Two days ago, Bungie turned off the Destiny 2 servers while the studio looked into a problem that had players apparently losing progress on in-game challenges. This outage lasted a bit longer than everyone expected, with the free-to-play loot shooter remaining offline for nearly 20 hours. So what happened? Today Bungie pulled back the curtain and explained exactly what went wrong and why it had to roll back the game, erasing a few hours of folks’ quest progress in the process.
On January 24 at around 2:00 p.m., Bungie tweeted that it was taking Destiny 2 offline while it investigated an “ongoing issue causing certain Triumphs, Seals, and Catalysts to lose progress for players.” A few hours later, at 5:51 p.m., Bungie tweeted that it had possibly found a fix for the issue and was testing it, but was unable to specify when or if Destiny 2’s servers would come back online. Nearly four hours later, Bungie tweeted for the last time that night, announcing that Destiny 2 would not be playable that evening. Nearly 12 hours later, at around 9:55 a.m, Bungie announced it had finally solved the problem and servers would be coming back online following a hotfix. The nearly 20 hours of downtime had some players worried about the game’s health, and its future. After years of bugs and broken updates, it was really starting to feel like the seven-year-old shooter was being held together with duct tape.
So what happened during those 20 hours and why was the game down for so long, seemingly with little warning? Bungie has explained what broke, why, and how it was fixed in its latest blog post. And surprisingly, the developer is more transparent than you might think, going into technical details of the issue.
According to Bungie, shortly after releasing a previous update for the game (Hotfix 6.3.0.5) players began reporting that many Triumphs, Seals, and catalysts had vanished. Bungie realized that this was being caused after it moved some “currently incompletable” challenges into a different area of the game’s data. To do this, Bungie used a “very powerful” tool that lets the studio tinker with a player’s game state and account. Apparently, due to a configuration error, Bungie accidentally “re-ran an older state migration process” used in a past update. Because of this error, the tool copied old data from this past update into the current version of the game, which basically undid some players’ recent in-game accomplishments
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“Once we identified that the issue resulted in a loss of player state,” wrote Bungie, “we took the game down and rolled back the player database while we investigated how to remove the dangerous change from the build.”
After creating a new patch that removed the mistaken change the issue was fixed, and following some testing, Bugnie deployed the update. However, as a result of this patch, all player accounts had to be rolled back a few hours before the troublesome update went live. This means any player progress made between 8:20 and 11 a.m. on January 24 was lost. Any purchases made during this time got refunded, too.
While it sucks that the game was down for so long and that the team was forced to spend what sounds like many late hours trying to fix their mistake, it’s refreshing to see a developer be so open and honest about what happened and how it was fixed. In a time when games feel buggier than ever and players are fed up with delays, outages, and broken updates, it’s smart to pull back the curtain and show everyone just how hard it is to make, maintain, and sustain video games as complex as Destiny 2.
Hopefully, next month’s new Destiny 2 expansion, Lightfall, and the upcoming Season 20 rollout will go a little smoother than this recent 20-hour hiccup.
Free-to-play online MMO looter shooter Destiny 2, released in 2017, is one of my favorite video games. I play it all the time. I have multiple characters. I own all the recent seasons. It’s fantastic. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned for the game’s future, as with each passing season, it seems to become more prone to breaking. In fact, as I write this very paragraph at around 4:00 p.m. on January 24, the game remains offline as Bungie continues to investigate the latest problem. Meanwhile, many players are hoping for a brand-new engine and game, likely in the form of Destiny 3. But things are never that simple.
Earlier today, Destiny 2 was taken offline across all platforms as Bungie investigated players losing progress on triumphs and seals, which operate like in-game achievements and challenges. It’s not the end of the world, sure, but just last week a few players reported losing their characters along with all their progress and items. And before that, it was a new mission not updating properly for players. And before that it was something else. In 2023, after years of updates, expansions, and more, it feels like Destiny 2 is starting to buckle under its own weight.
Taking a peek at Bungie’s official support account on Twitter—which often updates frequently to let players know about upcoming patches, server issues, and other vital info about Destiny 2—you can find a lot of tweets that amount to Bungie going “Welp, this isn’t working. We are trying to fix it. More info later.” Online games not working every day isn’t new and it’s not a problem exclusive to Destiny 2. But is starting to become a more prevalent issue with the aging shooter. Looking at that support account, a lot of the tweets about bugs or broken missions don’t have weeks between them, but just a few days or less.
Anecdotally, my time playing Destiny 2 lately has been buggier than ever. This new season brought with it both cool new heist missions and weird lag that I’ve never seen before. I still run into the problem of the game not counting every PvP match, making us play more to finish challenges and weekly quests. And I’ve just accepted that in-game bounties tied to kills, missions, or other activities won’t always update as they should. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize that I and other players I know have just gotten used to Destiny 2 not being reliable. And it seems to be getting worse, not better, as the game expands and adds more layers and systems.
