I'll keep this introduction brief since I'd like to make this piece short-and-sweet, as I've noticed that whenever I try to write about Destiny as a franchise, I tend to end up falling into the trap of overexplaining. Destiny is easily the game I've sunk the most hours into across it's two main entries and across three various platforms, so instead of my first piece on the blog being about my own history with it or anything super in-depth about the world, I'd like to talk about a single moment in it's history that I really liked from an expansion that's pretty far down the communities tier list. But just know, this is probably going to be the first of a few posts about Destiny. Sorry in advance.
Destiny 2: Shadowkeep had some extremely big boots to fill. Coming off the back of one of the most well received expansions up until that point, Forsaken, it was also the first expansion Bungie were releasing as an independent company. Ever since the franchises inception and Destiny's release in 2014, it had been published by Activision, and had received extra manpower and resources because of this. But when they announced the end to this deal in 2019, retaining all rights to the franchise but losing the help of subsidiary developers, the future was uncertain. Destiny 2 had opened with a bang but its post-launch content up until Forsaken left a lot to be desired, with a variety of circumstances leading to a mediocre Curse of Osiris expansion and a better but still not perfect Warmind afterwards. As mentioned previously, Forsaken, has gone down as one of the best expansions in the franchises history and its introduction of the seasonal model has done wonders for the content droughts that would plague the game in between big expansions. So when Bungie announced the return of the Moon as the primary destination for the expansion, some raised fair concerns about Bungie having to lean on reusing older content to make up for the lack of manpower needed to create new content. Likewise, upon the expansions launch, the campaign as a whole, in comparison to Forsaken's five story missions and five 'adventures', was critisized for its short length, with only three missions. However, one thing that I believe goes somewhat overlooked is that Shadowkeep, for the first time since the end of Destiny 2's Red War campaign, actually acknowledge the main antagonist of the series and started the current story arc of the Light and Darkness saga. The catalyst for this comes from the opening mission of the Shadowkeep campaign, 'A Mysterious Disturbance', right before the closing segment. But before we get to that, I'll try to give some brief context.
The Darkness: Its Definitely a Bad Thing
In Destiny 1, there's two big magic forces that are in direct conflict with one another. The Light, as represented by the player characters known as Guardians, humanity and the big white sphere on the cover known as the Traveler, and the Darkness, represented by the enemy alien species. As the franchise went on and expansions released, it became pretty clear that 1: no one had any idea what the fuck the Darkness actually was and 2: that whatever it was, only one alien race was directly tied to. The Hive are, in short, insectoid creatures that use lovecraftian dark magics and a philosophy of might makes right to commit genocide on a galactic scale as a form of worshiping the Darkness. So over the course of Destiny 1, the Hive ended up being the main antagonists of half the expansions, when Bungie wanted to lean into the more metaphysical aspect of their universe, while the other half that focused more on the 'grounded' ideas like escaped warlords or unearthed technology focused on the Fallen, four-armed humanoid scavengers who actually were blessed by the Traveler before it left them to die at the hands of the Hive in a weird and tragic coincidence. So when we arrive at Destiny 2's Red War campaign, a story about the victories of the past few years being wiped away after an invasion of humanities last City leaves the Guardians in disarray and powerless, no one really expected the closing cinematic. At the end of the campaign, the Traveler, contained within a massive cage that cut off the Light and after years of silence, awakens and breaks free to help the heroes beat win the day. However, that awakening sends a pulse across the universe and out into deep space, where a fleet of massive, pyramid-shaped starships also awaken and begin a years long trek to the Solar System. This is the first time in Destiny's history players had ever seen a proper representation of the Darkness and unfortunately, it's all we would get for another two years.
