Destiny 2 PC developed by Vicarious Visions, will not have dedicated servers - but grace your eyeballs with these 4K screens
Destiny 2 has a number of strikes against it in the PC community already, but gosh, it's pretty.
Destiny 2 is coming to PC. It certainly is a good looking beast, as you'll see in the 4K Destiny 2 screenshots in this post, but there are reasons for PC gamers to be a bit wary.
Discussing the matter with PC Gamer, Bungie's PC lead David Shaw said the port is being developed by a non-Bungie team, but that the situation isn't as clear cut as an outsourced port.
"We don’t want anybody looking at the game as a console port. We wanted to make sure that it feels like a PC game, it plays like a PC game."
"One of the key factors we looked at when coming to PC is that we don’t want anybody looking at the game as a console port," he said. "We wanted to make sure that it feels like a PC game, it plays like a PC game.
"So we kind of have embarked on an interesting situation. We’re not outsourcing it. Instead, we’ve developed this true partnership with Vicarious Visions in Albany, New York. We look at them as an extended part of the dev team," he added, confirming an earlier report on Vicarious Visions contributing to Destiny 2.
Make of that what you will - and by all means please click through to read Shaw's extended comments in their full context - but let's move on to some other interesting comments on Destiny 2 on PC.
For one thing, Destiny 2 won't have dedicated servers on PC. Shaw didn't seem to want to talk about this, but did say the game has a "complicated topology".
This is a concern because Destiny's multiplayer suffers from lag, but Shaw said that Bungie has taken this very seriously for Destiny 2, and said "there is new tech coming" on that front - although "at the moment, it’s not specifically geared toward PC".
One thing Destiny 2 will have on PC is a field of view slider, so that's something. It's not in the build on display at the Destiny 2 reveal event, but Shaw confirmed it will be implemented, even though Bungie hasn't locked down an exact range yet. It's probably too much to hope that Destiny 2 on consoles will ditch the claustrophobically narrow FOV of the first game, alas.
The PC version of Destiny 2 will have an uncapped frame rate (the PC demos at the Destiny 2 reveal event are running at 60fps), as opposed to the locked 30fps of consoles. Shaw said this change hasn't affected the feel of the game as much as the shift to mouse and keyboard, though; Bungie has had to change the reticule position, among many other adjustments, for the new control scheme.
But what will it take to achieve this frame rate? We don't know. Shaw adamantly refused to give any sort of guidance - but then, we know the specs of the system running the footage at the Destiny 2 reveal event, so that's something.
Shaw also could not comment on whether current console players will be able to import their characters to Destiny 2 on PC, or better yet have a persistent account across multiple platforms. Keep hoping, but do not bank on it.
Destiny 2 will release on PC via Blizzard's Battle.net rather than Steam or other services. While the PS4 and Xbox One versions are coming in September, the PC version of Destiny 2 has not been dated.
The full article is well worth a read if you're hanging out for the PC version of Destiny 2. Hit the link above to check it out.