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# <center>Bungie is destined for a comeback</center>
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<center>It's quite bizarre to think that for just three months ago we didn't know a single thing about what Destiny 2 would bring to the table. **Bungie** had not said a word and many speculations flourished into the idea of what game they would present us in the end. In may it was finally time for the announcement. Just the fact that **Activision** created a whole event and inviting hundreds of players do display the new and glorious **Destiny**, shows the trust that they are putting into Bungie and their massive space-shooter.
It's not like they needed to struggle for any attention during the **E3**-fair as their exposure area was widely displayed, not only did they try to excite the old Destiny fans but also trying to get new players into their world. **Destiny 2** might be a sequel but Bungie is choosing to restart and rebuild the foundation they have once lay.</center>
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohcDVmVfPLA
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<center>It's common knowledge *(and pretty annoying at this point*) to say that **Destiny** didn't live up to the mega high expectations the world had on the title. It's not that weird either when rumors where flourishing about the game going towards 12 million dollars invested in developing and marketing the title. The hype from **Bungie/Activision** also played it's role in that fact. We might not ever get to now exactly what happened, but rumors go of an massive time pressure on the team that made them trash the whole story to then try and patch it together again, and if that rumor is true it would explain why Destiny felt a bit all over the place and hollow. The mission design had gathered a lot of inspiration from Bungies **Halo**-games, but in Destiny (2014), it felt somewhat flat and uninspiring.</center>
# <center>Don't just patch, release it finished.</center>
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<center>Some of the short-comings that Destiny suffered from was slowly worked and patched away. New dlc improved the basic-systems, more content was added and Bungie seemed to understand what needed to be done. But at this point they had already lost a bunch of players. Many players showed disappointing faces after the short campaign, even so much that they turned away and never looked back, and others felt like spending money on something they felt should have already been in the game from the first place, is not a resourceful way to spend their hard earned gaming-money.
My personal opinion was one of disappointment after finishing the campaign. I eventually found my way back to the game and has since then put several hundreds of hours into Destiny, and now I feel ready to take the step over to the sequel. At first glance the game looks very familiar on the surface but many changes has been implemented if you dig down a bit deeper.</center>
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<center>The beta for Destiny 2 is in full action as i write this. Many players look at the beta and think that it just looks exactly the same as Destiny. Destiny 1.5 is a term being used on some online forums right now. I am though pretty convinced that these comments most likely comes from players who played Destiny when it was released but didn't bother to follow the development and the added dlc content that came after, which i can understand. But what happens if we take a look at other sequels for example? How about the differences between **Uncharted** and **Uncharted 2**, or why not **Halo** and **Halo 2**? The 2 indicates a sequel, a continuation of a concept both story wise and gameplay wise. It must include enough in the story to feel like a continuation, while still making subtle game-mechanic changes to make the players feel that something has changed with their favorite gaming unviserse, but still keeping true to their original form *(like being a green space-guy, throwing out round after round on aliens)*.</center>
# <center>Destiny 2 looks like.... Destiny.</center>
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<center>The menus *(which Bungie has won awards for)* are intact and similar to the previous design. You will find returning characters and some old original voice actors are back - Destiny 2 paints, at first glance, a pretty similar picture to Destiny. But if you place Destiny and Destiny 2 side by side for a comparison you will find that the sequel has taken an obvious step forward, that's especially true for the graphics. Destiny 2 looks gorgeous with volumetric lighting and an insane attention to detail. Especially for the **PC** and **Playstation 4 Pro**. It looks like a sequel should look like, being comfortable enough for old Destiny players to feel at home while still feeling that this is, in fact, a sequel.</center>
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<center>Except for the amazing visuals, the sound also gives an impressive soundstage with ground-breaking weapon sound effects and a fantastical soundtrack. Destiny 2 has *(based upon the beta)* a much more detailed sound. The muffled sounds from the triple-jumps, the whipping wind and the game music makes my surround system work for it's money.</center>
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<center>Mechanically Destiny 2 feels the most familiar. You need to shoot and blow up different enemy types in a high pace action setting. The large flora of enemies that we have seen so far looks familiar, we got the old **cabal, vex **and **fallen** offering us some resistance in the beta and many of the other variations are also old, familiar opponents, with some new also. The **Cabal**-invasion introduces a new way for the bad guys to arrive at the battle field by dropping down cubicle transports, and they also attack with a new movement pattern. The **Vex**-snipers are much more defined when they take aim and during the boss-battle **"The Inverted Spire"** they act in a way that was challenging and fun, with clear improvements in my opinion.</center>
# <center>A new way to handle weaponry & abilities</center>
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<center>A large difference, that might not be directly obvious to someone who has not played Destiny in a long time is the way they handle weaponry this time around. Previously you could equip yourself with three weapons at any one time, but you could carry more weapons with you to switch out some of the three main weapons being used in combat. This is unchanged, however, before you could for example use an automatic rifle as a main weapon, a sniper as "secondary" and a rocket launcher as a "heavy". You can't do that anymore because Bungie has classified snipers as a"power weapons" together with fusion rifles, automatic rifles and grenade-throwers, making it so you can only carry on of these at any one time.</center>
<center>In the beginning of Destiny most of the weapons had the ability to dish out damage with one of the games three elements, **"void", "solar"** and **"arc"**. It simplified the process of making poultry of some enemy types and in the **"nightfall"-strike** some bosses became ridiculously easy by using the right element. After some time Bungie removed that characteristic from many main weapons and only let "secondary" weapons deal out all the elemental-damage. In Destiny 2 all secondary weapons has gotten their elemental power taken, while the main weapons can deal it out once again.</center>
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<center>The beta also reveals that weapon modifications is something that will be current in Destiny 2. In the beta we can not do anything else then just seeing that it's there, and in what ways the modifications will work is a topic for speculation at this point. But it would be exciting to get modification options that can change things like reload times for grenades or other more class-specific abilities. It seems like you can also choose which type of elemental damage your weapon should do. If this is a permanent choice for that particular weapon once made remains to be seen.</center>
# <center>Alright, two of your friends have to go home.</center>
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<center>The multiplayer mode *(PvP)* has also gone trough some big changes. The most obvious one being the amount of players in each game. This time it's **4 vs 4** instead of **6 vs 6**. This practically changes everything. The pace of the games is completely different, the maps are smaller and the intensity is higher. Personally i like the path Bungie choose to take here, and it feels much more competitive, kind of like how the multiplayer in Halo felt before. In a good way of course.</center>
<center>***Okay so what can we conclude, is Destiny 2 similar to Destiny?*** Yes.
***Does it feel like a sequel?*** Absolutely.
***Will Bungie fix all the problems from the first game?*** We can't say for sure yet, but based on what we have played up to this point the game seems to get more focus on the story, the world and the characters that inhabit it.</center>
<center>We don't know yet how the "end game-content" will look, but i hope they lay some much needed focus on that aspect of the game as well. It was something that was lacking from the first Destiny game and it's something Bungie need's to smack their heads together to try and solve for Destiny 2.</center>
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### Sources
1. https://www.destinythegame.com/buy
2. https://us.battle.net/shop/en/product/destiny2
3. https://www.giantbomb.com/destiny-2/3030-52647/images/
4. https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/05/19/here-are-67-gorgeous-screenshots-of-destiny-2-straight-from-bungie/#36731b5a7947
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