Destiny 2's big Into the Light update, an interim patch to catch players up and tide them over in the lead-up to The Final Shape expansion, is coming April 9, and I don't say this lightly, Guardians, but its headlining activity might be the horde mode we've wanted for years.
As Bungie explained during a reveal stream today, Into the Light is built around a new game mode called Onslaught. It's a three-player activity available to all players – no season pass required – that comes with a normal playlist with 10 waves, and a challenge variant with five sets of 10 waves for a total of 50. It's also possible to opt-in for a solo run, though associate designer Noah Lee thinks it's "impossible" to solo. The short version and lower-difficulty challenge version have matchmaking, but you'll need a pre-made team for the Grandmaster-style high-tier challenge version.
In Onslaught, you'll be defending ADU units from attacking enemies, collecting scrap from defeated enemies (with a unique "purse" of scrap for each player), and spending it on defensive emplacements like turrets, tripwires, and decoys. You can install and upgrade your tools during defensive phases, but there are also boss fights and Rift-dunking phases, plus your ADU will rotate around the map between sets of waves on challenge mode.
The Onslaught map featured in today's reveal stream is a modified version of the PvP map Midtown, but we also saw some Pyramid Ship-retrofitted versions of other areas. Fittingly, the activity is captained by PvP master Shaxx, who serves as an announcer and vendor here.
There are some interesting wrinkles to the game loop that sound like a good test of strategy and buildcrafting. You can upgrade defenses up to level three, for example, with escalating costs for the power jump. All this goes down in 30-second upgrade sessions between waves, which hammers the Call of Duty Zombies parallel (or, arguably, Gears of War parallel) even deeper into my mind.
It looks like all of Destiny 2's enemy factions can come out to play, including big bads like Tormentors. Sometimes tanky, high-value targets (including Champions) will spawn in to bulldoze your base. You need to keep enemies away from your ADU and regularly deposit batteries to heal it, and if you keep it in perfect condition, you'll get triple points from batteries. Sub-objectives will pull you away from the ADU, forcing you to weigh defense with scouting and coordinate it with your team. Darkness clicks on after a few sets of waves, enabling permadeath. I'm into it, honestly.
When Into the Light was teased with art featuring a turret, Destiny 2 players began to speculate that it may be a new horde mode, quietly hoping for something much like this. Destiny 2 has gone through plenty of temporary horde modes and has always been crying out for something with more staying power and more strategic depth, and by folding in some Zombies-esque elements with Destiny 2 mechanics, it seems like Bungie's cooked up something special.
Onslaught has scalable difficulty, layered mechanics, and a lot of dudes to kill. With a good loot pool, this might actually keep players happy for a long while. On that front, Bungie says you'll get some loot paid out every 10 waves, with double rewards dished out for clearing the final wave on normal mode, and doubled rewards throughout on higher difficulties. It seems the devs have taken lessons from the Coil's beloved loot rain into account, which is mighty encouraging. Bungie says the full rewards will be shown off in another stream next week.
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