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Look online and you’ll quickly see players suggesting that Bungie needs to move on to a theoretical Destiny 3, a game that likely will happen—and is maybe in development already—but which hasn’t been confirmed. During today’s extended downtime, Destiny 3 was trending on Twitter as players argued over the shooter’s future and stability. For some, the idea of a new engine and fresh slate felt promising, giving hope it would solve many of Destiny 2’s problems. Others pointed out that a brand-new game isn’t easy to make or simple to launch, and would likely be missing features or content at release. Plus, there’s no guarantee it would fix all of the emerging problems.
Personally, I think a new Destiny would likely be a good move to eventually make. It could allow the devs to make something more flexible and able to handle the type of events they’ve spent years crafting and perfecting. But I also am not naive enough to believe it would fix everything or be easy to create. Still, I get the frustration players are feeling as Destiny 2 remains consistently inconsistent.
Like an old PC or blender, Destiny 2 mostly works, but it’s covered in duct tape, dents, and dirt. And every so often you have to kick it or mess with the cord to get it to start. Sure, it still rumbles to life for now, but you’ll probably need to replace it one day. And with Destiny 2, I get the feeling Bungie will be slapping on the tape for as long as it takes for Destiny 2 to survive through the end of its planned roadmap, which will likely see the final season arriving in 2024. Past that, well, I don’t know. Hopefully by then, the game will at least feel more stable and reliable, not worse.
Bungie, the studio behindDestiny 2 and the older Halo games, has a public service announcement for all of its PlayStation 5 guardians: Double check that you are actually playing the PS5 version of the game and not the PS4 version! Don’t feel bad if you are playing the wrong version though, Sony has done a terrible job with all of this stuff.
Destiny 2’s next-gen ports launched alongside the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles back in 2020. While they weren’t new games, they were improved versions of the old-gen originals, with higher resolution and 60fps support. They even loaded faster and felt snappier overall than the PS4 or Xbox One versions. So most players made the free leap to the next-gen editions of Destiny 2, assuming they owned a next-gen machine. On Xbox this was easy. You just…downloaded Destiny 2 on your Xbox Series X and that was that. Over on the PlayStation 5, things aren’t as easy and it seems a “notable” number of Destiny players on Sony’s fancy new console are still, in 2022, actually playing the old PS4 port and not the fancier PS5 version of Bungie’s online shooter.
In its weekly blog post, This Week At Bungie, the studio included a small PSA about the situation, explaining that a “notable number of PS5 players” were not playing the next-gen port, but were stuck playing the older, slower PS4 version of Destiny 2. To remedy this, Bungie pointed users toward a specific webpage created by Sony to help explain how to download and install the right version of your specific game on PS5.
Read More:The PlayStation 5 Features Most People Forget About
While I’m sure this PSA will help some folks out, it’s yet another reminder of how Sony is far behind Microsoft and its Xbox Smart Delivery System. I and many others joked about Smart Delivery at the time. “What a silly buzzword! Who cares!” we said. Now, it’s become one of the best things about the Xbox ecosystem.
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On Xbox, I never think about this stuff. I just hit download and the correct version of the game installs on my machine and all the saves and everything just…work. On PS5, I have to dig around to install the correct version or in some cases, I have to install both games to transfer saves between them. It all feels like it’s held together with duct tape and doesn’t seem like a good way to handle any of this. It shouldn’t take six steps to play the right game on the right console!
And while this issue will become less and less of a problem as fewer and fewer games are released across both console generations, it makes me nervous about how all this will work on the inevitable PlayStation 6.
Meanwhile, for those still playing Destiny 2 on Xbox One or PS4, Bungie also shared the news that it’s shrinking the game’s memory footprint by compressing some textures. It offered up some comparison shots to show how little the textures are affected by the new system and it looks good. Anything to help make games smaller and more efficient sounds great to me!
Destiny 2‘s most controversial practice is no more. Bungie confirmed during its 2022 showcase today that no more of the loot shooter’s content will be vaulted. That announcement comes after lots of fan complaints in recent years as huge portions of the game were removed to make room for new expansions.
Beginning with the 2020 release of Beyond Light, Bungie has been “vaulting” past content, deleting entire campaigns and planets, to try and keep the game’s digital footprint and technical demands within reason. But that’s also led to the loss of any semblance of an entry point for new players, as well as the erasure of some of Destiny 2‘s best story beats (I’m looking at you, Forsaken).
