During this week’s E3 event, Bungie was on hand to share the official story trailer for Destiny 2’s upcoming Forsaken expansion, but that wasn’t the only Forsaken-related feature it was showing off. This year’s E3 also provided attendees an opportunity to try one of Forsaken’s more standout features: a brand new PvE/PvP hybrid mode called Gambit. During the E3 play sessions, Bungie also shared a number of new details about Gambit, including the fact that the mode’s PvP component will take a player’s overall Power Level into account.
The E3 play sessions allowed Bungie to provide a more detailed breakdown of how a typical Gambit match will play out. Overall, Gambit will be a competitive affair between two teams of four, but rather than fighting each other directly, teams will instead have to fight through waves of AI enemies, with the first team to defeat its respective final boss enemy, known as a ‘Primeval,’ being declared the winner. However, in order to spawn the Primeval, players have to first amass Motes of Light that are dropped by defeated enemies and deposit them in a Mote Bank.
For every 5-15 Motes that a team deposits, a special ‘blocker’ mini-boss will spawn on the opposing team’s side, and while the blocker is alive the blocked team cannot deposit Motes into their bank. Players also lose all of their held Motes if they die, creating a sort of risk/reward system that encourages close-knit teamwork. The real fun begins when a team successfully deposits 25 Motes, triggering a portal that allows one member of the team to “invade” the enemy team directly, hopefully disrupting their opponents long enough for their team to build up a sizeable lead.
Bungie confirmed in a recent interview with Polygon that an invading player will be a noticeable threat since they’ll not only be granted a damage-absorbing overshield, but their Power Level will also factor into how much damage they can put out. Even though an invasion event will pit one player against four, the invading player could still prove to be quite a nuisance if their Power Level vastly exceeds those of their opponents. For the sake of balance, Bungie is also implementing a strict 30-second timer for invasions, ensuring that a powerful invader won’t be able to dominate the enemy team for the entire match.
Gambit will be just one of the various new features included in Destiny 2’s Forsaken expansion, an expansion which is currently slated to launch on September 4.