flavor to the four-year-old celebration.&nb??sp;However, this Quest isn't outwardly advertised within the game. It takes a little curiosity, or the right know-how, to start the task, and the same goes for completing it.

The Festival of the Lost is Destiny 2's yearly Halloween celebration. While the event has had its share of surprises in the past, nowadays, variety comes in the form of new costume cosmetics each year. But this year, there's a bit of a surprise during Festival of the Lost. It's nothing as big as the Xenophage Exotic that was introduced during a Festival of the Lost past, but it's st?ill a good bit of fun to get Guardians into the spirit of the season.

How to begin The Mystery of the Missing Bags

Before players can start the hidden Quest, The Mystery of the Missing Bags, there are a few things that players must complete first. The most important prerequisite is for p??layers to complete the introductory Festival of the Lost Quest from Eva Levante: Classic Carving. This? simple Quest will teach players the ins and outs of the event, gifting them a Masquerader's Hood Halloween mask and introducing the Haunted Lost Sectors.

Once Classic Carving is complete, players will gain access to the Festival of the Lost event card. It contains a set of event-specific Triumphs that contain a variety of rewards. The next thing Guardians need to do before they can obtain The Mystery of the Mi?ssing Bags Quest is complete the Hocus Focusing Triumph on the event card. All that's required is for players to head to Eva and focus an Eerie Engram. It doesn't matter what the Engram is focused into, so long as its spent. Once the Triumph is complete, it will reward players with the Tower Staff Mask Ornament.

The Ornament can be used to modify the appearance of the Masquerader's Hood, and hilariously enough, it makes the mask look a bit like Jotaro Kujo from Jo Jo's Bizarre Adventure. With the Ornament?? set and th??e Masquerader's Hood equipped, Guardians can pay a visit to Eva Levante in The Tower for a surprise bit of dialogue and the start of The Mystery of the Missing Bags Quest.

How to complete The Mystery of the Missing Bags

There isn't much to this hidden Festival of the Lost Quest. All that's required of players is a visit to the nearby Saint-14 in The Tower's Hangar. Saint will have his own bit of dialogue to add an extra bit of flair to the quick ordeal, and then he'll hand ov??er a reward. Guardians will receive a Confiscated Grab Bag from the Exo. The rewards from the Grab Bag seem to range from just Glimmer to gear, with no apparent predictability.

While the quick little mask Quest can be completed just as quickly as it can be started, it's worth noting that there are other mask Ornaments available through the Festival of the Lost event card. It very well m?ay be that this won't be the last time during the spooky season where Guardians don a mask to uncover some hidden surprises.

The post Destiny 2: How ?to start and complete The Mystery of the Missing Bags during Festival of th?e Lost appeared first on Destructoid.

If Destiny 2 players have ever felt like the odds were stacked against them when trying to earn a specific weapon roll, they might not be too far from the truth. The Destiny 2 community has come together to amass data that seems to point towards something going on with how Perks are distributed on weapons. While Bungie has responded and debunked previous questions about individual Perk weighting, it seems the studio found something worth looking into after recent player data suggested it's Perk combina??tions that might be weighted, not ?individual Perks themselves.

When players earn a weapon in Destiny 2, most of the time, that weapon drops with a random combination of Perks and weapon attachments. While crafting weapons allows players to sidestep lady luck, not every weapon can be Shaped. That's the case with the new arsenal of weapons from the Vesper's Host Dungeon, and that's where players started paying closer attention to what rolls wer??e dropping on weapons.

The conspiracy theory holds water

Some players started to notice that it felt impossible to get the considered god roll of Envious Arsenal and Bait and Switch on the new VS Chill Inhibitor grenade launcher from Vesper's Host. As the weapons from the Dungeon aren't craftable, it's just a matter of running the encounters until the players are graced with the roll. But even then, the VS Chill Inhibitor god roll seemed exceedi?ngly rare, so, the community brought the matter to Bungie's attention.

Bungie, having heard and responded to various drop rate worries over the years, responded as it normally does. In a seemingly now-removed post on X, Bungie noted, "Hey all, we had a conversation with our?? Sandbox folks this morning about this. There is no perk weighting active for any legendary weapon perks in Destiny 2."

Of course, the Destiny 2 community being what it is, some players didn't take Bungie's answer as definitive. Amassing data from across the community, players like @T1Vendetta and @kneewoah ran extensive testi??ng to research weapon Perk distribution. According to the ?data, Bungie was technically correct. There is no apparent favoritism for any given Perks on weapons. That said, with two Perks on weapons, there seems to be something going on with how the Perks are paired.

Imagine the available pool of Perks on a weapon as two side-by-side columns of options in a fixed arrangement. While the first Perk (the left column) is truly random, after that Perk is chosen, the game has preferences on what comes next. Again, imagining those two columns, weapons prefer a set of Perks that are "close" to each other. The column perspective is important because, as tools that pull directly from the Destiny 2 API like light.gg show, that??'s how the game itself organizes and references these Perks.

Bungie acknowledges something is wrong

With all of the data pointing to Perk pairing not working as Bungie thought it did, and with the conversation and discourse spilling out online, the studio had to take another look under the game's hood. On October 24, Bungie posted on X, saying, "While we have confirmed that there is no intentional perk weighting on weapons within our content setup, ??we are now investigating a potential issue within our code for how RNG perks are generated." Bungie went on to thank the community for pursuing the suspected issue and amassing the quantity of data&??nbsp;that it had.

The next day, Bungie was back on social media with news surrounding the investigation. "After investigation, we can confirm an issue has been found in our code where some random perk combinations are harder to earn per legendary weapon perk set," Bungie noted. "In some cases, desirable perk combinations are a bit easier to earn as well. While we inspect?ed our content and confirmed each perk is weighted equally, an issue in perk pool RNG is the culprit here. Our team has quickly identified a potential solution to the issue, and we are rapidly working to validate the fix."

As of October 28, Bungie communicated its progress once again on X, explaining that it is planning to address the issue during an update on November 5. The studio again thanked the community for the part it played in identifying the issue, and promised some kind of a greater community thank you in the future. Right now, however, Bungie made a new Emblem available for all players. Players can redeem the free goodie at Bungie's website by using the code VHT-6A7-3MM.

A perfect storm

Players might not have realized something was off if there hadn't been a perfect storm of a situation that created the awareness. First off, the VS Chill Inhibitor, with its god roll, is one of the best weapons currently in the game, especially with the new Artifact Mods for Episode: Revenant. This?? created initial demand for ?the weapon, which got players hunting for it.

Often, the weapons players want are craftable, so the chase ?for? a weapon extends only as long as it takes players to earn enough red-bordered "blueprint" weapons. Without crafting as an option for VS Chill Inhibitor, players became painfully aware of how difficult it was to earn the weapon with the desired roll. 

The final piece in the puzzle is that the god roll for VS Chill Inhibitor is actually one of the rolls that are least likely to drop. Suppose this wasn't the case and that the two Perks in question were "positioned" closer together in Destiny 2's API. In that event, there's a pretty good chance the desired weapon roll would've been easy enough to obtain that the community's suspicion would have likely never been raised. If that were the case, who knows how long this issue would have remained in the game unde??tected.

It was only through happenstance that all of these conditions coalesced when they did. However, it's a good thing that it did, as the scenario allowed the community to help Bungie identify and fix something fundamentally flawed on the backend of Destiny 2. While it's not every day that these kinds of conspiracy theories actually hold water, in this case, it's clear Destiny players aren't afraid of a little extra work to p?rove th?eir point.

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Though it has been inevitable from the get-go, nobody really knew when Bungie's upcoming extraction shooter, Marathon, would make an appearance on Steam. Happily, it's just happened, and to celebrate the occasion, game director Joe Ziegler chimed in on how the development is going and what Marathon is.

Ziegler's vlog comes in at just under 10 minutes' worth of runtime and I recommend it for anyone even remotely interested in Marathon. On top of the obvious boon that is an honest-to-goodness explanation of Marathon's core gameplay loop, Ziegler also said that Bungie's been executing some "aggressive [changes]" on Marathon over the past couple of years. Promising news? Perhaps, but Ziegler also essentially confirmed that Marathon's Runners will be pre-existing cha??racter archetypes instead of?? fully customizable blank slates.

Marathon Game Director provides a new production update, and it's looking good

"There's a variety of different things at different states inside of the game," Ziegler said when discussing the current state of Marathon's development. "Some things are a little more complete, like our environments [which are] starting to come together in a really, rea?lly beautiful way." Enemy models, items, and Runners themselves are progressing well too, Ziegler claims, adding that "it's [still] a little early to show you all of it as one piece."

In other words: no gameplay yet, whatsoever. Ziegler did provide a bit of valuable context on the how and why of some of Marathon's admittedly striking new artworks. If nothing else, we've seen the Thief and Stealth Runners' respective character art, and those are pretty darn sweet in a way that kind of makes me think of Craig Mullins' classic Marathon artwork.

Perhaps most importantly, Ziegler has promised that Bungie will expand Marathon playtesting substantially in 2025. By then, I expect, we should have a better idea of how ??the game actually plays and perhaps even get to see a crumb of actual gameplay.

Full disclosure, though, is that I am not happy about the direction Bungie's taking Marathon in. Though the franchise has always had a pronounced multiplayer component, that's always been an aside to the game's ridiculously complex campaign narrative. To get a sense of how that worked back in the day, I suggest playing Classic Marathon on Steam, ?which was released f?or free by the awesome Aleph One community.

It was always a given that Bungie would turn Marathon into a live-service offering if it was ever to be revived. That's modern Bungie's entire schtick, after all, given how successful Destiny has been from day one. Yet, I can't help but feel disappointed that it's being ??remade into an extraction shooter, of all things. Target audiences and all that, I supp?ose.

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For Honor is set to receive a crossover event for Halloween, bringing the Destiny universe into the game. At the same time, Destiny 2 players will soon partake in the yearly Festival of the Lost, the in-game Halloween celebration that has remained nearly identical since 2021. And yet, there's been no confirmation as to whether Destiny 2 will see any new content to benefit from the For Honor collab. It's a stark reminder of how Destiny presents itself from the outside looking in.

Bungie is no stranger to partnering with other studios to crossover Destiny to other franchises. This has happened several times in the past, with The Witcher, Mass Effect, Ghostbusters, and even Dungeons & Dragons being recent examples. In most cases, new content enters Destiny 2 to coincide with the collaboration, but this time, Bungie has been oddly quiet about whether this would be the case with this most recent partnership -- especially considering the extent of Destiny's presence in For Honor's Halloween event.

New Guardians rise For Honor

For Halloween, For Honor is getting a Destiny-themed event called Light of the Guardians. It will run from October 24 until November 14, adding enemies based on the Scorn from Destiny in a new mode alongside Destiny-themed cosmetics. The most iconic cosmetics are "The Crucible Lord" Lord Shaxx skin for the Centurio?n and "The Violet King" Saint-14 skin for Lawbringers.

The new mode for the crossover event is based on the existing Domination, but it makes a few changes to spice things up. The Scorn ?have invaded the map, with a Baron and its retinue taking up residence within the Cathedral map. Play??ers won't have minions to help, so each match is a warzone between the new Scorn and the enemy team.

During the three-week event, players will earn weapons inspired by Destiny, and more are available through the in-game store. That said, players will receive a free event pass for Light of the Guardians, allo??wing free rewards to be unlocked through participation.

Festival of the Lost is getting tired

While For Honor players are getting an entire Halloween event built around the Destiny franchise, Destiny 2 players are getting the same old Halloween event they've been getting for four years. Of course, it's not as if Destiny 2 and For Honor share development teams, but it's still a little demoralizing to see an admittedly cool Destiny Halloween event appearing...not in Destiny 2.

