Destiny 2’s Light and Darkness saga has come to an end. Players are jumping into the raid, beating the Witness, and finishing the final mission of The Final Shape, closing the book on years of storytelling. But as one book closes, another opens, and Bungie has taken this opportunity to be refreshingly honest and upfront about what to expect from the next year of Destiny 2, including a cool vampire-slaying themed season and a return to the Dreadnaught from Destiny: The Taken King.
As Destiny 2 moves away from seasonal models with drawn-out storylines and weekly check-ins, it seems to be embracing these larger, content-packed drops the team are calling episodes, beginning with Echoes. That episode, which begins on June 11, picks up directly after the fallout of the Guardian’s battle with the Witness, and transforms Nessus. Echoes is Vex-themed, so players can expect to dig into the weird new behaviors these mechanical adversaries exhibit post-Witness and uncover secrets from lost civilizations as they repel the time-traveling enemy faction in a new three-player offensive activity.
After Echoes, Revenant will center the Fallen as they look for a new home in the galaxy. Without a home world, which was destroyed by the Witness, it’s time for the Eliksni people to settle down somewhere new. Bungie has touted that this episode will have heavy “dark fantasy” themes, including some vampire-slaying aesthetics. Some of the armor and weapons teased for Revenant have a blend of gothic and high-tech influences, and it sounds like it’ll be a remarkably fun romp.
Revenant is also introducing potion crafting to Destiny 2, and it isn’t what you might expect. The team hints at how some of these potions might work, such as a potion that directly powers up your artifact, but there are also loot potions that will give you “agency over the rewards that you’re chasing” according to Jason Reynolds, a developer at Bungie. Moreover, Reynolds says that throughout year 10 of Destiny 2, the team is hoping to give players more agency in their pursuits, and potion crafting seems like a means to that end.
The final episode of the year will apparently shake up the “Hive pantheon,” as a new “eldritch force” begins disrupting things. The new mysteries of the episode will lead players back to the Dreadnaught, which Destiny 2 players may recall as the hulking ship of Oryx, The Taken King, from Destiny’s major 2015 expansion. The Dreadnaught was so massive that it was a destination unto itself, and it will be returning in the episode Heresy to bookend Destiny 2’s tenth year. Like Nessus in the first episode, the intent seems to be to give the Dreadnaught a facelift, and Bungie seems to be leaning toward a theme of decay with the environment and the weapons in this episode. It will also feature two armor sets, one inspired by fan-favorite character Eris Morn and the other by what the navigator of the Dreadnaught may look like.
Beyond this year of storytelling, Bungie closed things out with a tease of Destiny 2’s eleventh year, which is codenamed Frontiers. The name suggests that Destiny 2 might finally get out of our mostly familiar solar system and travel to some extravagant alien worlds, and some players are already theorizing about which locales they may be able to visit in Frontiers. The Cabal homeworld seems like a frontrunner for many, and I have to admit that I’m also excited at the prospect of finally pushing on these boundaries after ten years.
The team offered little else in the way of information, including whether or not Frontiers is the name of an expansion or a new year of episodes. A lot is currently unclear about the model that Destiny 2 will be adopting moving forward, but if the Frontiers tease is any indication, it sure seems like we’re sticking with this game for a while longer rather than moving on to a Destiny 3 any time soon. All will be revealed in due time, but for now, get comfy and keep it pushing Guardians. There’s still a lot of fights in our future.
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