Bungie Talks Raids and Other Post-Game Content in Destiny

Bungie recently said they have big plans for post-release content for Destiny, but the studio still hopes that you’ll find yourself satisfied with what you find in the game proper.

Speaking with IGN, Bungie’s Luke Smith talked about post-story content and how Destiny will preoccupy players once they’ve seen the credits.

“I think Destiny’s endgame begins as soon as you see the way the story ends,” Smith began. “As soon as you see the way we wrap up the sort of first piece of the adventure that we’re going to tell because we want to set you back out into the world to keep going. We want to try to align your motivations as the player with the motivations of the character who you’ve been pushing around this world. So for us I think a bunch of the endgame starts right at level 20.”

Smith talked about the game’s equivalent to MMO raids. He did confirm that they would be for 6 players, and would be restricted to players’ friends list as it does not include any sort of matchmaking. This is mainly due to the difficult nature of the raids, and the need for communication and cooperation.

“The activity is going to take you and your group of five buddies into a place that you’ve never been,” Smith explains. “A place that you will return to frequently. And [it will] demand of you things you’ve never even really been asked to do in a shooter before.”

Adding to the difficulty of raids is the level scaling found within. Smith explains that players at various levels will find the enemies and challenges awaiting them to be on part with a player’s in-game level and equivalent presumed skill level.

“Unlike a bunch of the other activities in Destiny, where you begin the activity – like let’s say you pick the level-22 Strike playlist – everything in that activity is going to be level 22. It’s going to be consistent. If you’re level 26, you’re going to have some relationship to it. You’re going to be more powerful than that activity. In a raid, when the raid begins at level 25, it’s not where it ends. Like part of going the raid is the journey of gearing up; building your arsenal to react to the situations that it’s going to ask you to go through.”

Smith did confirm that there would be more than raids for you to play through after you’ve played through Destiny proper. Bounties will be updated regularly and give players something to do on a regular basis.

“Bounties are this opportunity for you to create a parallel progression for what you’re doing for a day: It’s like allowing you to optimize, people love that; I mean I love that. I mean that’s the thing that we do every night when a couple of us pretty much play every night from six until embarrassing o’clock. And we’re like, the first thing we do is log in, grab the bounties, synchronize what we’re going to do, and then either head off to play explorer, and then we tip over the daily activities, and if we haven’t done it, we’ll knock out the weekly Nightfall activity and get our guys rolling. And then, like, I do that on all three of my characters.”

When asked for clarification on what a Nightfall activity entails, Smith described it as “something that pushes all the way out as far as the leveling allows you to go in Destiny. So it ends up occupying at the far end of the spectrum: this extremely high gameplay investment challenge. Like it’s both the toughest guys we can throw at you that’s going to require the best gear, and it’s going to have a bunch of modifiers on it that make it even harder.”

Destiny is coming to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One and Xbox 360 on September 9th. For more on Bungie’s follow-up to Halo, check out the Gaming Trend staff’s impressions of the game’s recently concluded beta.

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