Festival of the Lost is set to start on October 29, bringing back Haunted Lost Sectors yet again. The event? has players enter decorated Lost Sectors to fight the unique Headless Ones enemies. All the while, Guardians collect Candy to use as a currency for event rewards. There's nothing specifically wrong with Festival of the Lost itself, b??ut it's basically been unchanged for years.

While some rewards and the yearly Halloween costume cosmetics change, players have been diving into the same Lost Sectors, fighting the same enemies since before The Witness made its first appearance in-game. On top of this, the timing for Festival? of the Lost feels off this year. With the event starting two days before Halloween and? running for an assumed two or three weeks, the majority of the celebration is happening after Halloween has already come and gone. 

The timeliness of Festival of the Lost hasn't gone unnoticed by players either, with some taking to platforms like Reddit to voice their frustration and confusion. One commenter sa?id, "So we get festival of the lost literately 2 days before Halloween. I think that is way too late it looks like I'll be playing other games Halloween events instead."

Bungie acknowledges For Honor crossover

While keeping Festival of the Lost nearly identical to previous years and starting it so late may be questionable, excitement could be rekindled with a snazzy focal point to get players excited about Destiny 2's Halloween event beyond its new wizard costumes. In this sense, bringing some of For Honor to Destiny 2&nbs??p;would make sense, but Bungie ha??sn't noted that's in the cards.

Acknowledging the crossover happening in For Honor, Bungie posted, "Knights, Samurai, Vikings, Wu Lin, and Outlanders prepare to upgrade your armory. Equip your favorite warrior with gear delivered straight from The Last City, during the Light of the Guardians Halloween event. Available Oct. 24 to Nov. 14. Dates and content may change." Notably, the studio did not mention that any content would be coming to Destiny 2; instead, Destiny content would be featured in For Honor.

While it's not impossible that For Honor content could come to Destiny 2 later, it would have made sense for Bungie to note that kind of news during this communication if it was official. As it stands, For Honor players can jump into a cool and unique Halloween event based on a more fantastical franchise. For Destiny 2 players, well, once Festival of the Lost actually starts, just keep running those Haunted Lost Sectors?, I guess??.

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Continuing to inform players how Destiny 2: Frontiers will change up the game, Bungie has released another Developer Insight article announcing something called Solo Ops. The new activities are designed with solo players in mind, offering tailor-made content for those without a Fireteam. Solo Ops will be built to be replayed and are a????imed to be around 10-minute excursions.

Solo Ops is the latest piece of news to come out of Bungie about Destiny 2: Frontiers. The studio has been particularly communicative about the future of Destiny 2, dropping Developer Insights on upcoming armor changes and addressing concerns with concept art and structure plans. Needless to say, Destiny 2 will be almost a different game by the time all of the Frontiers changes are implemented, ??including a greater focus on solo play.

What are Solo Ops?

Destiny 2 has plenty of content that can be played alone, like campaigns and Exotic missions, but none of it is really designed for?? a lone Guardian. While players often take up the challenge of running a Dungeon alone or braving high-difficulty Lost Sectors for Exotic Engrams, they must build around something designed for a group. Solo Ops aims to fill that void, offering something appropriate and worthwhile for players embarking without the aid of a Fireteam.

"Sometimes you just want to jump in and play f??or 10 or 20 minutes and feel like it was worth your time," Bungie noted. "The activities best suited to solo players are time-consuming; story missions can take half an hour or more to complete, Lost Sectors require you to go into the destination to play them, and jumping in?to multiplayer activities as a solo player (for example, soloing a dungeon) can be stressful and take even more time than the activity would with a fireteam."

To remedy this issue, the studio wants Solo Ops to be readily accessible, approximately 10-minute excursions that emphasize gameplay and fun over buildcrafting or reflexes. There's also a focus on making Solo Ops enjoyable to replay. Right now, the team is experimenting with variable enemy factions and objective??s. Solo Ops's smaller, more intimate nature also allows Bungie to explore unused or forgotten locales, including some areas we've only ever visited during campaigns.

How will Solo Ops work?

Bungie explained that Solo Ops will be accessible through the upcoming Portal UI and be compatible with Frontiers' new Challenge system. Through steadily increasing Challenge, Guardians can earn progressively better gear. The studio commented on how the player score will affect rewards, noting, "You'll still?? want to play well in Solo Ops activities—your score will contribute to the quality of your loot—but we're trying to construct these missions so that getting a good score is a matter of moving, shooting, and looting rather than being determined by what loadout and build you bring into them."

Solo Ops are designed for one player, but they are not limited exclusively to solo play. Guardians can enter a Solo Op in a Fireteam of up to three members, but that's the limit. Bungie explained that it's working on implementing a system to scale up difficulty depending on the number of players. Similarly, the studio is looking into ways to add reactive enemy spawning instead of the fixed spawns that exist in most current Destiny 2 content.

While other players can join in on Solo Ops, Bungie noted that matchmaking will not be available for the activity. Instead, the studio recommends manually forming Fireteams fo??r the content. Regarding the new Banes and Modifiers, Bungie said that it wants to include them in the content, but Modifiers couldn't be transplanted as-is.

"We haven't locked down any specific set of modifiers that we are going to support in Solo Ops," Bungie explained. "We can't just use the same modifiers as, say, strikes,?? because we're really aiming at a tight experience that solo players can enjoy, and we want to make sure the modifiers we allow don't push the missions away from that experience. We do plan to support Banes, as we think they offer an exciting way to increase the variety of experiences you have across multiple plays."

With Solo Ops, it seems single players will finally have some niche content made for them. Alongside everything else promised with Frontiers, it seems players will have more ways than ever to engage with Destiny 2.

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Long gone are pit stops to The Tower and other locales with Vault access. Episode: Revenant makes the Destiny 2 Vault available from virtually anywhere and adds in a few other conveniences to boot. Now, Guardians can access their collection of gear at any time and s?wap things around to their heart's content. The new system even adds an optional safeguard to protect?? you from yourself, preventing accidental vaulting with a single button press.

One of Destiny 2's most persistent annoyances has been the Vault system that Guardians use to store their gear. Initially only accessible in a few specific areas, it was the only in-game way players could store unused gear and retrieve stowed weapons or armor. The situation led to the Destiny community's wide adoption of third-party services like DIM or Little Light, offering an ea??sier way to manage equipment between characters.

The Vault is everywhere

Guardians can now access the Vault at any time from the character screen. When viewing your Guardian, players can press W (or up on a controller D-pad) to open the Vault. There are no limitations to when and where this can be done, ??so it's even possible to pull an item from the Vault while in combat if players really want. Likewise, the same goes for depositing items into the Vault, especially in the event your inventory is full and you can't pick up new loot.

A long-time annoyance with the previou??s Vault system was how easy it was to accidentally store away gear you meant to equip. If players entered the character screen from the Vault, anything they'd try to use would instead get sent off to storage. Now, a new UI element in the top left of the character screen reminds players that they're looking at their inventory in "Vault Mode." It handily also offers a toggle using the Ctrl key (or L3) that allows players to equip g?ear from the screen, eliminating the fear of accidental vaulting.

These Vault changes are exactly the kind of self-sufficient quality-of-life updates Destiny 2 needs. It always felt weird that third-party apps and services offered more convenient inventory management than Destiny 2 itself, and it never seemed like an easy pill to swallow for new players introduced to the concept. Hopefully, after the success of these Vault changes, Bungie will consider tackling the dwindling total Vault stora??ge or make the Postmaster available anywhere?? next.

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In Destiny 2's Episode: Revenant, crea??ting n?ew Tonics and discovering recipes is a core part of the experience. However, it can seem like progress is stalled after players make their first few Tonics, as it doesn't appear that any other recipes are known. The solution is more straightforward than it seems, and Guardians just need to continue creating Tonics.

Bungie released all of Episode: Revenant's Act 1 content at launch, removing any and all timegates. While the whole of Act 1 is available, players can't continue to progress Fieldwork with Eido until they learn more Tonic recipes. With each Fieldwork?? Quest obtained, the next will call for even more Tonic recipes to be mastered. Thankfully, discovering ne??w recipes isn't a complicated process; it just requires the time and patience to farm the necessary materials.

Where do Tonic recipes come from?

New Tonic recipes are not found stashed in Raid chests or tucked away in a forgotten Lost Sector; they're instead discovered by co??ntinuously crafting the Tonics players already know. Tonics come in four distinct varieties: Uncommon, Rare, Legendary, and Exotic. 

After crafting enough Uncommon Tonics, Guardians will discover a Rare recipe. From there, more Uncommon Tonics can be made to potentially discover additional Rare Tonic options or Rare Tonics could be pursued to unlock Legendary recipes. Exotic Tonics are the outlier, as you can't lear?n a recipe for them. There's a modifiable chance that crafting a Legendary Tonic will reward an Exotic Tonic instead.

How many Tonics must be created before earning a new recipe?

The exact number of Tonics that need to be created before learning the subsequent new recipe is the same between all types of Tonic quality, but players will have to remember what they've already created. It takes five brewed Tonics to?? learn the next applicable recipe. For example, if you craft five Tonics of Worldly Gear, you'll learn the recipe for either Tonic of Worldly Armor or Tonic of Worldly Weaponry. A??nd five more Tonics of Worldly Armor or Weaponry will reveal one of seven Legendary Tonics. After enough new recipes are learned, the Tonic menu will change to make it easier to swap between Tonic families.

Of course, the process of crafting a Tonic requires materials itself. Here's a breakdown of the materials and the quantity needed to craft the different Tonics available during Ac?t 1:

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Whatever one might think about Destiny 2's new Episode, Revenant, Bungie certainly delivered an interesting new narrative beat. There's plenty of stuff to do beyond the compressed main "quest", and the new Vesper's Host dungeon is fun, too. If?? you're not playing it solo, that is.

It would seem that Vesper's Host suffers from at least some of the same problems that have been popping up in Bungie's dungeons ever since Ghosts of the Deep launched. Notably, Bungie has once again chosen to turn the dungeon's boss fights into grindy ordeals thanks to their massively inflated health pools. When you've got two more pals jumping around the place, this isn't such a huge deal, but going at it solo is a wholly different beast. According to the community, Vesper's Host isn't going to be p??opular in this respect.

Vesper's Host is fun with a full fireteam, but a punishing mess solo

Don't get me wrong: there are plenty of reasons to play Vesper's Host right now. The armor is pretty darn great, the guns are fancy and useful, and the featured Exotic is none other than the original Destiny's Ice Breaker! Attempting ??it solo may be a punishing ordeal, however, accordi??ng to long-time players.

Vesper's Host mechanics aren't that much different from the kind of stuff you'd expect out of a Destiny 2 dungeon by now. In due time, it's going to be entirely possible to get through the majority of the dungeon while chasing the revered solo flawless completion, but the final boss fight will be a trudge. That fight alone might take upwards of 30 minutes for a perfect completion, from what I've been seeing. Personally, ?I haven't even reached that encounte??r solo yet, and my experience with it in a fireteam confirms what other members of the community have been saying.

The thing about the final boss fight in Vesper's Host is that you cannot play it slow due to the wipe mechanic, and you cannot go at it quickly due to its difficulty. Most other final Dungeon encounters make it so you can grind the boss down over a longer period of tim??e if it has plenty of health.

Alternatively, if there's a hard wipe mechanic in place, the boss won't have a massive health pool to begin with. Destiny 2's Vesper's Host takes both of these features and? goes wild with them, ensurin??g that solo players, in particular, are punished for their efforts.

Obviously, Destiny 2's dungeons are designed first and foremost to be played in three-person fireteams. That's all fine and all, and having Vesper's Host balanced around a trio of players is perfectly fair. However, the f?act remains that Bungie has certainly been pushing solo and solo flawless completions over the past few years, and I honestly can't see the issue in dropping the health pool?? of the final boss fight down a tad.

