It is a certainty that June 6th, 2019 will go down as a momentous day for Bungie and the Destiny franchise. Just days after the release of Season of Opulence and their last obligation in their partnership with Activision, Bungie held a livestream where they made several huge announcements, mostly from Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy. After the initial presentation by them, Destiny community content creator Datto interviewed several members of the development team to get a better grasp of what is in store for the franchise.
The stream began with a trailer for the September expansion named Shadowkeep. It featured heavily a return to the Moon as well as a favorite character from Destiny 1 in Eris Morn. Yet the location is not as it was during the first game, and we are told the location will be twice as large as the original. Old enemies such as Crota and Ghaul can now be found as nightmares brought forth as the Darkness as well which seems rather ominous. There is a new red keep location found on the moon that will certainly play a major role in the DLC. The new raid will be taking place in the Black Garden so there will be plenty of nostalgia for Destiny veterans come September.
From there it was stated that Destiny 2 is heading in a new direction. That starts with the reveal that the base game would be going free to play with a new way to jump in called New Light. This allows players to have access to all locations quickly without having to beat all of the campaigns that have been released thus far. The idea is that new players would be able to jump right in and play with other guardians without having to complete tens of hours of past content first. New content would be purchasable a la carte, so you won’t have to buy every new season if one doesn’t fully appeal to you. Starting a brand new character in New Light will take guardians back to the very beginning where a ghost finds them in the Cosmodrome. Though it was explicitly stated that would not be a full remaster of the original campaign.
An announcement fans of the franchise have been waiting for has finally been made a reality with cross-save coming to all platforms. It wasn’t made fully clear how this would ultimately work but it appears as though you will choose one set of characters from a specific platform and be able to carry them to all of the others if you choose. This would include any weapons and armor acquired so there would be no need to earn them all over again. A huge positive side effect of this is that there would no more console exclusive activities or items.
Alongside the cross-save announcement was that Destiny 2 would be available on the Google Stadia when it launches. This was leaked early along with other news yet still comes as somewhat of a surprise direction for the franchise. The platform is brand new and still very much an unknown at this point, though more has since been revealed. Going even further the new content in Shadowkeep will also be included with the Founder’s Pack for the Stadia.
Bungie stated several time that they planned to embrace the game being MMO-like while enhancing on the RPG elements found in it. This will start with Season 8 as they introduce Armor 2.0. This is meant to allow customization to allow players to let their guardians wear the gear they think looks best while taking advantage of the best perks and modifiers. Artifacts will also be introduced that should add another layer of depth to build customization.
There were many acknowledgements over the course of the stream that Crucible has been ignored for far too long within Destiny 2. While the question of Trials of Osiris was posed by Datto, it was mostly side-stepped as the focus will be building a better foundation for PVP first. This will include old favorite modes appearing within Crucible labs such as elimination to see how they will fit in that sandbox. Season 8 will have a heavier focus on PVP as well but many of the specifics were not discussed.
There were a few work in progress items that were shown such as an exotic heavy bow and other weapons, though names and if they will be in the next release is unknown. Some really awesome looking armor could also be seen on a screen as well. Likely the most intriguing new feature is the introduction of finishers. Each class would have different variants that have really interesting animations which were shown off.
Overall this was a huge leap forward with the franchise that is now firmly in the hands of the developers. They made clear that the next season will be the first step in the direction they want to take it. There will be plenty more revealed over the coming months as well with the team having a presence at E3 and GuardianCon. Whatever comes next the only certainty is that they are doing their best to finally make the game exactly as they want it to be.