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Explore across the universe...

Destiny 2 features four new locations for Guardians to visit, explore and fight across, developer Bungie announced today: Earth, Titan, Io and Nessus.

Destiny veterans will appreciate one of the biggest changes Bungie is making for Destiny 2: It will be possible to travel from planet to planet without ever going to orbit.

“We want to remove as many barriers as we can between your gun and the enemy’s face,” said Luke Smith, game director on Destiny 2.

Earth in Destiny 2 won’t be the same place players remember from Destiny. The sequel’s campaign kicks off with a Cabal invasion of The Last City, and although the Vanguard fights valiantly to save the Tower, the city is lost. Instead, the action on Earth will move from Old Russia to the European Dead Zone for Destiny 2. It won’t be completely unfamiliar to Destiny players: Two Crucible maps from the original game, Memento and Widow’s Court, are set in that region.

“It’s an incredible place — the largest destination we’ve ever built, easily, by a factor of two,” said Destiny 2 project lead Mark Noseworthy. The European Dead Zone, which looks like a forested area, is the location of a camp that the Vanguard has set up. It’s the new home base for humanity.

The three Vanguards will each head to one of the other three destinations in Destiny 2. First up is Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. True to life, the moon’s surface features seas of liquid methane — in fact, Titan is home to “an old human utopia” that is “sinking into the ocean,” said art director Michael Zak. There aren’t any landmasses on Titan; Guardians will navigate platforms surrounded by the sea. Commander Zavala, the Titan Vanguard, travels to the moon to recuperate after the Cabal attack on Earth. (Destiny players will remember that the Dreadnaught, Oryx’s ship from The Taken King, floated among the rings of Saturn.)

Cayde-6, the Hunter Vanguard, gets stuck in a portal on Nessus, a planetoid that orbits the sun somewhere in the region of Uranus and Neptune. The Vex have taken over this rocky little outpost, which features canyons full of unique native vegetation, and have essentially turned it into one of their machine worlds.

Finally, there’s Io, the innermost moon of Jupiter. It’s the last place in the solar system that the Traveler touched before the collapse, and that makes it a very mysterious place. Ikora Rey, the Warlock Vanguard, returns to this moon to look for answers.

You’ll be able to explore these places yourself when Destiny 2 launches Sept. 8 on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One.

Source: Polygon