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What to expect from Destiny 2’蝉 year 2 reveal

Bungie is set to reveal Destiny 2’蝉 fall expansion

Destiny: House of Wolves - Queen screencap 960 Bungie/Activision
Ryan Gilliam (he/him) has worked at Polygon for nearly seven years. He primarily spends his time writing guides for massively popular games like Diablo 4 & Destiny 2.

Destiny 2 has had some serious ups and downs over the past few months. Since its release last year, Bungie has already released two expansions. The first, Curse of Osiris, was filled with problems and released alongside a nasty experience scandal. Warmind felt more like a band-aid than anything else. Players have been putting a lot of faith in Destiny 2’蝉 fall expansion to save the game and Bungie is finally ready to start talking about it.

In 2015, Destiny: The Taken King helped save a game with serious problems, setting it on the right path for the remainder of its lifespan. With news of Destiny 2’蝉 next release coming next week, it’蝉 time to collect everything we know — and think we know — about the September release.

A return to a familiar location

The end cutscene of Destiny 2 reveals quite a bit about where we’re going in the game’蝉 future. When we destroy Dominus Ghaul of the Red Legion and re-awaken the Traveler, its light radiates out into the solar system, showing us a few key locations.

The first location we see is Mercury, the location of Destiny 2’蝉 Curse of Osiris expansion. The second is Mars, the planet we spend our time on in Destiny 2’蝉 Warmind expansion. The next stop is The Reef, the home of the Awoken.

The last time we really visited The Reef in earnest was during Destiny’蝉 House of Wolves expansion. The Reef consists of broken ships and rubble scattered through space. The Awoken — altered human descendants who serve as one of Destiny’蝉 three playable races — have cobbled this flotsam together to build a home.

Bungie and Vicarious Visions/Activision

The teaser image for Tuesday’蝉 live stream looks very Reef-like. This, combined with the end cutscene of Destiny 2, has many players convinced that we’re going home to visit the Awoken.

Since Destiny: The Taken King, the Awoken royalty have been missing. The queen, Mara Sav, and her brother, Uldren, led an attack on Oryx’蝉 dreadnought to start the expansion, but both disappeared in the process. However, there have been several allusions to their survival. Most recently, players found a downed ship in one of the Warmind lost sectors that looks suspiciously like the one Prince Uldren was last seen in.

The Reef and the Awoken have several ties — including some alliances — with the Fallen enemy faction. It’蝉 very likely that the Fallen will be the major enemy of Destiny 2’蝉 fall expansion. However, there are hints that we could be facing a new enemy faction as well.

A new enemy race

This is somewhat of a far-fetched prediction, although we have our reasons. There have been rumblings about a fifth enemy faction in Destiny before the first game ever even launched.

Bungie/Activision

Thanks to some very old concept art, we can see that Bungie originally intended for there to be five races. Race 1 is the Vex, Race 2 is the Fallen, Race 3 is the Cabal, Race 4 is the Hive and Race 5 appears to be “The Darkness.”

Normally, players would simply dismiss this as cut content, but the very end of the Destiny 2 teaser cutscene actually shows black pyramid ships off in the distance — very similar to those seen in the Race 5 concept art.

After The Reef, players are shown the Dreadnought from Taken King and then the mysterious pyramid ships. While it’蝉 likely that those two locations are in fact teases for future content, all three could be wrapped up into this one expansion.

Class updates and additions

Destiny: The Taken King added three new subclasses to the game: Nightstalkers for Hunters, Sunbreakers for Titans, and Stormcallers for Warlocks. These three subclasses each harnessed one of the elements that their class was missing.

Destiny 2 launched with all nine subclasses in tact, so no class is missing any elements. However, this doesn’t mean we won’t see something new. While it’蝉 possible that Bungie could add a new character class altogether, coming up with a new element for three new subclasses would add freshness to the game without forcing players to re-roll classes.

destiny taken king Image: Bungie

If we don’t end up getting new classes added to the game, we should at least see some light reworks to the existing classes. Players have long complained that the class trees don’t offer the same customization in Destiny 2 as they did in Destiny. Players can use one tree or the other, rather than mixing and matching skills like the first game.

While new subclasses would certainly be welcome, just like they were in The Taken King, increased customization of our existing classes would be just as nice.

More secrets

Destiny: The Taken King was known for adding long, secretive quests into the game. The Touch of Malice, Sleeper Simulant and Black Spindle quests were all fun surprises for players to discover over the course of the expansion’蝉 life.

Bungie/Activision

Destiny 2 was sorely missing these secrets in the vanilla game and its first expansion. But Warmind brought the secrets back, with a weekly quest for the Polaris Lance scout rifle, a long quest for Sleeper Simulant and a data hunt for the Worldline Zero sword. Players are even fairly convinced that the Black Spindle is somewhere in Destiny 2 right now, we just haven’t found it yet.

These secrets have extended the fairly short life of Warmind, just as they extended the longer life of The Taken King. Expect more secrets to show up in the fall expansion, and be on the lookout for teases already showing up on Tuesday’蝉 reveal.

A fresh game mode

One thing we know is coming to Destiny 2’蝉 fall expansion is a new game mode. Destiny influencers and community members who attended the Bungie Summit in April were able to play the mode. While they couldn’t discuss it in detail thanks to a hefty non-disclosure agreement, it is definitely happening. Expect a full reveal on this mode during the live stream.

Weapon changes

On Bungie’蝉 development roadmap, it clearly states that we’ll see some changes to weapon randomization and slot changes. If you didn’t play a lot of Destiny, you may not know what that means.

In Destiny, legendary weapons could have different perk rolls on them. This made every drop of your favorite handcannon exciting, as it let you compare it to the one you already had for better perks. Destiny 2’蝉 guns all have static perks, meaning they never change. While Bungie hasn’t confirmed that Destiny is going back to the random perk system, that is heavily implied on the roadmap.

Destiny - Hunter aiming a sniper rifle Bungie/Activision

Destiny 2 also changed how the weapon slots work. It used to be that you had a primary weapon, a secondary weapon, and a heavy weapon. Primaries consisted of scout rifles, auto rifles, pulse rifles and handcannons. Secondary weapons were shotguns, fusion rifles, sniper rifles and sidearms. And heavy weapons were rocket launchers, swords and machine guns.

It’蝉 likely that when Bungie says “weapon slot changes,” they’re alluding to the return of this old system or something similar.

The usual

Like all Destiny expansions, we’ll see new gear, a new patrol space, a new vendor and new exotics. But this time, we’ll see a full new raid location — similar to the Leviathan from vanilla Destiny 2 — rather than the raid lairs of Curse of Osiris and Warmind.

Bungie will reveal Destiny 2’蝉 second year of content on Tuesday, June 5 at 12 p.m. ET.

The next level of puzzles.

Take a break from your day by playing a puzzle or two! We’ve got SpellTower, Typeshift, crosswords, and more.

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