• Starts by finally being able to go through the portal
• Witness is trying to form a connection with the light, to create the final shape
• Will answer questions at the grand scale, but will also be a personal journey, deepening relationships with Zavala, Ikora, our Ghost, Cayde.
• "A story told around campfires, told by companions who have been fighting together for hundreds of years"
• The core vanguard team is getting back together.
• The early focus is singularly on the campaign, nothing distracting from it.

• The Witness will be confronted in the raid.
• "But, that might not be enough"
• Need to "rally all guardians" in order to overcome the final shape and the witness.

• He's back in the story
• Voiced by the original voice actor Nathan Fillion
• Our guide through the new Pale Heart destination

• The new destination, stage for the showdown with the witness, within the portal on the Traveler, "inside the Traveler".
• Will initially be shaped around the Witness, because he was in there the longest. When Guardians show up, it begins to shape around there.
• Traveler is creating the world in front of us, as it saw us on our journey.
• Pieces of Destiny 1 areas seem to be brought back (unclear to what extent).
  • Destiny 1 tower is referenced directly, seems to be a pretty complete version of it
  • The wall outside the Cosmodrome in winter is also shown.
• "There are a lot of things that are different with this destination"

• The destination is built in a literal line, from the portal to the Witness's monolith
• You will begin your journey in a place of safety, and feel it escalate in danger and surrealness, a beautiful evolution of the space.
  • Things escalate as you move toward the Witness's monolith.
  • Things become deconstructed, put back together "wrong".
• After finishing the campaign, the destination opens up. It will be generally locked down until that point.

• New enemy type with two variants, one Strand and one Stasis.
• "Backfield tactician", as compared to Tormentors that play extremely aggressive
• CC abilities (Suspend, Freeze)
• Will buff other enemies on the battlefield
  • "pyramid buddies" are shown on many enemies surrounding the Subjugators, shooting darkness projectiles.

• Attack that fires a woven lash, suspending guardians hit
• Ranged attack with multiple Strand projectiles

• Ranged attack that looks like the Warlock melee, seems to freeze targets hit

• New Solar super, callback to Radiance from D1
• The second first person super in Destiny, can shoot guns while using it.
• Enhances abilities while active
  • Melee fires 6 projectiles.
    • Only snap is shown, unsure if snap and celestial fire are merged, or if only enhanced snap is available.
  • Grenade "almost is sentient", looks like a butterfly, floats between multiple enemies blowing up on each.
  • Supercharges solar weapons of yourself and allies, applying scorch when they're shooting.
• Will not have self rez.
• The super lets you do a lot of damage, especially when fireteam members can cause scorch.
• They know Warlocks are relegated to Well of Radiance, they're working to fix this by giving more options for healing and buffing (like the new weapon frame).

• Solar aspect, casting rift creates a solar soul, which launches at enemies, damaging and scorching.

• New Void super, will be the only ranged one-off offensive super for Titans in the game.
• Titan jumps up in the air, summons a series of three axes and throws them one at a time.
• Axes stick in the ground, pull enemies in and explode.
• The axe remains, can be picked up and use it against enemies.
• They've heard about the feedback of Titan supers being too similar, so they made the initial cast of the super unique for Titans, but still including the roaming melee fantasy by picking up the axe.

• Void aspect, consuming grenade turns it into a shield, which can absorb damage and release it in a blast.

• Arc super, you throw a knife and can warp to it, damaging all enemies around it
• Can cast it three times, damaging enemies each time.
• They're watching how strong it will be in Crucible, trying to not make it too strong.

• Can take your staff and spin it in the air, propelling the hunter upward
• Gives Amplified to you and allies near you.
• Acts sorta like another jump, which can be refreshed (likely by being attached to melee or class ability)

• Tesselation (available now)
  • Takes the damage type of your currently equipped subclass
  • In the energy slot
  • Special reload to consume grenade and fire a high damage projectile
• Dragon's Breath
• Khvostov
• Red Death
  • Will be solar
• They mention some exotic weapon concepts, unclear if they are coming in TFS, but concept art was shown
  • "What if Golden gun was a sniper rifle"
  • Weapon letting us wield the Traveler's laser

• They want new weapon frames to be as interesting and desirable as exotics
• Rocket Pistol
  • Fires tiny, slow moving rockets, hit very hard and do some AoE
  • A mixture of regular and rocket launcher stats
• Support Frame Auto Rifle
  • Switch seamlessly from firing at enemies to healing allies (by shooting them)
• There will also be a new weapon archetype attached to the first Episode that they haven't revealed yet.
  • Joe says people might want to bring it to the world's first race
• "A ton of cool stuff coming over the next few years"