Warlord's Ruin w??as a solid showpiece after the mess th??at was Ghosts of the Deep, and I'm sorry to see Vesper's Host going back down the tedium pipeline. Let's see if Bungie reacts.

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The Halo franchise has spawned some of the most iconic multiplayer maps ever made. Since it debuted in 2001, the series has s??een players face off in Spartan on-Spartan action across legendary battlegrounds that have cemented themselves in gaming folklore.

With so many to choose from, how do you find the 10 best Halo maps ever? We're going to try.

10. Valhalla

• Game: Halo 3

Valhalla felt like a natural evolution of Blood Gulch. Two bases facing off, separated only by a river. The wealth of vehicle optio??ns makes Valhalla a perfect Capture The Flag map, and the hilly terrain only adds to the tension as you escape the base with the enemy flag.

It returned in all three of 343 Industries' Halo games as Ragnarok, Viking, and Va?llaheim, respectively. After all these years, it plays bette??r than ever.

9. Narrows

• Game: Halo 3

Narrows is symmetry perfected. The two small bases on each side are accessed quickly by the man cannons that fling you across the map. There's a large bridge through the middle, featuring ?an upper and lower level. There's ??even a vertical curve to the bridge, which makes for some interesting combat engagements.

Narrows matches are extremely fast-paced, th?anks to the existence of the man cannons. You'll not get a moment to rest until the gam?e is finished!

8. Zanzibar

• Game: Halo 2

At times, it feels like Zanzibar is underrated by Halo fans. One team spawns in a power station, while the other starts on the beach. The two must fight for control of the giant spinning wheel in the middle of the?? map, giving Zanzibar an extremely dynamic feeling.

Its full commitment to its asymmetric design is admirable. This makes it perfect for 1 Flag Capture The Flag and Single Bomb matches, creating awesome "attack vs. defense" scenarios. Zanzibar's Halo 3 remake, Last Resort, is great too.

7. Battle Creek

• Game: Halo: Combat Evolved

Battle Creek is a total brawl. This semi-symmetrical map takes place in a small canyon, featuring two identical bases. In 4v4 Slayer matches, you're never far from the action, even if you spend most of your time on the resp??awn screen.

Taking your Xbox to a LAN party and playing split-screen Battle Creek is what classic Halo is all about. The map returned in Halo 2 as Beaver Creek, which is also one of the best Halo maps ever. The differences between the two a??re minimal.

6. Midship

• Game: Halo 2

Midship's Covenant setting gives it a unique aesthetic among the best Halo maps. It looks great, but it plays even better. It's a sma?ll arena se??tting with a ton of verticality, making it ideal for Oddball and free-for-all Slayer matches.

Midship produces a unique brand of chaos that other Halo maps struggle to replicate. Y??ou won't find campers here - there??'s nowhere to hide!

5. The Pit

• Game: Halo 3

Halo 3's The Pit is a symmetrical map set in a UNSC training facility. It was an instant fan favorite on release in 2007, and has remained a staple of Halo's competitive scene ever since. The P?it has verticality, long?? sight lines, and close-quarters opportunities. There's something for every playstyle here, hence its longevity.

The biggest compliment to The Pit is that it has been remade in every single one of 343 Industries' Halo titles. Pitfall in Halo 4, Simulation in Halo 5: Guardians, and Empyrean in Halo Infinite. Still, you're never beating the original.

4. Forge World

• Game: Halo: Reach

Halo 3 had Foundry and Sandbox as its primary Forge maps. Halo: Reach went one better with Forge World, an enormous blank canvas for players to bring their wildest ideas to life. The map has several different regions, each of which can be built ?upon to create something enti??rely new. It's magnificent.

Bungie certainly had confidence in Forge World; many of Halo: Reach's base multiplayer maps were built in it. For better or worse, this started a series trend o??f Forge maps becoming matchmaking staples.

3. Guardian

• Game: Halo 3

It's difficult to describe why Guardian works so well. It's asymmetric, feels smaller than it is, and doesn't play well with most objective game modes. Yet, it's undeniably one of the best Halo maps ever made. Why is that?

The map is separated by a few different areas, where combat encounters are well-isolated. It rarely feels like you're being attacked by multiple angles with littl?e you can do about it, and you're always fighting for control over a different area of the map. From a design perspective, Guardian is near-perfect.

2. Lockout

• Game: Halo 2

If you like verticality in your Halo maps, Lockout has three levels on what is otherwise a very small arena. Lockout features one central platform, from which the rest of the map spans out from. No matter where you spawn, Lockout does a great job of luring you back to that middle focal point, whether you come f??rom the upper sniper tower, or from the Gravity Lift room.

With so many areas to worry about, you're always taking a new combat engagement from interesting angles, and Lockout offers plenty of environmental cover for skill??ed players to use to their advantage. For this reason, Lockout is the best Slayer map ever made.

1. Blood Gulch

• Game: Halo: Combat Evolved

Blood Gulch is quintessential Halo. Two bases, one vast, open canyon. Plenty of vehicles on both sides. Snipers galore. Off to the races you go, Spartans. This is Capture The Flag at its very best, and there's a reason Blood Gulch has returned in so many Halo games since.

Part of the beauty of Blood Gulch is its simplicity. Bungie didn't overcomplicate anything, stripping the Halo multiplayer experience back to its core to create something magical. You can still play Big Team Battle matches on Blood Gulch in Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and it still feels as epic as ever.

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Episode: Revenant has begun within Destiny 2, and numerous changes to Exotics come with it. The alterations aren't just hitting a couple of weapons or armor but sweeping across many Exotics from both categories and for all Classes. And these Exotics updates are just the tip of the iceberg for what's changing in Destiny 2 for Episode: Revenant.

Bungie shared some of what players could expect ahead of Episode: Revenant through its This Week in Destiny communications and a Twitch preview stream. These offered insights into some significant changes coming in the Episode, from Titans gaining a taunt to be more like MMO tanks to the resurgence of the Inverted Spire Strike and big updates to Onslaught. These Exotic changes come alongside additional Class and ability tuning that shifts the gameplay sandbox from its The Final Shape-launch state.

Exotic weapon changes

Bungie noted that it wanted to focus its Episode: Revenant Exotic weapon sweep on options that have been previously underserved or synergized with the new Artifact Mods. Exotic SMGs start the Episode out strong, with Huckleberry?? gaining a reload effect on kills and the Kinetic Tremors Perk on its Catalyst. Tarrabah is also getting some love, mirroring a similar effect to the Riskrunner. It now offers 50% Solar damage resistance in PvE and 15% in PvP while the Ravenous Beast Perk is active.

Exotic grenade launchers are also getting some buffs for both the Special and Heavy ammo varie??ty. Ex Diris is getting a sizable 33% damage increase to direct hits, which should be easier to land with some additional velocity and recoil changes. It also sports more ammo reserves and generates Hive moths more easily via two direct hits instead of only kills. The cooldown between moth generation has also been reduced from four seconds to three seconds. The Fighting Lion is getting a bit of a Void synergistic boost, creating a Volatile explosion on direct hits. Finally, the Prospector is getting a bit of a rework. It's now limited to six shots in a mag, and its remote detonation effects a??re now gone, but each shot now creates three high-damage cluster bombs.

Bungie also gave a couple of Exotic shotguns a day in the sun, Chaperone and Duality. Chaperone got a few changes to provide it with some PvE potential, allowing its The Roadborn Perk to trigger after two precision hits. The Roadborn increases handling, range, rate of fire, and precision damage. Bungie's tweaks also add 20 stability and a 25% increase in reload speed?. Precision hits will extend The Roadborn, and base ammo reserves have increased. Duality has similarly received buffs to make it more usable in PvE, decreasing the number of On Black Wings stacks required to achieve full effects. The stacks will also last longer, shifting from seven to 10 seconds.

Alongside these broader categories, Bungie had a few outlier Exotic weapons that received some changes. The first one is Symmetry, which should be a bit easier to use, with kills also providing a stack of Dynamic Charge to keep its effects rolling. Bad Juju also had some quality-of-life changes to make it easier to use the weapon. The String of Curses buff now lasts longer, from three and a half seconds to five ?and a half, and the Catalyst now provides a seven-and-a-half-second timer. The magazine size has also increased, going from 27 to 36. Bungie notes that the Bad Juju has "become more haunted than it used to be� Finally, Lumina got a small change, making its hip-fired projectiles behave more like healing shots from Support-frame auto rifles.

Alongside these buffs, one weapon got a bit of a ??nerf: Choir of One. Bungie noted the new Exotic performed a bit too well in PvE while not providing enough oomph in PvP. As such, Bungie reduced base ammo reserves to 200 from 250 and reduced the total max reserves possible from 384 to 300. The impact damage from Point-Blank projectiles has been reduced by 50%, but it deals 10% more hip-fire damage against players. Choir of One will start with seven shots in Crucible, and ammo pickups reward seven more.

Exotic armor changes

For all of the Exotic weapons that got changed, even more Exotic armor pieces received a tweak. Most of these alterations amount to a buff, especially when considered alongside the slew of Super and ability buffs in Episode: Revenant. However, some previously-dominant ?options have been pared down so that other Exotics can shine.

Warlock

Leaning into the idea of a Stasis-focused Episode, Ballidorse Wrathweavers have seen some tweaks to make it more effective in higher-tier PvE content. Targets frozen by the Shadebinder Super's proj?ectile will now su??ffer 100% additional Shatter damage regardless of which player causes the Shatter. On top of this, Warlocks can gain a variable amount of Super energy for granting Frost Armor using Frostpulse or Winter's Wrath, depending on how many allies are affected.

Skull of the Dire Ahamkara is getting a small but valuable update, providing Super energy whenever players defeat enemies while Devour is active. Sanguine Alchemy got a rework and now acts as t?he default target-marking Exotic for Warlocks. Players can mark an enemy by damaging them from within a Rift, gaining 10% increased damage against marks. The Exotic also g?rants a Surge x4 to any weapons matching the damage type of your equipped Super.

The Verity's Brow and Spirit of Verity effect on Exotic Class items is getting a small change to front-l?oad the brunt of the effect. The first stack of the Death Throes buff now provides 40% increased PvE grenade damage and adds 15% with each additional stack. Cenotaph Mask is also getting a minor update, bringing back the visual marker on targets under its effect. Speaker's Sight now has the ability to generate Orbs of Power back in PvP, creating one Orb per six instances of healing in the Crucible. 

On the nerf side of things, Osmiomancy Gloves got a bit of a debu??ff. The armor already provided a strong buff to Coldsnap grenades, so Bungie reduced bonus seeker distance and speed by 50%. It still allows the Exotic to generate g??renade energy quickly, but Coldsnaps should be less of a nuisance in PvP.

Hunter

Starting Hunters off, Lucky Pants is getting a few changes, with some targeted to bring the Exotic into line with other options. An equipped hand cannon now provides a movement and slide distance bonus, and the bonus to airborne effectiveness now persists whenever a hand cannon is being used. Additionally, the Out of Luck cooldown will only apply when players swap the weapon or time expires after reaching seven stacks in PvE. The maximum hand cannon damage bonus has been reduced ?from 650% to 400%, but players no lon?ger need to use a hand cannon with a damage type matching their Super.

After removing the previous effect on Young Ahamkara's Spine that refunded grenade energy on grenade hits, the Exotic now has a similar version of its original Perk. Hunters gain Tripmine grenade energy from ability hits, granting 33% energy in PvE and 8% in PvP. For the Exotic Class item, specifically for the Spirit of Synthoceps Perk, the melee damage bonus has been reduced by 50% when Stylish Executioner and Biotic Enhancements are b??oth active.