“We’ve also been working on the Destiny engine behind the scenes, preparing our technology and our game to last for many, many years to come because Destiny 2 is not going anywhere and neither are your expansions,” Destiny 2 general manager, Justin Truman, said during Tuesday’s showcase. “We want this story since we first communed with the Darkness on the Moon to be fully playable from start to finish and we’re happy to announce today that we’re not planning to sunset any more expansions.”
Screenshot: Bungie / Kotaku
What Truman is saying is that Bungie wants some level of continuity between the launch of Shadowkeep in 2019 and the conclusion of the Saga of Light and Darkness with The Final Shape sometime in 2024. That four-part arc revolves around encountering The Darkness and its agents, and is as good a starting point as any to stop pruning. Seasonal content, meanwhile, will seemingly still continue to filter out every year.
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One clear takeaway from Truman’s little speech was that Destiny 3 is not coming anytime soon, if at all. Destiny launched back in 2014 with Activision as the publisher, a company notorious for the aggressive annualization of gaming sequels. Bungie broke from the Call of Duty maker in 2019, however, and was purchased earlier this year by Sony. The launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series X would have been a natural peg for Destiny 3, but instead Bungie released a new-gen update for Destiny 2 at the end of 2020.
This puts the game in line with other big MMOs like World of Warcraft and Warframe, which continually iterate rather than rebuilding from scratch every few years. And while it’s definitely more sustainable from a development point of view, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t slightly disappointed. I’d love to see Destiny take some big risks and make some huge changes after The Final Shape concludes. We’ll see if it can still manage that evolution on the existing foundation that launched back in 2017.
Of course, Truman did only say that this is what Bungie was “planning” to do, and plans can always change, especially if the technical constraints become too big down the road. Destiny has promised (and done) a lot of things over the years that it later reversed course on. Hopefully an end to vaulting content isn’t one of them. And only time will tell if the stuff that was already banished will get a second chance at some point.
No more speculation, after a last minute leak, Bungie has moved official reveal timing and has finally spilled the beans about Destiny 2 season 17, a new experiment in near-total secrecy ahead of launch.
Today, along with a new trailer, Bungie has finally revealed the actual name, Season of the Haunted, which did leak out in some circles ahead of time, but no one knew whether or not it was legitimate. It was!
So, why hide that name? Well, it may be about what’s haunted, which is Calus’ Leviathan megaship, which was sunset when the Pyramids arrived and Beyond Light hit, but now has returned this season to in a “corrupted” form to commune with the dormant pyramid on the moon. Calus has been working on some sort of scheme to serve the darkness, possibly to attempt to become a Disciple like Rhulk, and guess what? We have to stop him.
And we will do so using solar 3.0, the new subclass which was also kept hidden until right this moment, even though again, some pretty steep clues pointed in that direction (for once, one of my predictions panned out).
We have a small amount of information about the seasonal content that launches in just a few hours. The list:
Destiny 2
Bungie
Story: Leviathan is corrupted, overtaken by darkness. We will be going back through old zones like the Dogs/Throne rooms that are now transformed. The story centers on Crow, Zavala and Caiatl confronting old “Nightmare” demons who haunt them, like Eris was haunted by her dead fireteam. The shots indicate Crow faces Uldren, Caiatl faces Ghaul and Zavala might face his dead former love, I don’t recognize her otherwise. I need to confirm this, but the Leviathan seems like it may be an actual freeroam space now, at least the parts that have been brought back for this season (and possibly permanently).
Nightmare Containment: We are back to fighting Nightmares on the moon. These are not the old Nightmare Hunts, but battles that will take place inside the newly corrupted Leviathan somewhere. This activity is free for all players. Not sure about playercount yet, but Bungie has been doing mostly 6 man stuff as of late.
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Bungie
Sever: This is some sort of paid seasonal activity that has players navigating the Underbelly of the Leviathan to reveal the truth behind Calus’s plan and sever the Nightmares he controls. Not sure if this could be something akin to Season of the Splicer’s Expunge-type missions.
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Bungie
Solar 3.0: No details here other than we can “light the flame of creativity” with the aspect and fragment system. Many speculated that the new element was being kept a secret because it was tied to the story, but no confirmation of that here yet.
Destiny 2
Bungie
Loot: From the press kit, I’ve seen images of moon-themed armor that I assume is the season base set, some wicked, Ghost Rider-looking armor that are probably high-level ornaments, and a solar Eververse set like the void one we got last time. New loot is again, pretty evil looking, and includes a new scout rifle, rocket launchers, glaive and legendary trace rifle. But most pressingly, Bungie has brought back four classic Menagerie weapons, Calus MINI Tool, Beloved, Drang and Austringer, presumably with new perks and an origin trait. There’s also a new scythe players can wield, but I think that’s like a relic weapon for the activity, not actual loot.
