Destiny 2’s Post-Final Shape Future Includes The Dreadnaught And A Tease Of Codename Frontiers
With the world-first raid race finished and the final Excision mission bringing The Final Shape’s campaign to an end, Destiny 2 has officially reached the conclusion of the “Light and Darkness Saga,” the story of staving off a second apocalypse developer Bungie has been telling since 2014. Knowing that that story arc was wrapping up has left the future of the game a little hazy, but we now have a clearer idea of what the next year will look like for Destiny 2, as well as a tease of where things are headed in 2025.
Bungie laid out the details of the rest of the year’s Destiny 2 content, divided into three big story arcs called Episodes, in a short new vidoc called The Journey Ahead. Mostly, it fills in some story and gameplay details about what each of those episodes will entail, because up until now, we only knew their names and the structure of how Bungie was arranging content going forward.
Episode 1: Echoes
The first episode, Echoes, starts Tuesday, June 11, and deals directly with the aftermath of The Final Shape’s conclusion. The Witness, Destiny 2’s ultimate antagonist up until now, is defeated, but the paracausal energy it embodied isn’t gone. Instead, it mixed with the Light of the Traveler to manifest weird artifacts from the Witness’s memory, shooting them out into the solar system. The episodes all deal with the fallout of what those sources of power to do the worlds where they land and the people who find them, with the first one resulting in major shifts to Nessus.
Bungie said that players will head to Nessus to find the echo and discover the location has been physically altered, with the Vex enemies there acting strangely. The episode comes with a new activity, Breach Executable, which Bungie described as an “arena-style offensive” in which you’re trying to cap geysers of Radiolaria (otherwise known as “Vex milk”) while holding off hordes of enemies.
The episode is also going to take players deeper into Nessus to uncover secrets of what used to be there–including, apparently, a whole lost civilization. It looks like that will include more than just a few superficial changes to Nessus as it tells its story. Bungie also teased a new villain who might be behind what’s happening with the Vex and said the Vex will exhibit new behavior, changing up how they act in battle.
Episode 2: Revenant
The second episode is Revenant, one that deals with Scorn leader Fikrul, otherwise known as the Fanatic. Bungie described the Episode as having a sort of “vampire-hunter” theme, and it’ll heavily concern the Fallen, who are finally trying to establish a new permanent home since their own homeworld, Riis, was destroyed by the Witness. Bungie said you’ll team up with the Fallen to become a Slayer Baron, essentially a Fallen monster hunter.
In practice, the vampire-hunter theme is informing the armor aesthetic–you look a lot like you’re in Bloodborne or the movie Van Helsing. Fikrul also has a Dracula castle, so it sounds like we’ll be Castlevania-ing our way through that. As for new gameplay, Bungie mentioned a potion-crafting system, where you’ll be able to create potions that provide different combat buffs and influence what loot drops you receive.
Episode 3: Heresy
The final episode, Heresy, concerns the Hive. The Final Shape saw Savathun standing as both an ally and an antagonist to the Guardians, and her sister, Xivu Arath, is still out in the universe somewhere as a potential threat. Bungie said the episode is going to shake up the existing relationships in the Hive god pantheon, which sounds ominous and potentially important for Destiny 2’s future.
As for the relevant details of what’s taking place: We’re headed back to the Dreadnaught, the big Hive battleship that was introduced in Destiny’s The Taken King expansion and has been kind of chilling in the orbit of Saturn ever since. It’ll have an activity Bungie likened to The Coil from the Season of the Wish, although we don’t have many details about how it’ll actually work. Bungie referred to an “eldritch force” players will face aboard the Dreadnaught and showed off two armor sets–one that takes cues from resident Hive expert and former Hive god Eris Morn, and another that imagines being a navigator on the Dreadnaught. That last one has the flair of an 18th century officer’s uniform from a European navy, but made out of bones.
Destiny 2 Year 11
The last thing Bungie did was tease Destiny 2 content in 2025, although it provided precisely zero details about what that might entail. The final screen of the vidoc just listed the name “Codename: Frontiers” with the Destiny 2 logo.
There are a couple things to intuit from that slide, at least. First, the use of the Destiny 2 logo might suggest that we’re not in for a Destiny 3 anytime soon, despite some rumors to the contrary. To some degree, that make sense–with massive player investment in Destiny 2, rebooting the community in a whole new game has its risks, even if that might help Bungie deal with some of the current game’s technical limitations.
As for the name, Codename: Frontiers might suggest expanding Destiny 2 beyond the solar system, where the game has taken place up until now. Before the original Collapse that kicked off the story and created the world we’ve been playing in, humanity was trying to expand beyond Sol and out into the rest of the universe, and it would make some sense for the story to go back to that direction, cleaning a lot of the slate for something new. But that’s all speculative at this point.
In the meantime, we at least have a better understanding of where things are going from The Final Shape for the next year. Bungie didn’t mention any new dungeons or raids among the episodes, but the Annual Pass that was made available with The Final Shape buys access to a dungeon, so we can expect at least one to pop up sooner or later, too.
