Bungie started the day off by revealing the House of Wolves prologue, a short intro video similar to the one that they released for Crota's End. The video was released with a short description saying that "The Reef will open to all Guardians, and you will join the allies of the Queen to destroy the traitorous Fallen from the House of Wolves." Finally, Bungie said that "the hunt begins on May 19th," which many people had speculated would be the release date. Check out the Prologue video below.
Personally, I think the video looks pretty cool. The story seems a little bit stronger than that of Crota's End, so far, but at this point it's obviously hard to tell what the story will ultimately be like. I have my fingers crossed that there will be some actual cutscenes and some very epic, cinematic gameplay moments. We'll see!
Just a few hours ago, Bungie made another post. While this post is intended as a "Calendar of Events" for the next month which details when Bungie will reveal more about specific elements of HoW, it also serves to drop some great hints and confirm some previous speculations about some features of HoW. I did a post some time ago about all the rumors surrounding House of Wolves, and it's great to see some of those speculations get confirmed. If you haven' read that post yet, I highly recommend you check it out here.
Let's take a look at the schedule of events, shall we?
On Wednesday, April 22nd, which is a week from this Wednesday, Bungie will give a walking tour of The Reef with a discussion about the upgrade paths for gear.
This seems to confirm the rumors that The Reef is some kind of playable space, whether its purely a social area or also involves a Patrol activity (or both). This is a nice change from Crota's End, which offered no new playable spaces outside of the mission areas.
Upgrading gear was obviously the most controversial and most ill-received part of Crota's End. Bungie has said that they've learned from their mistakes, and let's hope they did. We'll find out soon what they have planned for Round 2.
On Wednesday, April 29th, the reveal of Trials of Osiris featuring live gameplay and end game gear will take place.
A lot is known (or so we think) about Trials of Osiris. According to datamines, it is a 3v3 team deathmatch gametype for Crucible with level and gear advantaged enabled, similar to Iron Banner, and will feature a variety of weapons, gear, and items as exclusive rewards. The only map in the playlist is Burning Shrine, ensuring that every game is as fair as possible. Players reportedly have to spend one Mote of Light to gain entry into the Trials, and after a total of three loses, players must purchase entry again.
This is also reportedly an "event" (presumably similar to Iron Banner), but it may be a permanent addition to the Crucible roundup.
That new armor looks pretty sweet. I'm loving the Anubis-style Warlock helm!
On Wednesday, May 6th, the reveal of Prison of Elders will take place and will feature live gameplay.
Contrary to what we previously expected, House of Wolves will have no raid (which was previously assumed to be called "The Arena"). Instead, the Prison of Elders will be a three-player cooperative multiplayer arena, presumably in the style of a horde mode.
This is a dramatic change from the pattern previously set up by Destiny and the Crota's End expansion. While as a gut reaction, this news may seem disappointing and even angering, after some thought I think it sounds pretty cool. Due to the glitchiness and rampant ability to cheese the Raids, especially Crota's End, the Raids definitely lost some of their prestige, as they aren't necessarily "the hardest activities" in the game that they were hyped up to be. Taking a break from Raids will allow the design team to learn from their mistakes and make the next Raid an activity worthy of the Raid title.They did say that a new Raid was coming sometime later this year, though.
On top of that, Prison of Elders is an entirely different type of activity. This will definitely add some much needed variety to Destiny and will go a long way in reaching that goal of having "an activity for every mood" that they kept referring to prior to Destiny's launch. The fact that this activity also only requires three players instead of six is also a nice change that I'm sure many people will appreciate. So yeah, I'm pretty excited about this and eager to experience it. After all, it looks pretty cool.
Is that... a giant Servitor??
Finally, on Friday, May 8th, Bungie appears to have a special surprise in store. I'm at a complete loss for what it could be, but I'm eager to find out!
Needless to say, this was a lot of very interesting information. We're finally in the final days leading up to the release, and soon we're going to be flooded with a lot more information and details. There weren't any mentions of the Missions, Strike(s) or the possibility of Quests for HoW and reveal of these activities weren't shown on the Calendar. It's possible that this is what's planned for May 8th, or that their reveal simply isn't on the calendar or won't happen at all. Only time will tell.
I'll be keeping my eyes open for more Destiny news and speculation. Stay tuned for more posts!
Thanks Guardians, and don't forget to follow on @DestCentralBlog on Twitter!
Ea
No comments:
Post a Comment