Your character in Destiny 2 will be mute throughout the game, and since the console beta, Supers regenerate faster and kinetic and energy weapons do more damage.
Here’s everything cool we found in the Destiny 2 console beta.
That’s the headline news from an ask-me-anything session with Bungie, hosted by IGN to round out their month of exclusive Destiny 2 coverage.
Some of the biggest concerns coming out of the console beta centred around ability cooldowns and PvE versus PvP balance; many players felt that Bungie’s efforts to make a competitive PvP game had undermined Destiny’s power fantasy by making weapons and abilities too weak in PvE.
In answer to related queries from WBDawg and Corgi8, game director Luke Smith said:
“In the wake of the beta, we’ve made a few changes that will increase Super Regeneration across the game,” and confirmed again that internal testing had resulted in stronger grenades, more power ammo drops, and more powerful kinetic and energy weapons even before the beta went live.
Smith also noted that “PvP and PvE are [already] balanced separately in many ways (things like: outgoing damage across weapon archetypes, ability and melee damage are all different). So I think what you’re actually asking is ‘Will the combat rhythm for Destiny 2 diverge across PvE and PvP?’ The answer to that is ‘No’. In Destiny you build a character with a bunch of powers, abilities, and we hope, a combat rhythm that is consistent across the game.”
We also learned Destiny 2 will not have a theatre mode for community movies, nor multi-passenger vehicles, and that our characters will be mute throughout the game. The player’s Guardian had some (not many) spoken lines in the original, but has been mute throughout all its expansions.
Smith also evaded a question about the release date of the game’s raid (it’ll likely unlock after the game itself launches).
I shared concerns about ability cooldowns and the partition between PvE and PvP, so I’m glad to hear that abilities and weapons are all getting tweaked. A talking protagonist seems much less of a big deal to me, though it does seem an odd choice in light of Bungie’s new focus on story. Watching cutscenes in the beta where my avatar can’t even manage a grunt of pain while getting beaten up did feel a bit jarring.