Preview: Destiny 2: Forsaken - Gambit Mode
By daire-August 28, 2018
Killing enemies drop motes, these are "points" that you can exchange at the central pillar to summon a primaeval (the final boss at the end of the match which must be defeated to achieve victory). These can be "banked" one at a time or in bulk. Banking motes in bulk can reward you with a "blocker", an enemy that spawns on the opposing teams' arena and stops the team from banking their motes. When your team gathers 75 motes, a final boss spawns to be defeated to achieve victory.
Banking 5 motes give you a small blocker, 10 for a medium blocker and 15 for a large blocker. By using blockers you get involved in a constant cat-and-mouse game with the other team and that makes the game a lot more dynamic. On top of that, banking 25 or 50 motes opens a portal one team member to travel to the opponents' side. This is the PvP element of Gambit.
Welcome to the Wild West
As the name suggests, Forsaken pours a Wild West sauce over the Destiny 2 universe. The main new area in the game is The Tangled Shore, a fused asteroid that is the home of the Scorn. This new Fallen faction is led by eight different Barons, each with their own fighting style. Some prefer snipers, the others swear by their knife. Yet they all have one thing in common: they are on your list to be made a cup smaller and that is your main task for the storyline of Forsaken. During your hunt for the Barons, you will discover that the gameplay has undergone some changes. We deliberately do not talk about "innovations" here, because Forsaken reverses many changes in relation to the original Destiny. This way the random rolls are back, which means that weapons that you pick up each time have different stats. Furthermore, shotguns and snipers are no longer assigned to the same Power slot. Instead, you now get three generic weapons slots, giving you more freedom in combining different types of weapons. In my opinion, this is one of the finest innovations because you can now fully match your arsenal to your playing style.
At the beginning of my play session, I immediately made use of that freedom by filling one of my slots with a bow and arrow. This new weapon type comes in three variants (short, medium and long distance) and is perfectly suited for gamers who like to align their shots carefully, but aren't a fan of snipers. In addition, Forsaken introduces a new Super for each subclass and we can also get started with a brand new Raid. This takes place in The Dreaming City, a new environment that also forms the home of the Awoken. We do not know much about this dream city yet, except that according to Bungie it is the first environment that is fully designed to support endgame content. That sounds so promising.