Before Episode: Revenant, the Blight Ranger Exotic only had niche functionality to create Orbs of Power in a pi??nch, but it has been reworked a bit. Players can cancel the Super to Blind and damage nearby enemies, gaining an Arc weapon damage boost. The Super will no longer generate Orbs of Power from reflecting attacks, directly generating Super energy instead. 

Raiju's Harness lost a lot of its functionality to Blight Ranger, so Bungie rebuilt the Exotic to better represent its lore tab. The Exotic now buffs the Gathering Storm Super, summon?ing a lightning strike on all nearby enemies that Jolts and Amplifies teammates. Hunters can also generate Super energy by defeating Arc-debuffed foes.

Titans

Titans are taking full adv??antage of their Class changes and the focus on Stasis with Icefall Mantle. The Exotic has been reworked, rewarding a stack of Frost Armor for rapid Stasis kills. Stacks of Frost Armor from any source now heal and the unique Class ability, Icefall Mantle, now grants full Frost Armor stacks, too. The Class ability no longer impedes jumping or sprinting, and it also works when Thruster is equipped. The trade-off is that Icefall Mantle no longer offers a Stasis weapon dama??ge bonus and now requires a Stasis Super equipped.

The Cadmus Ridge Lancecap Exotic is also bringing some Stasis-themed love, boosting the effectiveness of a Diamond Lance build. The Exotic no?? longer requires a Stasis weapon to create Diamond Lances. Titans will make one with any weapon kill whenever they're behind a barricade with a Stasis Super equipped. Additionally, any powerfu??l combatants damaged by a Diamond Lance will create three Stasis Crystals.

Ursa Furiosa and the Spirit of the Bear Perk on Exotic Class items are also getting a tweak to support the reworked Unbreakable Aspect. T??????????????????????????he total amount of Super gained from using Unbreakable in PvE has been increased from 15% to 20%. However, that total is capped at 10% in PvP. On top of this, Spirit of the Horn, Spirit of Alpha Lupi, and Spirit of Hoarfrost now work with the Thruster Class ability on Exotic Class items.

The Thundercrash Super has always benefited from Cuirass of the Falling Star, but Bungie wanted to rework it a bit to provide more benefits beyond increasing Super damage. The Exotic now rewards Super energy whenever Titans get melee kills while Amplified and damage resistance is applied after the impact instead of an overshield. The damage resistance is 50% in PvE and 10% in PvP. To compensate for these other changes, the damage multiplier for the Exotic has reduced from 2x to 1.55x. However, total damage should still be similar to before Episode: Revenant after the Thundercrash buffs.

Bungie wanted to create an Exotic effect for Titans that worked similarly to how Lucky Pants performed for Hunters. As such, the? Peacekeepers Exotic has had a bit of a rework, now providing a damage buff when contin??uously damaging enemies with SMGs. Players can amass up to 20 stacks, which becomes 100% increased SMG damage.

Finally, Mast o??f the Quiet One got a minor tweak. In addition to its previous effects, the Exotic now offers the Devour buff. Players will need a Void-based Super to use this new effect, but it will grant the life-stealing buff whenever Titans get kills while at critical health.

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As Destiny 2: Episode 2 - Revenant's Act 1 unfolds with questionable gusto, it seems tha??t game content problems aren't the only issue Bungie is currently facing. Notably, there's a new lawsuit cooking, alleging that Bungie's writers had stolen the concept of Year 1's (now sunset) Red War campaign.

Specifically, the word of the lawsuit was first brought to light by The Game Post's Zuhaad Ali. The legal dispute was filed earlier this month by author Kelsey Martineau in Louisiana, alleging that man?y of the concepts and characters from Red War were "directly" taken from one of their science-fiction short stor??ies. The lawsuit states that "The creators of Destiny 2 did not independently create their version of the Red Legion but instead of have wrongfully copied Martineau’s original creation," and though Bungie is yet to respond to the allegations, it will have to, at some point.

Destiny 2's latest lawsuit is all about the sunset Red War campaign

The claim, which is available for reading via Scribd.com, comes with a whole slew of alleged similarities between Martineau's fiction and Destiny 2's Red War. Before going deeper into this, I'd like to use this opportunity to highlight the fact that almost all the key elements that appeared in Year 1 of Destiny 2 had been fairly well established in the years prior. After all, Destiny 2 is a sequel, and Bungie cooked up Cabal lore a fair few years prior to the release of even the first Destiny title.

With that in mi??nd, here are just a few hi?ghlights from Martineau's library of allegations:

• The name "Red Legion"
• An alien faction of warlike Legionnaires
• Similarities between Dominus Ghaul and Martineau’s Overlord Yinnerah
• The presence of a large celestial object in the Earth's low orbit, which the Red Legion attempts to capture
• The use of the word "failsafe" in both narratives

The list goes on and on. A particularly interesting highlight can be found ??on pages 7 through 9 of the document, stating that it was "well publicized that the development team for Destiny 2 was forced to scrap a majority of their work midway through development in order to start over again." This is, presumably, used to suggest that Bungie might've read Martineau's self-published works and attempted to leverage it for the flagship title.

For those who didn't have the chance to enjoy Destiny 2's old, now sunset content, there is a somewhat acceptable solution: YouTube preservation. The only way to currently get a sense of what it all looked like is to check out the cutscenes and gameplay f??ootage that veteran players had previously captured, as there's n??o way to actually engage with the Red War campaign in-game at this time. Will this play a role in the lawsuit? I don't know, but it sure will be interesting to see how the situation develops.

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Destiny 2: Episode 2 - Revenant's Act 1 of content launched very recently with an impressive trailer and a promising cont??ent roster, but it didn't take long for players to become disillusioned. Now that Bungie's lifted al??l time-gates from ep??isodic content, it's become clear how little of it there is.

Now, I complained early on in Episode 2's Act 1 about Bungie's annoying insistence on time-gating meaningful narrative development in Destiny 2. Imagine my surprise when Bungie announced that, starting with Episode 2 onwards, time-gates would be no more, allowing players to progress through Acts one at a time in their entirety. Exciting! Well, yes, but also no, because players are now surprised and unhappy with the fact that there's about an hour's worth of main story progress to be found in Revenant's first Act. Honestly, it's not a great look.

With the time-gates gone, Destiny 2's Episodes look surprisingly meager

For players with lots of experience in playing Destiny 2's seasonal content, this shouldn't be a huge surprise. In most cases, Bungie doesn't actually have all that much seasonal story to dispense willy-nilly. During the years prior, we genuinely did get just a fe?w dialogues' worth of story d??evelopment before being sent back into the trenches to grind and/or engage with a variety of seasonal activities.

The fact that there was activity-based drudgery to be found in-between weekly 15-minute story beats helped camouflage the whole setup. Now, however, Bungie's done good on its promise and taken away virtually all the drudgery. This leaves us with a nice, brisk, and lean story to enjoy in rou??ghly an hour's worth of playtime once every couple of months. It's not hard to see why players would be unhappy with this.

Quite obviously, Bungie's providing us with an extremely compressed version of seasonal story progression, but if we want to be honest about it, this isn't all there is to Revenant. Based on the NPCs' dialogue, it's clear that the Episode was still built with time gates in mind, as Eido references players continuously fighting for the Eliksni in between major story beats. Presumably, these instances talk about the upgraded version of Onslaught, which is the resident seasonal act?ivity for th??e Episode.

So, it's not that there's nothing left to do in Revenant's first Act, really. You still have a bunch of Tonics to complete and Fieldwork to get through, and each of those nets you some additional dialogue to move things forward. The gameplay is there, most certainly. The main quest isn't. Granted, the story's never really been the focus of Destiny 2's seasonal content i??f we're being honest, and minuscule progression beats now don't have the brunt of the game's activity-based gameplay loop to hide behind.

Now, I'm not sure why Bungie chose not to keep rounds of Onslaught in between important story progression steps. Simply doing away with the time-gates themselves would've solved the biggest problem many of us had with Episodes. As it currently stands, Destiny 2's second Episode is having the opposite effect and diminishing its own content ??fantasy.

Personally, if Acts 2 and 3 don't have more narrative to offer, I'll find myself hard-pressed to believe Revenant actually has more content in it than any of the old Witch Queen-era seasons. Even with all the fluff removed, I genuinely believe there was more stuff to be f??ound there. Again, though, it's still early to tell and future Acts might pick up the pace.

With all of the above in mind, the older news that Codename: Apollo is not time-gated and should be fully nonlinear has me concerned. Once again, Bungie is struggling to deliver on the bits that the community is asking for, and even when we do get the bit we wanted, it's not quite at the level we expected to see. Destiny 2's biggest problem is, indeed, uncertainty. At least the non-story content is good in Revenant, right?

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Maintaining a decade-old game is a non-trivial task. Even Warframe, the poster child of general F2P positivity, ??struggles with content updates and player expectations every so often. Even more so when your game locks DLCs behind payga?tes. Further still, uncertainty about the long-term further exacerbates this.

Just a few weeks back, I decided the time was right to give Warframe a shot once more. Full disclosure: I'm very familiar with the game due to spending just under three thousand hours playing it. I did stop a while back, but now that I'm more-or-less done with Destiny 2 as well, I felt it might've been good to check what Digital Extremes had been up ?to.

Honestly, I didn't like it. Warframe's no longer a game for me, and while I recognize there's a lot of awesome stuff in it, I'm simply over it. The thing that I really made note of, though, was the fact that I didn't feel lost in it at all. Even though I hadn't played Warframe since Update 25, every single element of the game made perfect sense to me still. The basics might've shifted ever-so-slightly, but the really important bits all stayed the same. With Destiny 2, that's really not the case at all.

10 years into its lifecycle, Destiny still doesn't know what to do with its core gameplay and progression systems

The Final Shape was an excellent expansion pack for Destiny 2, but it also served as an excellent off-ramp for many players. The Light vs. Dark saga now basically complete, all there was left to do for the time being was to engage with Bungie's questionably reinvented seasonal model. Or, if you're like me, skip it entirely and hope that Frontiers is more engaging in some way, shape, or form.

For what it's worth, Frontiers genuinely looks interesting, but that's a different can of worms.

Thinking about all of this made me realize that, even though Destiny 2 does have a baseline gameplay experience and certain tropes that are always present (i.e. the Director UI, the concept of Collections, Vendor-based progression, etc.), virtuall?y everything else in a state of constant flux.

Heck, we don't even need to look that far back to find the latest example of this being the case. Is the crafting system being taken out of the game? Players aren't sure. It definitely is being changed to some extent, and its very purpose in the Destiny 2 meta is? being tweaked - for better or for worse. What will this materialize into? We don't know for sure, and that's really not even the point I'm trying to make.

The point is, instead, that Destiny 2 should not be struggling with its power progression and content formatting this late in its lifecycle. Why is ??Bungie still reinventing the wheel?

Destiny 2 is changing, every year

I'm honestly not sure how many more times Bungie might need to change how Destiny 2's armor works. Or how rewards are doled out. Or, for that matter, how players access and interact with Destiny 2's core activities. It's not that I think Bungie will make these things worse, note. It's just that, having started my Destiny 2 tenure back in the days of Opulence, I pla??yed through several different iterations of each and every ??one of these systems.

Don't get me wrong: Destiny 2 is definitely superior to what it was years ago, and even though Bungie does sometimes adopt the tired old "three steps forward, two steps back" philosophy, things are slowly improving. It's the fact that Destiny 2 even needs to go through so many d??ifferent versions of the same thing that bugs me.

New resources replace old ones every so often, interfaces combine the feature set of old ones while adding some stuff in and tossing other stuff out, and content rotates in and out of availability. Destiny 2 always has its players on loose footing, and it's deeply?? a?nnoying that there's no end in sight for this process.

