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Destiny 2 Forsaken’s new Gambit mode caters to both the PvE, PvP crowds

Stevivor has 25 minutes of Gambit gameplay to share from the upcoming Destiny 2 Forsaken expansion.

If you’re unfamiliar with Gambit, it’s a new mode that combines PvP and PvE. As we described last week, two teams of four face off against one another, with teams tasked, primarily, to defeat NPCs. With each NPC kill, a mote will drop; players are required to collect motes and bank them to progress.

Players can collect up to 15 motes at once, storing them to bank later, though risk losing them all upon death. A blocker, stationed at the enemy team’s bank, is earned when banking 5, 10 or 15 motes at once. A team is required to eliminate any blockers in play before they can bank motes.

At 25 and 50 motes, a team will be able to send one teammate through a portal to invade the enemy’s base. Finally, at 75 motes you can summon a boss character called a Primeval. Your team needs to defeat its own Primeval before the other team defeats theirs in order to win a round.

A winner is decided from taking the best of three rounds; one full match of three rounds took us around 25 minutes to complete.

Check out our gameplay — which includes the new Titan super — below:

Is it all making sense now?

“I think Gambit is a good example of an activity that lets different players come together and perform a different role on a well-balanced team,” Destiny 2 Community Manager, David ‘Deej’ Dague, told Stevivor.

“If players want to be all about taking down the boss as soon as possible, or if they want to be about crowd control, or if they want to be perfectly configured for the competitive aspects of Gambit, [they can],” he continued.

“I think we’ll see some interesting fusions within our community, with players who have not necessarily enjoyed activities together, coming together as a dream team. Where those Strike teams who have that one friend that is a warrior in the Crucible, can come together as the ideal four-player Gambit team, with a designated invader.

“I can already think of people on my friends list of who will be my ideal invader, who will be the person to take down the boss, who’s gonna be the person who meticulously mops up the floor of those motes and does the bank runs, and who’s gonna be on crowd control when we have new ads.”

How true DeeJ was. I’m not the best in the Crucible, but I’m decent at add control — as you saw above, I contributed to my team’s well-being by clearing adds, laying waste to blockers and above all else, gathering and banking motes.

Destiny 2 Forsaken heads to Windows PC, Xbox One and PS4 on 4 September. Here’s all you need to know about the expansion.

Update: More gameplay from Gambit’s recent trial is below:


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Steve Wright

Steve's the owner of this very site and an active games journalist nearing twenty (TWENTY!?!) years. He's a Canadian-Australian gay gaming geek, ice hockey player and fan. Husband to Matt and cat dad to Wally and Quinn.