This afternoon, Bungie shared a bunch of new info on the next expansion for Destiny, a video game about the great galactic battle between talented actors and a terrible script.
For starters, the folks behind Destiny gave us a brief description of the new strike that will be included in House of Wolves when it launches on May 19. The strike is called The Shadow Thief and it’ll take place on the Moon but will pit you against Fallen enemies (like the above walker). The boss is a “notoriously cutthroat Fallen mercenary” called Taniks.
We’ve already heard about the new upgrade system and the new PvP mode, Trials of Osiris, which leaves one more big new feature to discuss: the Prison of Elders, a co-op arena mode that Bungie describes as follows:
Teams of three players can take on waves of increasingly difficult enemies to earn high-level legendary and exotic rewards. You can match-make with other players anytime, or form your own Fireteam to take on higher difficulty challenges with even greater rewards.
This afternoon, Bungie hosted a livestream where they showed off this new take on horde mode, and although it was pretty hard to watch—so many group wipes!—I must say, the Prison of Elders looks really fun.
You have to finish all the story missions in House of Wolves to access the Prison of Elders, which is divided into four different parts: a level-28 base arena that you can play over and over again for Vanguard Marks and Reputation (among other rewards) and three challenge modes that are level 32, 34, and 35. The base mode will have matchmaking; the challenge modes won’t.
Looks like the main crux of PoE isn’t much different than most of Destiny—shooting waves of enemies—but unlike story missions, PoE throws some wrenches in the forms of A) modifiers for every new round (like, say, a buff to primary weapons); and B) varying objectives, like “defuse these three mines before they explode and kill everyone.”
Also, via Bungie, here are some pretty new screenshots from the Prison:
You can reach the author of this post at jason@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @jasonschreier.