Bungie just can't nail down a system that works, even a decade in

Again, I've got no doubt that the upcoming Portal UI will be, in some ways, superior to everything we've had in Destiny 2 before it. It's not going to be perfect though, and we already know that. More specifically, Portal is not even going to fully replace the Director: the Director UI is going to stay right where it is. Even Bungie itself admits? that Portal won't be able to show off?? every single activity that's available in the game. It's just going to show you the seasonally relevant bits, really.

With that in mind, I cannot shake off the feeling that Destiny 2 is conti??nuously reinvent??ing itself simply for the purpose of reinventing itself.

Certainly, there's merit in keeping things fresh, but does freshness include a retrofit of all the bits and bobs I've been menti??oning in this article? Reworks are, at this point, crutches for problems tha??t really ought to have been figured out a decade into a game's lifecycle, and I don't think this will change anytime soon.

Destiny 2 is as oblique as it has ever been, and Frontiers won't change that

The biggest issue I take with Destiny 2 after having spent thousands of hours playi??ng it is that its content structure ??and delivery systems change in a way that doesn't do anything about staleness.

Sure, Frontiers sounds pretty good right now, but I'd like to highlight that Episodes also sounded good before they first came out. It didn't take long at all for players to realize that they really are just rebranded seasons in a top hat and a fancy coat.

If it seems like I'm giving no quarter to Bungie, that's only because I do still care about the game and would like to return to it. Between sunsetting (which is still a thing for seasonal content on a yearly basis), a constant need to keep changing everything all the time, and an uncertain future in the long run, it's simp??ly become quite hard to keep up with it.

I do think 2025's Frontiers will improve Destiny 2 in some key areas, but I'm not sure if it's going to be enough to meaningfully freshen things up and draw in new players. And, since all the current systems are in a state of flux, we won't have the sort of continuity you get from, say, Warframe. From my experience with Destiny 2, ??we'll instead go through just enough change to keep old players on the backfoot, but not enough to permanentl??y improve the core progression loop. Like an Ouroboros of feature creep.

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While the jury is still out on whether Destiny 2's current episodic content structure is good or not, Bungie's seasonal offerings are wholly inevitable, and the new Episode 2 - Revenant is almost upon us. All content considerations aside, Revenant's trailer is appropriately striking and badass, riffing on Doom and Bloodborne.

To be perfectly frank, there are a lot of reasons why a Destiny player might be getting excited about Revenant. Between Onslaught updates, the removal of content time-gating, and a whole suite of cool new weapons and armor, Revenant is already looking mighty fine. If all of those things didn't sell you on it, though, Bungie's new trailer may well do so. With music that almost certainly brings up images of Doom and the like, and an art style that even FromSoftware wouldn't shy away from, Destiny: Revenant may end up being exactly the tour de force that Bungie currently needs.

Destiny 2: Episode 2 - Revenant begins on October 8

Slated to kick off properly on October 8, Destiny 2: Episode 2 - Revenant is our opportunity to take up arms alongside Mithrax yet once more. This time, our enemy is Fikrul himself, the big bad of Forsaken, and a few other notable pieces of Destiny 2 content. As the narrati?on tells us, Fikrul's managed to get his undead paws on an Echo of the Witness following its defeat, and this led to the creation of a whole new kind ??of Scorn.

It's an exciting setup, not in the least because there may or may not be flying Scorn mucking about. With the Guardians taking up arms as kinda-sorta vampire killers, it's perfectly thematically appropriate for Revenant to adopt an almost Castlevania-esque design language for the season. A timely development too,?? now that Halloween is ??on the horizon.

That being said, Destiny 2: Episode 1 - Echoes had some good moments only for it all to kind of fall apart towards the end. Bungie has got a long road ahead if it wishes to impress its players with Revenant, now that the first Episode didn't quite deli?ver o??n all of its promises.

Even if you're thoroughly uninterested in Destiny 2's current content structure, there's something to look forward to with Frontiers. Destiny 2's 2025 format seems way more player-friendly and approachable already. Though, I'd keep this in mind with a pinch of salt at hand: Episodes appeared way better than the prior years' seasons ahead of their launch, too, and then we got disappointed. Bungie has since corrected the course, yes, but a tiny bit of skepticism goes a long way with Destiny 2, I feel.

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Whether you're interested in Destiny 2: Frontiers or not, it's hard to argue against the fact that Bungie is eager to reinvent the wheel yet onc?e more. Before that reinvention happens, though, we've got two ?more se??asons' worth of Episodes, and the Revenant gear is a proper delight.

More specifically, Bungie's recent TWID (This Week in Destiny) blog post goes into substantial depth on what to expect out of Episode: Revenant's weapons and armor. For those who are keen on the nitty-gritty of it, it's an excellent expansion of the same concepts that are being brought to bear with Onslaught. For those of us who want to leer at fancy new gear, we've got pictures, too. Broadly, Revenant's seasonal weapons are old Vanguard, Gambit, and Forgotten Shore armaments kit-bashed with Scorn field-plat?e. ??Neat!

Destiny 2's seasonal Revenant weapons are kit-bashed monsters, and the Iron Intent armor is the opposite

While the speci?fics of what each of the featured weapons does are still largely a mystery, we now know we'll be getting six new weapons in total:

• Adaptive Sniper Rifle
• Double-Fire Break-Action Grenade Launcher
• Aggressive Handcannon
• Lightweight Scout Rifle
• Adaptive Pulse Rifle
• Adaptive Heavy Grenade Launcher
• Precision Sidearm

For Destiny 2 veterans, the underlying weapon model for each of these guns should be fairly familiar. The good news, though, is that most of them haven't been used for any recent reissues, so they'll feel fresh and exciting. Their partially redacted Perk lists are also available in the TWID, so be sure to check them out if you're intrigu?ed. Note t??hat one of the weapons (the Scout Rifle) does not appear to be shown off in the graphic featured above.

The second major visual showpiece of the TWID are the fancy new Iron Banner armor sets: the Iron Intent trio of armors is a sleek rendition of Nordic aesthetic. Perhaps most importantly, it looks like each part should pair up reasonably well with a variety of other assorted armor pieces. Being fashionable without wearing the full set of a given armor is, afte??r all, the obvious endgame.

There's really not much to complain about with the gear that's been shown off so far. Don't forget that we're also getting both the evil and the good wizard cosmetics during Revenant's Act 1, either.

I'd also like to use this opportunity to highlight the fact that Bungie is updating some of the oldest legacy weapon Ornaments for the first ?time in years. It's quite rare that they go back to revamp old cosmetics, and this praiseworthy move is bound to make some beloved classic Ornaments much better to look at in 2024.

Overall, then, Bungie is on the right track when it comes to design work with Episode: Revenant. Let's see how the rest of it pans out.

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Destiny 2 will see some considerable changes to how stats and armor work for Frontiers, finally reigniting the armor chase for players. Some stats are simply getting renamed to be easier to understand while seemingly entirely new ones are entering the mix. Also, armor itself will be very different in the next Destiny saga, introducing powerful set bonuses and reworking how stats are distribu?ted.

The armor chase has been more or less stagnant since Destiny 2 added Artifice armor alongside the 30th Anniversary Pack in 2021. Artifice armor offers an extra slot on the piece, adding a free +3 to a desired stat. It's flat-out better than any other option, and the only reason you wouldn't take an Artifice armor piece in every slot is so you can equip an Exotic in one. It sounds like that's all getting shaken up in Frontiers with new reasons to hunt down some swag.

Stats for all

The crux of the armor changes work on top of greater changes both to how stats work and how they are distributed through armor. Bungie outlined how everything would come together in a Developer Insight post. The studio noted, "Once you have the right stat rolls, there is very little else to look forward to, and the intricate balance of stat values has a lock-in effect that makes it hard to want to swap anything out anyway. For armor to be exciting again, it needs some unique properties, and sta??ts need to be easier to manage without so much need for fine-tuning??."

To address these issues, Bungie is taking several big swings at stats in general, starting with eliminating its curren??t tier-based system. Players no longer need to build their stats with multiples of 10 in mind, as every little bit of a stat will count towards something. Complimenting this is the fact that stats can now be pushed over 100 to a maximum of 200. Building this high unlocks powerful effects, and Bungie hopes that will help make every stat have some value.

In the spirit of making everything more accessible, some stats are set to receive a name change. Bungie outlined that Discipline would become the Grenade stat and Strength would become Melee to help ease player identification. On top of these renames, Bungie also listed a Special Ammo stat. It didn't s??pecifically note whether this was altered from an existing stat or if it would join the others already in the game.

The studio offered a bit of information about how these stats might work in Frontiers, noting ??that up to 100, Discipline (or Grenade) behaves as players know it, but from 101 to 200, the stat grants an exponential chance to get? an extra grenade when the ability charges. Strength (or Melee) decreases the cooldown for powered melee abilities as it does now through 100, but beyond, it similarly offers the chance for additional powered melee charges. As you might expect, Special Ammo increases the opportunity for ammo to drop after defeating enemies, and pushing it past 100 makes it more likely for double bricks to appear.

Valuable armor set bonuses are inbound

While Guardians are seemingly getting more stats on their armor, each piece will feature less diversity. Currently, armor appears with every stat possible, with only a couple highlighted to receive more than a few meager points. In Frontiers, armor will only appear with three stats, but each will offer more points in the stats that actually show up. In an example shown, a chest piece h?ad 30 Strength, 10 Intellect, and 20 Discipline.

In addition to the general changes to stat distribution armor is getting, Class items are also getting a bit of love. Bungie noted that all Legendary Class items would receive a suite of stats just like any other piece of gear. The one exception to this is the Exotic Class items for Prismatic, as adding another layer of complexity into the grind for that item isn't ideal. The studio ??noted that it's consi?dering methods for players to manually add the stats they want to the items.

Finally, one of the most significant changes to armor is the reimagining of set bonuses. Armor set bonuses are already in the game, though they appear in a rather timid fashion. These boons are never anything more than a Seasonal rep increase or something to help farm the currency of the week. However, Bungie is looking to make set bonuses in Frontiers something players would actually want to g??o after.

The new armor set bonuses will offer benefits when players either have two or four pieces of a set equipped, leaving room for an Exotic. This?? also allows players to mix and match two different sets for their bonuses if desired. The studio shared a few examples of the general direction in which these bonuses are intended to appear, including one from Tex Mechanica that improves hip fire and another for the Vanguard that offers damage resistance for the Fireteam when using a grenade.

Of course, as Bungie noted, much of this information is still in development and early, and the final product could change at any time. That said, Destiny 2's armor has needed a change for quite a while now, and if the studio can also tune up stats in the process, then it feel?s like a w?in-win.

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Rejoice, Destiny 2 players, for Onslaught will not go the way of Gambit. Bungie recently hosted a Twitch livestream where the studio shared some details about the upcoming Episode: Revenant. Alongside a look toward the future and a few surprises, Bungie dove into some of the content co?ming with the Episode, including a huge update to the Onslaught horde mode.

Onslaught is a horde-based activity in Destiny 2, first introduced alongside the Into the Light update preceding The Final Shape expansion. Initially, Onslaught sported three maps and a couple of difficulty options, but enemies, rewards, and the content itself were static. That won't be the case for long, though, as Bungie shared that Episode: Revenant will add some fuel to Onslaught's f??ire, introducing new maps, foes, and rewards.

Please put your hands together for Onslaught Salvation

Bungie revealed that ex??isting Onslaught content isn't just ??getting a gloss-up; it's getting a new mode called Onslaught Salvation. The Onslaught variant will change almost everything about the horde mode, including where players are fighting, who they're fighting, and how they fight altogether.