Monster of the Week
Destiny was built around antagonists that popped in for a bit, did some damage and subsequently beaten. The only time before Shadowkeep where it seemed like there was a larger plan was Crota's End and The Taken King, where the titular Crota that was slain in that expansion was the son of Oryx, the Taken King and leader of the Hive. Besides that, we've had House Of Wolves' Skolas attempting to resurrect the titular House of Fallen before he was killed by the player, Rise of Iron's antagonist was more a force of nature in the SIVA nanotechnoly that spread throughout the Russian Cosmodrone with the assistance of the Fallen House of Devils, Destiny 2's Red War had Dominus Ghaul as the leader of the Red Legion, a army of Cabal (think massive humanoid rhinos with big guns and some Roman vibes) that invaded before beaten as mentioned, then both Curse of Osiris and Warmind featured villains' largely dismissed by the fans in Panoptes, a Vex (time-travelling robots) trying to mess with the timeline and Nokris, another son of Oryx who dabbled in necromancy. Forsaken managed to make an extremely popular story with the promotion of Uldren Sov to main villian, a character last thought dead in The Taken King but was also killed off by the end of the story. The season model lead to even more once-off villains, including a Fallen Crime Syndicate, a Cabal monster corrupted by Hive Magic and at least two rouge factions from various races trying to rewrite history with Destiny's version of the TARDIS. While all of these had some interesting ideas behind them (The Syndicate being the result of all the Fallen Houses left in the Solar System falling along with their old guard, leaving the next generation of Fallen adopting human concepts like organized crime Syndicates is way more intriguing then how it was presented in-game) and in some circumstances, did lead to better payoffs later on (Forsaken's final hour reveal that Uldren was manipulated by Savathun, the Hive God of Trickery and Lies that became a reoccurring villain throughout year 4 of Destiny 2 and the main antagonist of The WItch Queen expansion), on the whole it was lackluster. Bungie had spent so much time building their universe wide in various ways, increasing their options for narratives later instead of building one throughout each expansion. The reasons for this, in my own opinion anyway, comes down to Activision. Destiny 1 went through a lot of rewrites, with some of what was planned for its launch being used now in Destiny 2 (the first reveal trailer for Destiny 1 featured a character called Crow, who became Uldren in the released game, and is now returned as a Guardian). It's a fair argument to make, given that the first expansion free from them started a coherent expansion-to-expansion story, that Bungie was hesitant to create a larger narrative in case Activision made a decision that could impede that. So, now free from the potential narrative axe of Activision, five years of worldbuilding foundation to build upon and a games worth of cut narrative to implement, Shadowkeep opened with a bang.
Shadowkeep: Getting to The Fireworks Factory
'A Mysterious Disturbance' opens with the player character arriving on the Moon to investigate a seismic disturbance as well as to fight against a resurgent Hive brood, who've built a massive Scarlett Keep and have who knows what schemes planned. The Moon hasn't been visited properly since Destiny 1 and the Hive there were largely presumed crippled since their leader, Crota, was killed. So imagine the player's shock to see not only a new Hive, but a whole fortress built on humanity's front door. In the lead-up to Shadowkeep, trailers and interviews highlighted Nightmares, a new enemy that's made of a person deepest fears and trauma made manifest. For the player, this meant some familiar faces appearing as bosses in some side missions, like the previously mentioned Skolas and Ghaul. But as an environmental detail, it meant scarlet phantoms haunting the Moon, a sign of the countless Guardians who died during the Great Disaster, a failed assault on Crota's Hive. These phantoms watch you make your way under the Keep, investigating what the Hive are so dedicated to protecting...
Its worth noting that,1: unless the player has completed a series of quests from an early season where they're informed of the Pyramid ships, the reaction from our companion will be much more confused instead of nervous and 2: Unlike other expansions, there was no clear antagonist mentioned in the marketing. Previously, characters like Oryx and Uldren were all over the advertisements, Forsaken essentially had to spoil its big first act twist of Uldren killing fan favorited Cayde-6 in order to regain some of its lost fanbase from a rough opening year. So people had ZERO idea what the hell was going on in terms of villians and, as far as I can remember, the idea of a Pyramid being hidden on the Moon was not a popular theory, let alone one people considered at that point.
That Pyramid, so close to Earth and on a location we frequented for years without any idea of its existence, set in motion a new arc of Destiny's narrative, one focused on an exploration of the forces that we've been wielding and fighting for five years as players and for centuries in-universe. The conclusion of the story follows us inside the Pyramid.
From this point onwards, the dichotomy of Light and Darkness in the Destiny universe is thrown out the goddamn window. The location those two characters appear in, The mythical Black Garden, is the location of Shadowkeep's Garden of Salvation raid, the conclusion of which sees us discover another Pyramid within the Garden. As the seasons go on, we witness the Pyramids approach to the Solar System. During the Season of Arrivals, they... well, arrive and land on various locations the player has visited since the start of Destiny 2, the planets Mercury and Mars and the moons of Titan and Io. The Io Pyramid in particular tries to give us a message but is cut off by Savathun's interference. That message is eventually revealed as an invitation to Europa, a moon fans have long been speculating held a dark secret relevant to the mysterious Vex. Finally, at the end of the season, after we've helped evacuate allies from the each location now home to our apparent archenemy, an event occurs as the Traveler slowly begins to glow and players gathered in the Last City to watch as it slowly reformed itself from the cracked and broken state it had been in since the end of the Red War. Finally, it shone a blinding final blast and the season ended with the following cutscene.
