What’s Good About: Destiny 2 Beyond Light
The night before Beyond Light launched, I and my fireteam received an in-game top priority alert from Commander Zavala. We all got to a scenic spot in the Commercial District, a part of the city that we’ve never been in before. As our group and a lot of other players in our instances started to filter in and see what was happening, the Traveller started to pulsate Light. As time passed, the light surrounding us and other Guardians in the district was starting to amplify; the Traveller began pulsating Light faster, the debris of its damaged shell getting closer to itself (damage that was there since the end of the Red War when it first woke up). One thing became apparent as time was passing with this: the Traveler was healing itself. The light was intensifying, burning brighter, the winds on the platform were starting to pick up, the visuals began to aberrant; faster and faster until a final cutscene started to play. The Darkness, which was said to be on its way, finally came. It quickly but surely began to swallow planets whole. Mercury, Mars, Titan, and Io had all vanished; but before the dark tendrils started to reach Earth, the light pushed it back causing a flash of light…and booting us from the game so Bungie could start the 14-hour maintenance to get Beyond Light up and running and the servers in ship shape.
I bring this up because it serves as the perfect opening to the events of Beyond Light, Destiny 2’s current and newest Expansion that launched last week. We started with a moment of intense brightness, which is fitting because one of the main themes of Beyond Light so far is delving into the Dark Places to protect what you care about. The thrust of the main campaign is that following the end of the Interference quest chain (a series of weekly missions spanning a few months in which we commune with the Darkness itself), the Darkness informs us that “Ancient Power awaits on Europa”; this is convenient because we receive a distress signal from Variks the Loyal, the lone member of House Judgement and the former warden of the Prison of Elders (he’s effectively on the outs with both the Awoken and the Vanguard following the inciting incidents of Forsaken): A Fallen Baroness by the name of Eramis the Shipstealer has gained control of a form of Darkness known as Stasis (effectively Ice manipulation to keep it simple for now) and is building up her own Fallen House in an attempt at revenge for the Traveller abandoning her people during the Whirlwind (the Fallen’s version of the Collapse). While there, we meet back up with the Exo Stranger, who we haven’t seen since the end of the initial campaign for Destiny 1 over six years ago and she goes “Yo, we gotta use the Darkness to Fight the Darkness”.
I’m not going into further details, but suffice it to say that the base Beyond Light story is an interesting start of the narrative threads on Europa; as after the story ends, you unlock your class’s Stasis subclass: the mage inspired Shadebinder for Warlocks, the beefy and fittingly named Behemoth for Titans and the ninja-themed Revenant for Hunters. The subsequent quest chains are focused on gaining new aspects for each of your abilities that change their properties (different grenade types and modifications to your other abilities). As a new means of character customization, it’s an interesting approach; giving us options like the skill grid in Destiny 1 and the synergy of Destiny 2’s light subclass paths. It so far doesn’t have the former’s illusion of choice or the latter’s restrictiveness, but I’m holding off on what stasis can do in endgame content because the broader community is still trying to figure out builds for it. But I will say this about Stasis as an element works: it’s focused less so on directly damaging enemies and more on battlefield control. This is accomplished by way of creating ice walls and straight-up freezing enemies. I like it a lot in PvE because it’s a new way to engage with the world that isn’t simply doing damage, but I hate it in PvP because it turns out being chain frozen for upwards of 5–7 seconds and then getting shattered feels bad in a competitive setting. At the time of writing, it’s been adjusted in PvP, so there’s at least that.
To loop back to quests: The narrative threads presented in the Born in Darkness quest line give us some incredible, universe shattering implications surrounding both the Exos: the game’s race of playable androids and their creator, the Golden Age scientist Dr. Clovis Bray. We’re talking “speculation reaching back to the beginning of Destiny as a Franchise being confirmed” big. I expect the lore bombs to continue dropping with the release of the Deep Stone Crypt this weekend as a raid: the Crypt itself being the main facility the Exos were created in. All I’ll say in regards to this and other pieces of information that have come to light is “Clovis Bray is a fucking bastard” and no I will not elaborate as to why I think that now, just trust me on this.
And on a similar note, the implication of Guardians being able to use the Darkness, the very thing they were created by the Traveller to fight against, is an interesting thematic to play with because we’ve been conditioned both in and out of the game that the dark = evil, with the Hive being the most prominent example; a former prey species making a deal with dark gods and using it as a foundation for a twisted religion of death and destruction responsible for wiping out countless civilizations and cultures across the cosmos. With the Stranger being the main proponent for the use of the Darkness for the betterment of Humanity. It’s a narrative I’m interested in seeing through, alongside more threads introduced, to say the least.
The actual location of Europa is goddamn gorgeous. The new environmental tech introduced with the expansion helps a lot. To preface: I have this weird hang-up when it comes to snow in video games: because I grew up in Canada, I’ve experienced some of the harshest winters in the world. A lifetime of being in the Ottawa area in particular gives you an acquaintance with how snow looks, acts, and feels. Most games just…treat it like a mixture of powdered sugar and sand (gross, I know). So when I heard that Bungie was adding new weather systems to simulate blizzards, I was skeptical. But when I first saw it in action in-game I was mighty impressed, they made snow that looks and acts like actual snow! The snowstorms generated in Europa make it incredibly hard to see to the point where I had to wait them out in caves nearby, which you would think would be annoying, but is super cool. The standout visual regarding them for me has to be when I was fighting a group of Vex when a storm kicked up, the only thing visible aside from my immediate field of view being their singular, burning red, cycloptic eyes in the storm.
The locales are also great; with the partially frozen over Braytech science facilities scattered across Europa evoking early 70’s science fiction, Vex architecture seamlessly jutting out of the cliffs in some spots to denote the moon being slowly assimilated like the planet it orbits and the Fallen’s ramshackle fortifications looking as if the storms could tear through them at any second. All of which are tied together with the presence of an ominous Pyramid Ship looming in the background as a reminder of what’s at play. It’s a contrast of styles that all manage to work and create a place that feels weirdly alive for how dead and frozen it is most of the time.
Overall, as a beginning for the next chapter of Destiny 2’s life, Beyond Light makes a great first impression. Though I am willing to admit that the next year’s worth of content is exciting to me mostly as a Lore nerd, the introduction of Stasis and what other Darkness subclasses could be like has me invested. So if you need an excuse to go in and embrace the darkness, remember this: While there is great power awaiting on Europa, remember not to get too caught up in doing so; Because you might find yourself caught in the cold.