Introducing Onslaught Salvation, Staff Designer Clayton Kisko noted, "We heard players' feedback, they want to see us invest in Onslaught. We are coming out with a brand new Onslaught called Onslaught Salvation." Diving in a bit deeper, Kisko said, "We are going to have three maps that are in there, you will have some new defenses, we'll have enemy factions that will be fighting into? the theme of this Episode."

The studio first showed off the Widow's Court map, a retrofitted Crucible map. It bears a newly added spooky demeanor, with twisted growths and heavier fog accenting the Scorns focus in Episode: Revenant. And speaking of the Scorn, the narrative team has a reason w?hy they're getting involved in the first place.

The Scorn's story is a part of Onslaught Salvation

"One of [the Echoes] fell, o?f course, to Maya Sundaresh, which we know from Episode 1. And it fu?ndamentally changed how the Vex saw themselves," Senior Narrative Designer Jerome Virnich explained. "And now, we're going to get the same treatment with the Scorn because one of the Echoes will be falling to Fikrul, leader of the undead Eliksni army. Similarly, that Echo is going to prompt the Scorn to evolve, to see themselves in a new way, and to fundamentally change what they are."

Virnich noted that Fikrul is attempting to grow and evolve his Scorn army, and for that, he's going to need Eliksni corpses. To that end, Guardians wil??l find themselves?? teaming up with Mithrax and his daughter Eido to prevent the Scorn from spiriting away captured Eliksni. 

"I just wanted to point out here,? you'll notice two things. First off, the Fireteam is tracking that Revenant Baron, just like you said, and also freeing captured Eliksni," Virnich said. "And as to why people would want to keep Eliksni captives alive, I'll save that for the player?s to discover."

New defenses for evolved foes

While the aesthetic and enemy change would be enough to get some excited for Onslaught Salvation, the gameplay will change, too. Bungie?? is adding new defenses to players' arsenals and tweaking some old ones to make investments more worthwhile??. 

The team showed off one of the new defenses during the stream, a new non-automated turret emplacemen??t that Guardians can control. Kisko noted that as players level them up, they'll develop new effects like Scorch, which can be empowered through the wielder's Artifact Mods or build. The Staff Designer also highlighted another upcoming defense, an airstrike that calls for a powerful assault from the sky.

Bungie is also looking at some of the defenses that? weren't as universally beloved in the first iteration of Onslaught, like the trip wire. In its original? form, it simply exploded when enemies crossed its path. Now, however, it is empowered by Stasis, slowing enemies and creating Stasis Crystals at higher levels.

The interim rounds for Onslaught Salvation are also changing. Originally, players ventured through some Pyramid architecture, defeating enemies along the way. In the new Onslaught, Bungie describes that players will find themselves infiltrating a Revenant nest, chasi??ng down a Scorn Reve?nant Baron to save Eliksni from a gruesome fate.

With the changes coming to Onslaught and its focus in Episode: Revenant, Bungie is showing that the mode wasn't simply a one-and-done for Into the Light. ??Hopefully, this is just the first of many future Onslaugh??t updates to come.

The post Destiny 2’s Episode: Revenant brings big updates to Onslaught appeared first on Destructoid.

In a Developer Livestream on Twitch, Bungie spoke about what Destiny 2 players could expect for content moving into Frontiers, comparing each of the two yearly expansions to the size of the Rise of Iron expansion for the original Destiny. The? studio also offered a glimpse at what new content could look like, showing some concept art and commenting on gameplay struc?ture.

The Destiny 2 community has found itself in a bit of a predicament since Bungie announced its plans for the future. On the one hand, some rejoiced at the news that the game was continuing not only to receive regular expansions but two expansions a year. On the other hand, others worried that Bungie noted that these expansions would be smaller in size and scale than what players had grown used to. Bungie seemingly took the Episode Revenant livestream as an opportunity to assure fans about the future of Destiny 2, spending a good chunk of the stream talking about Frontiers.

Bungie wants to spread out the spotlight

During the stream, Destiny 2's Assistant Game Director, Robbie Stevens, outlined how future expansions for Destiny 2, starting with Codename: Frontiers, will shift in scale and structure. Instead of a single enormous expansion every 18 months or so, the new approach aims to bring two relatively large expansions annually. Each is noted to have a scope similar to Rise of Iron from the original Destiny.

"Expansions are changing going forward with Codename: Frontiers," Stevens explained. "Our philosophy?? behind this is moving from one really big, all-consuming tentpole moment that takes all the oxygen in the room, to two big tentpole moments happening in each year."

Bungie's plan introduces more frequent content and more replayable and unique experiences. "Each expansion is going to have its own unique version of a campaign and post-game experience that you can dive really deep into beyond the initial playthrough," Stevens elaborated, comparing it to beloved areas like The Dreaming City or The Final Shape's new locale, The Pale Heart. "Making our expansions unique and deeply replayable is a big goal for us, in large part to support all the new gear and the new tiering of gear that we're? putting into the game."

One of the standout features of this new approach is the non-linear design being touted for upcoming campaigns, particularly with Apollo. Stevens described it as being something of a "??Metroidvania-inspired" destination, implying that a??reas or zones might have layers that aren't immediately accessible. 

"You're going to journey to a Metroidvania-inspired destination. That's our guiding light for how we're creating this new location," Stevens shared. "So, this new destination is going to feature a non-linear campaign that puts you in the driver's seat of exploring ??its world and its story."

Bungie claims it's not taking its foot off the narrative gas

Bungie also took some time to address some of the community worries that the story would no longer be a centric part of the Destiny experience. In short, the studio maintains that narrative is still a cornerstone of what gives Destiny its ide??ntity and that it won't be going ??away. Narrative Director Alison Lührs spoke on the topic.

Responding to whether Destiny 2's new content structure would allow the same quality of storytelling as it had in the past, Lührs said, "That would be news to me if [the narrative] suddenly vanished." Lührs continued, "Story is Destiny. What makes Destiny Destiny is the beating heart of story at its core. That's not going an??ywhere."

Elaborating a bit, Lührs explained that the new structure allows the narrative in Destiny to go places where it wasn't abl?e to before. Aside from being able to play with delivery and new themes, Lührs notes that the two yearly expansions will allow the game to feel more alive, giving the changes to the universe and its lore a more rapid delivery.

The Narrative Director also noted that Frontiers allows some of the previous pain points within Destiny 2 to fall away. The current narrative dance pl?ayers often do, where a week's worth of quests amounts to ?talking to a few NPCs in different locales, will be a thing of the past. 

"Yeah, [that Quest structure] drives us bonkers too," Lührs said. "We believe that everything should be questioned, right? Like, we should be questioning that structure; we should be reinvestigating it. Starting with Revenant and especially when we get to Apollo, we're going to be deliberately shaking it up. By the time we get to Apollo, that loop, that pattern, is more or less gone."

While it was a bit unexpected for Bungie to go all in on addressing feedback and talking about Frontiers, the stream ce??rtainly proved insightful. It's clear that Bungie is working to do what it can to reestablish play??er faith. As Lührs said, "The feedback is loud and clear," so let's hope Bungie will continue taking it to heart.

The post Bungie addresses Destiny??? 2 Frontiers worries, sharing concept art and structure plans appeared first on Destructoid.

Bungie is gearing up for the launch of Destiny 2's Episode: Revenant, offering players a glimpse at what's to come in a Twitch stream. And while players already knew that the Exotic sniper Icebreaker was returning to the game, the studio announced that Episode: Revenant would also reintroduce a classic Destiny 2 Strike and an opportunity to snag a free hover?board.

Episode: Revenant is set to focus the narrative on the Scorn, undead Eliksni, and their leader Fikrul. Finding the new power of the Echo, Fikrul hopes to remake his Scorn. Bungie noted that it wanted the Episode to have a heavy-metal vibe, and it doesn't look like it will disappoint on that front. However, an update on the Scorn isn't the only thing t??he Episo?de promises. It's reintroducing content players are always asking for: Strikes and hoverboards.

The Inverted Spire is getting a glow-up

Payers who have been with Destiny 2 since its early days may remember the Inverted Spire Strike. It was the original PvE content available during Destiny 2's Beta and was a part of the game until it was deprioritized ahead of Lightfall. In a February 2023 blog post, Bungie outlined how it was hoping to revamp the Strike,? much like Lake of Shadows or The Arms Dealer. 

Since then, Inverted Spire has remained in the game but hasn't been featured in the Strike playlist or as a Nightfall. Though news has been thin about Inverted Spire since then, it seems the studio is finally ready to deliver a reimagining of the Strike. Toward the end of the Episode: Revenant segment of the stream, Bungie teased that Inverted Spire would return in a new form?? for the Episode. 

When asked whether players could expect the same experience they remember from the last time the Strike was featured, Staff Designer Clayton Kisko said, "Nope, we're taking our approach and adjusting all the encounters. And you'll see more Vex than what you are used to." T?he stream host and Bungie's Senior Social Media Manager, Andy Salisbury, shared, "My compatriot on the social media team, Mitch, showed me through a little bit. The only thing I'll spoil is if you like death lasers, h??ave a great time out there."

Including a few death traps and some added enemy d?ensity sounds precisely like the kind of changes old Strike content needs, allowing players to slay out with their new kits while adding a few unexpected hazards. Hopefully, those are just scratching the surface of some other significant changes? to Inverted Spire, much like other Strike reworks have earned.

Skimmer hoverboards can be earned with Strange Coins

One of the most unexpected and well-received updates Destiny 2 added before The Final Shape was released was Skimmers. The franchise's take on hoverboards were a hit, with the vehicles revolutionizing moment-to-moment transportation. However, as great as Skimmers were, they have only been free to players lucky enough to participate in 2024's Guardian Games.

That's changing in Episode: Revenant, as a Skimmer variant will become purchasable from Xur in The Tower. As Xur primarily deals in the Strange Coins currency, the Skimmer will be no different, so players who want one should start saving up now. The new Skimmer, the Xûrfboard, will cost 97 Strange Coins. Players won't have to wait beyond the Episode: Revenant launch to nab their Xû?rfboard. If you want one, it will be available as soon as the Episode begins. 

Bungie also teased something else that would be coming later on in Episode: Revenant during Act 2. The studio was coy on specifics, but Salisbury noted that some playable content would arrive "inspired from a fan-favorite activity from Destiny's past." While Salisbury's info is too vague to make definitive claims, my mind immediately goes to Sparrow Racing League. The event was a fondly remembered activity from the original Destiny, where Guardians could race each other atop their Sparrows, Wipeout-style. 

Though Bungie has steered clear of the beloved activity in Destiny 2, I can scarcely think of anything else from Destiny that hasn't already made its way into Destiny 2 that would get players as hyped as Sparrow Racing League. The language was careful to note that it's something ?"inspired from a fan-favorite activity," so it's clear that whatever it is, it likely won't be 1:1 with its original incarnation. At any rate, players have a surprise to look forward to in Act 2.

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A new Dungeon is on its way to Destiny 2 to coincide with the release of Episode: Revenant, Vesper's Host. The Dungeon will be released on October 11, alongside a 48-hour World's First race. While this is the first time a Dungeon is getting the formerly Raid-only treatment, Bungie is pulling out all the stops with a Power-restricted Contest Mode enabled.

Though it's usually something only ever done with Raids, Vesper's Host will feature a Contest Mode and race for two days after its launch. Contest Mode juices up the Raid or Dungeon, pitting more powerful combatants against Guardians restricted by limited respawn tokens or? enrage mechanics. Players have 48 hours to race and see which Fireteams can conquer the content.

That said, once the Dungeon race is over, players can tackle the content at its intended difficulty. As opposed to waiting the full 48 hours??, a Normal difficulty will be available once three teams clear the challenge. Once the two days are up, Contest Mode will no longer be an option, and teams won't be able to attempt the feat.