The four locations where Pyramids had landed were gone. In their place, anomalies were left, holes in reality that would become extremely important later in the story. This occurred the day before the Beyond Light expansion, an expansion focused around, as the title implies, looking for powers beyond our typical arsenal. Included in this expansion was the Exo Stranger, a character not seen since the ending of Destiny 1's campaign, six years prior and one of the franchises biggest question marks. Included in the expansion was House Salvation, a Fallen group dedicated to wielding the Darkness as a weapon, to reclaim the Traveler as their own. Included in this expansion was Stasis, an ice-themed power that came as a gift directly from another Pyramid ship on Europa and with it, a whole new Destiny story began to unfold.
God, I can be a bit dramatic when I want to be, can't I?
So. What does all that mean, exactly?
Ya know at the end of the first Avengers how they show Thanos for like, five seconds and then every single movie afterwards, people were waiting for him to eventually show up and start dropping superheroes like flies? Yeah, that's essentially what this entire piece has been explaining. Look, I know, the MCU already infects enough of pop culture but a big bad teased for years and eventually showing up to deliver the greatest loss the heroes have experienced... the comparison is there, I have to make it. However, the kicker to all of this is that, for a while, Bungie themselves had no idea what the Darkness even was. There's interviews from 2017, during the marketing for Destiny 2's launch, where Luke Smith, Game Director for the franchise, straight-up said "We had no clue what it was and it's not going to be in Destiny 2". Which, to anyone playing now, is really funny in hindsight. To be fair, this is before the split from Activision so they probably didn't plan that far ahead. But again, considering that ending cutscene and Shadowkeep's plot, it's clear they at least wanted to keep that door open. So then, if we take Bungie's then five years worth of foundation-laying, a whole games worth of plot rewrites, a newly gained creative freedom and an audience fresh off a much more well-received year of content, what you're left with is a perfect storm to begin the story you've been dying to tell, which is exactly what Bungie has been doing ever since. These past two years, while definitely not perfect (in terms of gameplay stuff that I do NOT have the time to get into), has been hitting home runs in the story department. If anything, that extended, monster-of-the-week storytelling has been a hidden boon to them. Players are conditioned to believe now that Darkness Bad, Light Good, Aliens = Darkness, Human = Light. There's always been the idea that the Traveler is less benevolent deity protecting humanity and more desperate survivor using humanity as a buffer and a weapon to defend itself, but now that idea is a belief in-text. Theories of Fallen Guardians have blossomed into a whole new Fallen House, called House Light, being taken into the City and treated as allies, led by a character from two separate sidequests that players had theorized about for years. The Darkness itself has gone from an ominous malevolent entity to just another tool in our arsenal that happens to be wielded by massive flying Doritos capable of eating planets, as you do. It's a natural progression of the world state. As we learn more and more, the lines that create dichotomy blur. Or, as the player has been told by both a variety of important characters in Destiny, "The line between Light and Dark is so very thin".
Conclusion, AKA Space Game go brrr
Shadowkeep's reveal of the Lunar Pyramid, to me, was a declaration of Bungie's intent as a creatively independent studio. After years of creating a wide universe of mystery and intrigue, one where lines seemed pretty clearly drawn in the sand, they revealed that the universes' greatest foe had been lying in wait on our closet celestial neighbor, that it was finally waking up and that things were about to get a lot more complicated. The closing "We are your Salvation" line has haunted the franchise ever since and now, Destiny 2 has just closed Season of the Haunted, one focused on the Moon, the Nightmares and that same Lunar Pyramid.
But in larger terms, what does it actually mean mean? Like, from what I've written, The Darkness is just "bad guy who do bad thing because bad", right? Weeeell, once I've actually be arsed to go do a bunch of research and stuff, I am gonna write about exactly that. To be honest, that's a piece I really wanna get right since Destiny has had a reputation of a great game about nothing since its inception and that's changed a lot over the past two years so I wanna do right by the narrative.
I know that my usual reader base might not care about this as much, but to me, managing to so simply and yet so dramatically state "This is where we are going now" in a single scene is pretty cool, especially considering the direction the franchise has decided to go. The next expansion for Destiny 2 is called Lightfall and after that, The Final Shape, the term Hive us for their end goal, total universal genocide with a single life left as the ultimate victor. So its pretty clear that Bungie is setting up their Infinity War and Endgame and honestly, with how well-written the last few years of content has been, I'm excited to see where this space opera ends.
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