• Some activities will become "power fixed" in The Final Shape.
  • Things like free roam, strikes playlist, base level exotic missions.
  • Some things (like Nightfalls, Raids, Contest modes) are staying the same.
  • Right now Trials is power enabled, and they will be testing fireteam power in it in the expansion. The expansion will start without it, and they'll test turning it on at some point, and see how it goes from there.
• They're adding Fireteam Power, where the person with the highest power in the fireteam will bump up everyone else to slightly below their level (in the video it is shown to be 5 below, Joe says it might be 5 or 3, they're not sure yet)

• Requires agreeing to behavior principles before participating
• LFG posts can be tagged with playstyle preferences
  • In the video, these are shown to be Chill, Clan Recruiting, Competitive, Experienced, First Time, Friendly, Lots of Time, Meta Loadout, Patient, and Short on Time
  • There are additional tags shown later on, these are Colorblind, Deaf, Fast, Hard of Hearing, Kind Gamers
  • The other filters available when looking for LFG posts are Communication, Language, Guardian Rank Minimum. There is also a Join Settings field, unsure what this does.
• After joining, players are put in a lobby where they can gather and communicate with eachother while waiting for the post to fill up.
• They're getting it out in Season 23 to make sure they have time to tweak things before The Final Shape.
• You can either launch Fireteam Finder from the roster page, or directly from activity launch screens.
• Guided Games will be ending, they mention finding "the right way" to retire it given emblems tied to it.

• Out today
• Pulled out individual missions from past expansions (Forsaken, Beyond Light, Witch Queen) that represent key narrative beats within the story.
• They're not one to one copies of the campaign missions, there will be additional pieces of narrative to give context.

• Instead of 4 seasons a year, we will get 3 episodes
• The first 3 episodes are called Echos, Revenant, Heresy
• Each episode has 3 acts, where new weapons, artifact mods, new missions, new story moments.
  • Each episode will also have a new Exotic weapon and mission
  • Each episode has a new season pass, and acts 2 and 3 will add 50 more ranks, totaling 200 ranks
    • The last rank will be an armor ornament that every class can use.
  • There will be a similar system for Artifact Perks, with 25 perks in act 1 (same as current), and each new act in the episode will add an extra row.
• The first episode will be delayed until after The Final Shape story beats resolve, to give that story the spotlight.
  • The majority of the narrative and mission content will begin the reset after the raid, but some things from the episode like some weapons and the season pass will be early.
• TFS year will have more cinematic moments than any year of seasons.
• Episodes are playable standalone, can be experienced whether you are new or old to the game. Can be played in any order.
• Focus on frequent change, deeper story moments, and more loot more often.
• Episodes and acts will let them be more dynamic with content, get more experimental and weird.
• As per the Final Shape marketing page, two dungeons will still be released this year as well, sold as a dungeon key.

• They want to make Xur more useful for veteran players, not just new players.
• They're letting strange coins drop from ritual activities.
• They're don't say what they will be spent on

• They're moving buffs and debuffs around the screen, to make it more sure what's coming from what, and make sure the most important buffs are always visible.

• In response to feedback over wanting to learn about The Witness in the expansion, instead of over the seasons:
  • They want people to feel in the first few moments that it's a satisfying experience.
  • They feel the need to land the conclusion in a really satisfying way.
  • "There's things they're doing to account for this".
  • They're buffing up writing, more writers rooms and pulling people in from across the studio.
  • Answer the questions that player want answers
  • They knew they had to have The Witness be confronted in the raid, the campaign will be the penultimate story building up to the raid, but raiders will not be the only people to see the end of the story.
• In response to feedback that the seasonal model is too predictable
  • Episodes are an evolution of the seasonal model.
  • Seasons helped deliver content rapidly over the years they've been doing them, but they bias towards consistency with them, which ended up making the experience repetitive for players. They've been stretched to the end of their utility.
  • Episodes will let them amp up variety, mix things up and get weird with things.
• In response to "what's next for destiny 2, after the first three episodes"
  • Episodes are their new storytelling framework, after the first three episodes there will be more episodes.
  • They very specifically avoid talking about whether a new expansion will be coming, but they reassure that no one's moving off Destiny 2 team, and that there might be things outside the episode model that will be coming.
• In response to worries that the multiple games Bungie are working on will take away resources from Destiny
  • When starting up new projects, they're deliberate about who goes over to them and who stays on Destiny.
  • They're hiring to be able to expand out without losing resources on Destiny, while expanding both new and old game teams.
  • There's still a lot of legacy content on the Destiny team, but new team members are learning fast and some of the strongest team members are newer.

 

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Sources:

• Destiny 2 Showcase 2023