How to participate in the Dungeon race

If players want to join in on the Dungeon race, they'll need to be prepared. Not only will players need a team of reliable and skilled players, but there are also some specific requirements. Notably, interested players will need to own the Dungeon Key for The Final Shape expansion. Beyond that, players will need to complete an as-of-now unreleased Quest titled "Rogue Network," which will be provided by Spider once Episode: Revenant releases.

Of course, guardians will also need to have the appropriate Power to take on Contest Mode. Bungie notes that the required Power to run the Dungeon during the race is 1985. It's certainly no hurdle for players who have continued to play after completing The Final Shape's campaig??n, but newcomers won't be able to just ?;jump right in.

Bungie outlined some specific criteria for completion, noting that finish time is recorded when the final chest in the Dungeon is looted. Additionally, qualifying teams must not have any members who have already completed the Dungeon with another team. The studio also pointed out that?? at least one member of the finishing Fireteam must have com??pleted and looted the previous encounters to be considered.

If a Fireteam manages to complete the Dungeon during the 48-hour Contest Mode period, each member will earn a couple of special rewards. That's a unique Embl?em that earns bragging rights, and the Dungeon's featured Exotic weapon. 

The post Destiny 2: New Vesper’s Host Dungeon releases October 11 appeared first on Destructoid.

Destiny 2 players will have the opportunity to once?? again dress up in-game to celebrate the spooky season, as ??new cosmetic armor is inbound for Festival of the Lost. This year, players can dust off their wands and brooms, as the theme is witches and wizards. Some classes opted for an evil depiction of the magic-users, while another chose the higher ground to prove spellcraft can put to some good.

As we continue to inch closer to Halloween, games are starting to talk about how players can celebrate the spooktacular holiday. In Destiny 2, that's done through the ??Festival of the Lost event, rounding out to Guardians' and The Tower's version of Halloween. The holiday has seen some notable changes over the years, transforming from the pse??udo-horde mode Haunted Forest activity to the current iteration featuring Haunted Lost Sectors.

Guardians now spend the Festival of the Lost collecting Candy as a currency and spelunking through Haunted Lost Sectors harboring the mysterious Headless Ones, bone-chilling enemies that only appear this time of year. Players can unlock fun ghost stories throughout the event and use Candy to buy masks, wea??pons, and other goodies like the Festival of the Lost Memento.

Warlocks, the witches and wizards are coming

Last year, Destiny 2 players got some gross-looking bug and arachnid-??themed armo??r for Festival of the Lost. This year, ?the theme is taking a step into the eldritch. W?arlocks and Hunters are sporting the garb of a malicious spellcaster, while Titans are holding it down Gandalf style to show what good wizards can do. All of the sets look great, with the only downside being that Warlocks would have looked damn good in a set of that good wizard armor that Titans are rocking.

For Warlocks, the evil wizard set makes Guardians look like an aspiring Chaos cultist Psyker from Warhammer 40,000. The robes look to be mostly&n??bsp;leather, with tattered and torn edges. The undershirt and pants are tight and black, almost looking like skinny jeans and a body suit. On the chest, pinkish-purple energy emanates from metalwork. Metal is also featured sparingly on the legs and boots, with more creating pointed pauldrons on the shoulder. Potions dangle from the belt, and a crooked and pointed hat sits atop a metal helmet, completing the look.

Hunters sport a similar style,? albeit with some notable differences. The class trades tattered robes for more metalwork on their armor, though a damaged cape still adds the right ??witchy vibes. The pinkish-purple energy is more prominently featured on Hunters, pulsing from front, back, and one shoulder. The wizard hat for Hunters is less crooked and sharp at the tip, but it's affixed with some metalwork that adds in some witch hunter accents.

Going against the mold are Titans, which is the only Class sporting the appeara?nce of a benevolent spellcaster. Opposed to the dark leather, tarnished metal, and black linen, Titans radiate brilliance with a blue and gold aesthetic. Titans get something like a cross between a robe and a trenchcoat embellished with golden filigree. Little scrolls dot their belt as gold metal and tassels decorate their shoulders and back. Their hat is the shortest and bears the least curve, making it almost look like a pilgrim's hat, complete with a buckle.

When does the Festival of the Lost start?

Destiny 2's Festival of the Lost is set to kick off toward the end of Act 1 of Episode: Revenant, on October 29. Thoug?h Bungie hasn't specified how long the event would run for, there's a pretty good chance it will run through Act 1 of the Episo?de, which would end after October.

However, even after Festival of the Lost starts, chances are that players will have to shell out a bit extra if they want to dress up fo?r the occasion. While it's possible to earn masks from Eva Levante for free, the premium full costumes each year are only sold in the Eververse Store. 

While Bungie has made some Festival of the Lost sets available for Bright Dust (the earnable currency), there's no guarantee that this set will be earnable without spending a bit of real money on Silver. Either way, Tess Everis will likely be the real gatekeeper between you and your new spooky Destiny 2 attire. 

The post Destiny 2’s Festival of the Lost 2024 adds evil and good wizard cosmetics for Episode: Revenant Act 1 appeared first on Destructoid.

Destiny 2 players now know that Frontiers is on the horizon, but new content is coming to the game much sooner than that. Episode: Revenant is due out on October 8, and alongside new story content, G??uardians are poised to inch their power up even more. Bungie revealed a slew of Super and ability change?s, most of which are flat-out buffs.

While Titans are g??etting some extra love in the form of a Class identity rework, Hunters and Warlocks won't be completely left out of the fun. Bungie typically does a mid-expansion weapon and ability balance update, and it appears Episode: Revenant will kick off the process. Starting things out, Bungie wants to ensure pl??ayers feel powerful when using their Supers and Class abilities.

Supers and abilities getting an upgrade

Bungie outlined the upcoming changes in a recent This Week in Destiny blog. Every Class is due for at least two of its Supers to get some buffs. Notably, Titans are getting four Supers powered-up, including the already-strong Twilight Arsenal. Bungie also noted that, alongside these tweaks, Super uptime would increase for Episode: Revenant, with more info to come. On the ability side, Swarm grenades are taking one of the only h?its, making the projectiles easier to shoot down and chaining an explosion to others.

Warlock

For Warlocks, Stormtrance, Chaos Rea?ch, and Nova Warp are in the spotlight. Stormtrance is already great at taking out groups of weaker enemies, but its durability and the fact that it locked your loadout left something to be desired. Damage resistance is creeping up from 53% to 58%.

Chaos Reach will also benefit from some increased da?mage resistance, moving from 45% to 55%. While the Super has some already-incredible damage potential, it ?wasn't consistently triggering Jolt or piercing Sentinal Shields or Barricades. Bungie has addressed both of these issues.

The final Warlock Super getting buffed is Nova Warp, and it, too, will see an increase in damage resistance while active. While it's a small bump, every bit counts, going from 51% to 58%. The two other buffs will feel like a bigger change, increasing Pv?E damage by 20% and applying the Volatile debuff regardless of how long an attack is charged for.

On top of the Super love, Warlocks are also due for a small ??update to Lightning Surge. As is, it's not a common pick compared to some of the options Prismatic offers. However, Bungie is increasing damage resistance against Titan Barricades by 50%, and a successful cast will now make Warlock?s Amplified.

Hunter

Hunters are already a force to be reckoned with between their Golden Gun Super and the Still Hunt Exotic sniper, but they're still getting some buffs to Golden Gun and Spectral Blades. Golden Gun, in particular, is getting a whopping 30% damage incr??ease against regular, elite, and miniboss enemies.

While Spectral Blades hasn't ever really stood out in PvE, Bungie aims to make the Super a bit m??ore usable. Spectral Blades is getting a flat 20% damage increase in PvE and a small boost to damage resistance, going from 47% to 58%.

For abilities, Hunters have a few changes. While most offer some form of a buff, a couple take a hit at Hunters dominance in PvP. First up is Threaded Specter which will now deal a flat 33% more damage in PvE. That come??s alongside another welcome change that makes the Prismatic Hailfire Spike grenade more reliable, adding increased tracking and aim assist. 

On the contrary, Combination Blow is finally getting tuned down a bit. The ability currently rewards 80 HP per kill, but it will now restore 40-100 based on the n??umber of stacks. In addition, the regen no longer clears any health or shield stun players are affected by. Thankfully, to offset these changes, the cooldown between triggering the Combination Blow effect has been removed.

Titan

Titans have the most Super changes, but they vary in scope. Kicking things off is a small one, allowing the ??Howl of the Storm Aspect to be usable while in the Glacial Quake Super. The Aspect allows Guardians to slide into a Stasis wave that freezes enemies and cre??ates Stasis Crystals.

Twilight Arsenal has been performing admirably since Bungie tweaked it following the launch of The Final Shape. That said, the axes it creates are getting a buff, adding&?nbsp;an additional 23% damage. This comes alongside another change that makes the thrown axes track targets better than they currently ?do.

Fists of Havok will see a few updates. Damage resistance is going ??up from 51% to 58%, and it will be easier to land hits on enemies. Bungie described that it reworked light attacks to be more consistent, increasing range and vertical target acquisition.

One of the bread and butter Supers for Titans, Thundercrash, is getting a simple but effective change. It will deal an additional 33% base damage from its explosion, making it hit even harder. Of course, the Super changes just scratch the surface of what Titans have in store. Several abilities have been buffed or tweaked to support its Class identity overhaul.

The post S??everal Destiny 2 Supers and a??bilities are getting buffed for Episode: Revenant appeared first on Destructoid.

While news has been rolling in about the next big thing in Destiny 2 and how Raid and Dungeon content will appear going forward, Titan players specifically have something to look forward to in the short term. The Class is getting a substantial overhaul as part of an effort to add more identity and playstyle options. ?The best part is that it'll go live alongside Episode: Revenant on October 8.

Over time, Destiny 2 Titans have found themselves in a bit of a pickle. While the Class can do things that none other can, like a Ward of Dawn dome barrier Super or consume a grenade to create a mobile shield, the game doesn't actively reward defensive play. For Warlocks and Hunters, the Classes have evolved to allow players to eliminate enemies nearly as soon ???as they appear. 

There's not much incentive to stand around and block damage when you can destroy a room of enemies with a single grenade. As such, this has led to limited builds and playstyles for Titans, just trying to keep up with the other Classes. Thankfully, Bungie has some significant changes incoming fo?r Titans.

Titans join the ranks of the MMO tank

In a This Week in Destiny communication, Bungie described how it plans to ch??ange up Titans. The studio started by acknowledging that Titans didn't feel like they had a Class identity that competed with what other C?lasses could do. The first alteration, arguably the biggest, is that Titans can taunt enemies like a traditional tank.

Bungie said of the change, "We've hear??d your cries for more depth to Titan gameplay and more viability in high-tier endgame content, and we agree with you. Titans have so much more to give than mere blunt-force trauma. They're frontliners, damage mitigators, and battlefield commanders. Now, we don't want to take away from ?or replace what the Titan already has. Instead, we want to find non-destructive ways to add depth to the Titan's kit."

The taunt ability will work primarily through the Barricade Class ability, though Bungie notes that Unbreakable Shields and Sent??inal Shields will also benefit from the effect for mobile taunting. While the studio notes that the taunt will only occur if a player is behind the Barrier, this tweak will allow Titans more control over the flow of the battle, redirecting incoming damage.

To further support these changes, Barricades will take 50% reduced damage from non-bosses, reduce splash damage by 20-60% for Guardians behind a Barricade, and grant some damage resistance during the cast animation. Unbreakable is also getting a few alterations, including generating gren?ade energy from blocking damage and increasing the maximum duration the shield can be active.

Other changes coming to the Titan Class

The ability to taunt isn't the only new toy Titans will have to play with, as a few other abilities and options have also been tweaked. Void Overshields will be more helpful, seeing an increase from 50% to 70% resistance. Stasis Crystals will also be detonatable via a Consec??ration slam or a Diamond Lance. Additionally, Diamond Lances will apply two stacks of Frost Armor to Titans and nearby allies when slammed.

