Bungie already fixed Destiny 2’s most annoying objective

Destiny 2’s beta only features one story mission, but one part of it was so poorly designed that it left numerous players bewildered and then frustrated. Thankfully, Bungie has already tweaked the area in question in a way that should alleviate the situation.

Near the end of “Homecoming,” the opening mission of Destiny 2’s campaign, players must deactivate a generator that powers a Cabal ship’s shield. The instruction that the game offers is seemingly simple: “Overload the generator.” In order to shut down the machine, Guardians must destroy the generator’s three exhaust turbines. There are no enemies in the area. Easy as pie, right?

Nope. Many players — including hundreds of Destiny veterans, if the series’ subreddit is any indication — got stuck trying to figure out where the exhaust turbines were. It turns out that the generator chamber has three sunken compartments in its floor, each one-third of the way around the perimeter of the round room, that provide access to the turbines. (The game actually provides an on-screen indicator pointing to the first one, which is below the player’s line of sight, but it’s easy to miss.)

It’s simple enough to destroy the turbines; you just have to shoot them for a bit to shut them down. The challenge comes in surviving the trips between them. You see, the generator has two arms, which look like giant honey dippers and rotate around the room in opposite directions. You die if either of them touches you.

Bungie/Activision via ZackScottGames/YouTube

Luke Smith, game director on Destiny 2, said in an interview with the Namek vs. Saiyan podcast this week that he was “surprised” by the turbine section in the beta because, well, it hasn’t looked that way for a while.

“I was surprised by the turbine, because there’s only one turbine spinning in the shipping game,” said Smith. “And I was surprised to see two of ’em.”

Bungie said last week that the beta represents “a build of the game that is now months old,” so it wouldn’t be shocking for the studio to have redesigned this encounter in the interim. That’s exactly the case, according to Smith.

“That’s a great example of something that we implemented, we found it to be too challenging — you know, especially for that opening sequence of the game — and in the shipping game, we’ve removed it,” Smith explained.

Destiny 2 launches Sept. 6 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and Oct. 24 on Windows PC. Bungie will run a beta for the PC version in “late August.” For more on the beta, which ends at 9 p.m. ET today, read our in-depth impressions.