Much has leaked about Destiny: Rising, the long-gestating mobile game from NetEase, not so much Bungie or Sony, and now it’s finally been revealed.
The official rollout of Destiny: Rising is here and with it, a description of its ambitions:
“Enter an era of heroes and legends, where familiar Destiny faces meet intriguing new characters, each with a rich story, unique personality, and formidable skills. Experience top-tier sci-fi shooting action in FPP (first person) or TPP (third person) as you embark on a new adventure in an alternate Destiny timeline. Play as these unique characters to defend future Earth and reclaim humanity’s future!”
Right away, you can see this is an “alternate Destiny timeline” which would make it not canon with the history that precedes Destiny 1 and 2, despite some shared characters like Ikora. This is perhaps emblematic of just how hands-off Bungie has been with this whole process, the result of a pre-Sony NetEase deal where the Korean developer has taken on essentially the entire thing themselves with only minimal involvement from Bungie this whole time.
Yes, you will remember NetEase from Diablo Immortal, a game that was of course lambasted at launch, but has turned into a decently profitable mobile moneymaker for Blizzard, which I’m sure is what Bungie and Sony are hoping to see here.
The trailer shows off typical action-packed Destiny play in a format that doesn’t look all that dissimilar to perhaps rough launch-era last-gen consoles, to some extent, and it’s true that mobile games and shooters especially have come a long way. But here’s what we know about what this is, overall:
- It is PvE, and has campaign missions, 3 player strikes and 6 player raids. Insider reporting said that a struggle with the game was making those short enough to appeal to a mobile audience, and it’s not clear how or if that might have been addressed.
- This will all be non-canon, but set in the post-Dark Age era where lightbearers are still finding out what to do with their power. As such, there are no Titan, Hunter or Warlock classes yet.
- The lack of those classes mean a bunch of individual heroes with hero-specific powers and gear. We see giant rocket cannons, a heavy shield, a Warlock wielding a void scythe (which players now want in actual Destiny 2). Characters will each have their own personalities and stories (it’s a hero shooter if I need to spell it out)
- Lots of new gear is being created for the game including an entirely new weapon class, which appears to be a crossbow. There is also a new tier of items past exotics, “Mythics.”
- The game will head to new locations we haven’t been like China or the Red Sea. Enemies seen are the Fallen, Vex and Hive as the Earth starts to be invaded.
- The first alpha test in the US will begin on November 1 and you can sign up for that here.
The big, obvious question mark is that as a free-to-play mobile game from the developers of Diablo Immortal…what are the microtransactions going to be? Presumably selling power is going to be essentially a guarantee, at least to some extent, alongside cosmetics. But there’s nothing mentioned about that at all yet.
This is just…not going to be directly targeted at Destiny players. Adjacently sure, but it’s certainly a Destiny game aimed at mobile players not a mobile game aimed at Destiny players. So if you bounce off, I would not be surprised. Still, I am more than curious to check it out.
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