Earlier this week, Bungie held a Destiny 2 live-stream event showing off the future of the game. Little did anybody know that they would reveal a plan for the next few years would have in store. The Darkness has crept in the dark reaches of space long enough, now it has arrived stomp out the remaining light.

Since the first Destiny we all knew that primary antagonistic force known simply as The Darkness, would return. At the end of Destiny 2’s main campaign, The Darkness in the form of ‘pyramid ships’ were shown coming for Earth. With the recent expansion, Destiny 2: Shadowkeep, and its followup seasons, everything has been building to this; and it has made its dreaded arrival.

Season of Arrivals

Now we are greeted with the brand new season called Destiny 2: Season of Arrivals, which was both revealed and released during the Destiny 2 live-stream event. As the title would suggest, The Darkness has begun their arrival in our known solar system. Be brave and team up with Zavala, Eris Morn and The Drifter to fight back and investigate the nature of the mysterious Dark Pyramids.

Season of Arrivals brings a whole new suite of weapons, armors and general improvements. The most notable new weapon is an exotic grenade launcher known as “WITHERHOARD”, which is extremely powerful. All the classes are receiving new dark aesthetic armors with updated abilities and armor mods.

The season also sees the return of Trials,  updates to the Nightfall Ordeal playlist, and exciting new story quests to grind through. There’s even a new public event called “Contact”, which is essentially the PvE only version of Gambit, has been added to IO with a giant pyramid ship hovering above it. Most excitedly is a brand new Dungeon called “Prophecy”, which takes place in the mysterious dimension of The Nine – and is FREE to all Destiny 2 players.

Season of Arrivals ultimately serves as a prequel to the upcoming expansion pass, releasing later this year. As all Destiny 2 seasons before it, expect to see a plentiful amount of updates as we approach the most important events to date. Only time will tell what surprises are held in store over the coming months, but it’s reasonable to expect the movement of more Dark Pyramid ships.

Beyond Light

This year’s major expansion, Beyond Light, has been announced with an exciting new cinematic and gameplay trailers. Beyond Light sees the anticipated return of the Exo Stranger; who meets with Eris Morn and The Drifter on the brand new location of Europa. The reason of such meeting looks to be a massive and Dark Pyramid ship covered in an ominous orange glow.

Europa has been teased before the original Destiny game even released, and looks to be a sinister but important location. The gameplay trailer shows a frozen over city with Vex architecture breaking through the ice and Fallen crawling about the wreckage. It’s important to note that a ominous red glow which can seen emanating beneath the ice, foreshadowing something truly sinister is afoot.

Dialog heard in the gameplay trailer reveals that there’s much more to the Exo Stranger’s story than meets the eye. Stating that she has seen the wrath of The Darkness from her origins, and knows of a dark truth that we can no longer hide from; darkness resides within and must be embraced. Echoing Prince Uldren from Destiny 2 Forsaken, she states that the line between light and dark is so very thin; and we must cross it together.

The huge reveal shows that Guardians can now wield the darkness in the form of a new subclass. The gameplay shows Guardians in a shadow-ice aesthetic wielding weapons such as a staff and ice picks; including grenades with the similar effects. This addition may also foreshadow further dark secrets revolving around the true nature of The Light and The Darkness.

Era of Darkness

On top of this fall’s Beyond Light, Bungie has also announced the upcoming expansions for the following couple of years. With The Witch Queen releasing in fall 2021 followed by Lightfall in 2022.

While not much is known about these upcoming major expansions, they will contain brand new destinations and enemies. Plotlines are already starting to be made in Season of Arrivals, and will continue build up through the upcoming seasons and expansions.

“[After Beyond Light] It’s going to continue with the next major expansion, The Witch Queen, and Lightfall is going to kinda drive this all to a moment” Destiny 2 Game Director, Luke Smith explained, “These three releases represent this new era in Destiny… The Era of Darkness”

Evolving Worlds

In Bungie’s live-stream event, an impressively detailed road map for Destiny 2 was shown off with some fantastic features to look forward too. First of which is cross-generation support, meaning that all the content you own for Destiny 2 will carry over to the next generation of consoles. Destiny 2 will run at 60FPS and 4K resolution on next-gen and will support cross generational play between respective console ecosystems; with cross-platforming between PC, Xbox and PlayStation likely coming in 2021.

The future of Destiny is huge, and further expansion passes will contain never before seen destinations and enemies to look forward too. To avoid starting from scratch with a new sequel, and to ensure the game doesn’t get too large to patch; Bungie is implementing a new program called Destiny Content Vault (DCV). This will allow older, less played content to be cycled out so that new AND classic content can be added in its place, so that the world can continue to evolve.

This Fall: IO, Mercury, Titan, Mars and The Leviathan will be stored into the DCV, as the brand new Europa and updated Cosmodrome destinations are added in their place. It is also possible that other classic locations and Raids, such as The Vault of Glass, may make a return with the new DCV system. This cycle will allow continuous fresh content and worlds to be played on as time goes on.

We’ve covered the primary highlights of the live-stream event, but there is even more to be seen. Checkout the full live-stream below to view the trailers, gameplay and other specific information below.

Season of Arrivals is available now with the Shadowkeep expansion ($34.99) or the separate season pass ($9.99). Destiny 2 Beyond Light releases on September 22 2020, and is now available for pre-order ($39.99). For more information on Destiny 2 including; patches, updates and news, stay tuned to Bungie’s Website and follow Bungie and Destiny on twitter.

Be sure to stay tuned to Informed Pixel to get additional information as it is released. Want to speak to the team and interact with other gamers? You can do so over on the Informed Pixel Facebook page or on the Informed Pixel Twitter account.

Listen to my personal project, The Noble Core Podcast on Spotify and Apple. Our weekly Podcast primarily focuses on Halo news and content; as well as Destiny 2! Follow us on Twitter @TheNobleCore, where you can also find my co-host @JonTheChief117 as well.