The Knockout Aspect will change to help Titans stay in?? the action longer, starting health regen immediately. The long-maligned Shiver Strike also gets some love, refunding 80% of melee ener?gy on a missed attack and regening 12.5% faster. On top of that, a successful blow now adds a Stasis explosive to the foe.

An added bonus is that the Echo of Domineering and Facet of Command Fragments are also seeing some retooling. The cooldown between? triggering the effect has been reduced to four seconds from 11. As if the above changes weren't sweet enough, Titans can also live out their slugger fantasies with a 20% increase to unpowered melee damage in PvE and a 5% increase in PvP. The punches also have the chance to stun enemies.

While Titans didn't start at the front of the pack when Prismatic hit the scene, Bungie is making some big changes to breathe life into the Class. Time will tell how it's all r??eceived, but it seems like exactly the right kind of changes to help give the Class more identity. I can't wait to see Titans rushing into battle and soaking the attention and damage from a group of enemies, becoming the unstoppable bastion all Titans should be.

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There's a whole lot of uncertainty in the Destiny 2 community as of late, and for good reason. 2025's content structure is basically yet another humongous revamp, which really could ??go either way. Thankfully, the Raids and the Dungeons are still on the docket to some extent.

Specifically, Bungie finally chimed in on how Raids and Dungeons will be handled from Frontiers onwards. The good news is that they're not entirely foregoing this content (I feel that'd be suicidal, honestly), but the bad news is that there will be a fair bit less of it. As per Bungie's latest blog post, we can expect one new Raid and one new Dungeon every year, and that's about it. Thi??s is, in effect, 50% of Bungie's curre?nt endgame content output, though it's not an entirely black-and-white sort of situation.

One Raid and Dungeon per year in Destiny 2: Frontiers

More specifically, Bungie's Raid output over the past few years has included re-releases of old Raids and entirely new Raid content. Dungeon-wise, we've been getting two per year, though their quality did vary a fair bit, too. As of Frontiers, the first DLC of the ye?ar will feature a Raid, while the second will feature a Dungeon. Conversely, the first DLC's seasonal content update will expand upon its featured Raid, while the second will have a Pantheon-style event that leverages legacy Raids and Dungeons.

It's not the worst thing to happen to Destiny by a long shot, but it's not the best, either. The silver lining is that Bun??gie will no longer use the infamous Dungeon Key system to monetize the content further. Instead, the annual Dungeon will be tied to purchasing the second DLC.

To Bungie's credit, the blog claims that the first DLC's seasonal content update may eve??n include entirely new Raid encounters. This is quite unprecedented, as we've never seen a Raid get such a (potentially) substantial upgrade after its initial release. Combine this with the new Feats challenge system and you've got something really promising. Maybe.

None of this is to say that Frontiers will be a total wash. The fact that Bungie is being this specific about how content is going?? to work from 2025 onwards is a good thing, and a single Raid and a single Dungeon could carry the game forward and keep things engaging for veterans if Bungie pulls this off right. Will the studio be able to do so, though?

As for myself, I did have my dreams about what Destiny could be, but those are all gone by now. I'm not sure yet whether I'll be back to get hands-on time with Frontiers, and the current episodic format has lost my attention entirel?y. A toss-up, then, wherever I look.

The post Bungie explains what’s up with Raids and Dungeons in Destiny 2: Frontiers appeared first on Destructoid.

From an objective point of view, Destiny 2 is a thoroughbred Bungie shooter. Satisfying movement and gunplay, loads of gear to chase after, and all the trappings of a modern live-service content treadmill. Yet, the fantasy it sells to the player is a fair bit different. The Destiny you see in passing isn't quite the De??stiny that lured me in.

The bit that spurred me to actually articulate why I first started playing Destiny 2 came about very, very recently, with B??ungie's announcement of the content structure for 2025. Now, the stuff Bungie told us about sounds fine. Interesting, even, but that's not really what I want to talk about here at all. Instead, it's the artwork. Specifically, the very picture I use as the featured header??? above.

Now, Destiny has always been excellent at showing awesome alien vistas without actually allowing you to actually properly interact with them. And, to be perfectly frank, "interact" in this context is basically sci-fi overlanding with a bit of survivalism thrown in, for good measure. Obviously, that is not what Destiny is, but much of its a?rt does rhyme ?with the concept.

One of Beyond Light's most striking pieces of media wasn't a screenshot of a decked-out Guardian taking d?own a squad of Fallen in a single (frosty) attack. Instead, it was a calm image of a Guardian taki??ng a cliffside breather, with the Pyramid vessel in the far background.

This piece of art is most certainly not an outlier. Huge, sweeping vistas come part and parcel with every single pre-release artwork package Bungie puts out, and they help ground the world in a way no in-game vista ever could. Destiny has always been famous for all of the delightful views Guardians witness on their way to pummel this week's new ontological hyper-predator. This is a surface-level nod at the grander; it's a suggested exploration happening in-universe and is about as far as Destiny 2 goes.

Yet, I often find myself wanting to interact with the environment and just explore the world of Destiny, and I'm most definitely not the only one. That's where Starfield comes into the picture.

Pre-release, Starfield, too, targeted the same sense of awe as Destiny often did. And from the beginning, one key difference kept their journeys distinctly apart �Bungie's world stayed neat and focused, whereas Starfield, by virtue of its gameplay, could not. Then it was hey, presto, suddenly I could reach out and venture into the concept art to explore all those places I could never access in Destiny.

In this respect, Starfield is perfect. It's an effectively infinite exploration engine, brimming with places to be and weird things to find. I've also upgraded the exploratory aspects of the game with the delightful Desolation - POI Overhaul mod by agd25, as well as Shade's Vehicle Tuner. The former makes POIs a bit more sensible and far spread?? out, while the latter adds a?ctual overlanding features to the REV-8 buggy. All this plays further into the free-form sci-fi exploration niche I've hoped to experience for literal years now.

And sure, perfect is a bit much, as Starfield isn't on top of i?ts game elsewhere. It's clunky and underbuilt in some major ways, and after about 120 hours of gameplay, it struggles to truly surprise me in a meaningful way. Such is the nature of these things. I was never under the impression that an actual playable game could deliver the same sense of awe as static concept artwork could, ?of course, so I'm generally okay with the trade-off.

Raiding and completing dungeons is, understandably, the high-point of any Destiny player's experience with the game. Yet, those aren't the bits I myself appreciate the most about the game. Instead, I've always been fond of just snooping around the maps, finding one-off setpieces (now entirely devoid of any activity) and enjoying the Bungie artists' penchant for detail. Try looking up the old Niobe Labs in the EDZ map, for example, and it won't take long at all to feel like you've unearthed a forgotten secret in the far-future, post-apocalyptic Switzerland of Destiny.

I've never been particularly fond of live-service offerings, and Destiny 2's infamous sunsetting, in particular, managed to break my infatuation with the game itself. The artists' hard work I still very much appreciate, of course, but the removal of Io and Titan - some of my favorite stomping grounds - nudged me to look elsewhere for my exploratory adventures. Starfield is so close to what I wanted in this ??respect that it's gotten annoying by now. Yet, t?he game's insistence on repeating points of interest over and over again, populating its worlds with fauna that doesn't act like it belongs, and generally being just the tiniest bit too janky to achieve proper immersion really pulls me out of of the world.

Starfield could very well be the game I want it to be, but it just isn't yet. Maybe in a few years' time, when Bethesda pushes out a few more meaningful, game-changing updates such as REV-8, modders release more delights such as Desolation, and we've had a few more big expansion packs in tow. It's a big maybe, to be sure, but it's not an impossible hope, either. And hey, the same absolutely cannot be said about Destiny, whi?ch is more than happy to stick with its unreachable vistas and tightly curated combat hallw?ays.

Now, obviously, I don't expect this topic to make sense to everyone. For most players, Destiny 2 is all about those things that keep us glued to the screen in the moment-to-moment gameplay. That is, of course, perfectly fine and valid. If you'd like to get a better idea of what I've been mulling on about here, though, I recommend checking out Bungie's very own 10-year Destiny "Art Blast" over on ArtStation to begin with. Then, if you're still up for it, scroll on through the absolutely phenomenal unofficial concept a?rt collection hosted by ??Redditor Dark129. It consists of about 2,000 pieces of Bungie's Destiny artwork, and it comm??unicates the scope and scale of this? universe incredibly well.

Bungie isn't likely to lean into the more exploratory, conceptual aspects of Destiny anytime soon, I'm afraid. The game's patrol zones are simply too busy and too small to properly deliver on that promise. That's okay, though. Starfield is extremely imperfect in many of the things it tries to do, but it almost gives me that oblique high that Bungie's been hinting at all along. In that sense, it certainly fails to deliver, but looking at? it from a different point of view, it sure as heck is the closest I've gotten to it. So, I'll take it happily.

In the end, I suppose I'm just trapped between Starfield's comparative mediocrity and Destiny's forever-unattainable fantasy, forever bouncing between the two until the end of time. Or, rather, until Starfield's been appropriately modded.

The post Starfield is what I always ?wanted Desti?ny to be, but it too fails to deliver appeared first on Destructoid.

With the latest weekly reset in Destiny 2, Episode: Echoes' final story beats have become available. However, players are calling the finale, and the Episode at ??large, one of the worst "seasonal" narratives Bungie has ever produced. While the Episode only just recently released its conclusion on September 9, early commenters were quick to point out their disdain for what felt like a colossal time waste.

Destiny 2's Episodes were pitched as self-contained narratives set to replace the previous seasonal model. With three longer Episodes making up a year's content rather than four Seasons, Bungie positioned the change as a way to shake things up. In practice, the first Episode felt almost identical to a Season, except with more time-gating. Bungie has since announced the remaining two Episodes will be free from time-gating and that after those, the game will return to a seasonal model.

No horse in this race

After three straight weeks of running the same Exotic mission over and over again, the finale proved the final straw for some players. Echoes' confrontation with the newly established Vex villain, The Conductor, plays out in a single cutscene where players sit idly by, paralyzed, while Ikora Rey and Saint-??14 launch a single attack each, toppling The Conductor into a Radiolaria river. To ?say it was underwhelming would be a gross understatement.

Forbes' Paul Tassi commented on the finale, saying: "The finale of the season, ?sorry Episode, arrived yesterday, capping off nine weeks of story with six weeks of breaks inserted. The end was…lacking, and I would apply that to the rest of the Episode as well, now that we can see its entire (Final) s?hape."

On Reddit, one user made their own post about the finale, complaining that the Episode felt like a waste of time. "The final week of the episode, the story of which was already spread out across four months resulted in: essentially nothing," the post read. "[W]e are no better off than when we star??ted other than maya/the conductor being declared MIA vs being an active threat."

Further into the post, the author noted, "[I] dont think destiny has had ??a more egregious ending than the confrontation with the final boss happening in a cutscene where your character is little more than a spectator, doesn't contribute to the fight or say a single word and then watches the big bad disappear."

Tassi and the community participating in the Reddit post aren't the only ones who have objections about the Episode: Echoes finale. Even a cursory glance on X, formerly Twitter, reveals random users also coming to the same conclusions. Criticisms point out that the Episode had little effect on the greater Destiny narrative.

In 15 weeks, Echoes' major narrative accomplishment is th??at it introduces a new villain, before promptly removing it from the board. Not only that, but Episode: Echoes fails to add context to what the titular Echoes actually are or how they work. With two more Episodes to go, hopefully the next outing, Episode: Revenant, packs more of a punch.

The post Players are touting Episode 1’s ending as one of the worst in Destiny history appeared first on Destructoid.