Destiny 2
Bungie
Trespasser: The one exotic Bungie is revealing is one that they accidentally revealed a few weeks ago, the return of the Trespasser, Shiro-4’s exotic arc sidearm from Destiny 1’s Rise of Iron. This is the season pass exotic all players will get.
The Dungeon: No new information here other than its “secrets are tightly under wraps.” Given the events of the season, I’d be somewhat surprised if it wasn’t on the Leviathan, but technically the dungeon is not seasonal content, it’s bought separately through the deluxe edition of Witch Queen or in a special two-dungeon pack for sale. So really it could be anywhere. I don’t believe any loot or screenshots from the dungeon are shown in the press kit.
It does not sound like things like the vaulted raids or Menagerie are returning as activities, but uses some of those old areas, and the fact that the ship is back at all could open that door down the road.
Even with this last-minute reveal, it’s clear that Bungie is probably keeping a lot about this season a secret. Was all this worth the mystery and hype? I mean, logging in to find Calus’ ship above the moon is a pretty big deal, but we’ll see how the season pans out from here. I’m certainly excited, based on what I’m hearing here.
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Xur has been fixed by Bungie and now he’s selling exotic and legendary armor that have actual non-trash stats again. But that’s not why you should log in and buy something from him this weekend. Rather, he’s selling an exotic weapon you need to purchase.
No, not Queenbreaker, which is the main weapon on page one, but Xur has been selling random rolls of both Hawkmoon and Dead Man’s Tale now that both can no longer be farmed from their vaulted year 4 missions. Today, it’s the Dead Man’s Tale you need to take a look at on page 2, as it’s probably the best roll he’s sold so far, depending on who you ask. Xur is in the Tower Hangar, by the way.
The roll is:
Fluted Barrel – Handling+++, Stability+
Ricochet Rounds – Stability++, Range+
Composite Stock – Stability+, Handling+
Vorpal Weapon – Better damage against bosses and Guardians in their supers
Destiny 2
Bungie
This roll with all its stability and handling improvements just make it feel a lot better to use. I’ve heard some people say that a Vorpal roll he sold a while ago with Extended Barrel, Steady Rounds and Fitted Stock was better, but it comes down to preference, and I’m not sure range is that worthwhile on a scout over other options. I really do think you will like the handling and stability focused roll.
The catch here is that Xur’s randomly rolled exotics cost extra over his normal ones. You need to spend both an Ascendant Shard, the endgame masterworking currency, and an Exotic Cipher, which you may have laying around already, but if not, you have to do a playlist activity quest from Xur himself to get one. Plus 125,000 Glimmer and 200 Legendary shards. Yeah, this ain’t cheap. But keep in mind you’re getting yourself a god roll that you previously may not have found after a hundred Presage runs.
I already have one with Vorpal, Composite and Ricochet, but mine has Corkscrew instead of Fluted. For me, probably not worth spending all that just to get Fluted, but I mean, I’m considering it.
While you’re at Xur, anything else worth picking up? 26 intellect, 64 stat legendary arms on my Titan, but other than that, I’m not seeing anything that really jumps out at me this week. I saw another 48 stat armor slip in there, so I’m not sure Xur is fully fixed just yet. In any case, try to grab that Dead Man’s Tale if you can afford it.
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When Destiny first shipped it didn’t have much of a story to speak of. Years later, that’s definitely changed. There’s still plenty of ridiculous jargon, but also characters, conflicts and histories Bungie has spent nearly a decade diligently cultivating. With Destiny 2: The Witch Queen, it’s all coming to fruition, and a lot of what players through they knew to be true about the game’s world has been turned on its head.
Spoiler Warning: You don’t need to go into The Witch Queen a blank slate to enjoy it, but if you want and or plan to at some point, turn back now.
In the conversation below, Kotaku weekend editor Zack and I get into some of our thoughts about what the latest expansion’s big reveals mean for the story and the series. But first, a quick recap of what recently transpired in the universe of Bungie’s loot shooter MMO.
Hive god Savathûn is reborn with the Light and tries to hold the Traveler hostage in her Throne World. The Vanguard kill her and free it, but in the process discover that the Hive were not always evil, but in fact tricked into becoming so by a Disciple of the Witness named Rhulk for the purpose of waging war against the Traveler.
Screenshot: Bungie / Kotaku
While Guardians manage to kill Rhulk in the Vow of the Disciple raid, the Witness is still at large and massing his army of Pyramid ships to possibly destroy the Traveler for good. At the same time the Vanguard are questioning everything they thought to be true about the Light vs. the Darkness and turning to ever more questionable means to achieve their goals. And with that out of the way, let’s get to it!
Ethan Gach: So Zack, where do we even start? The end of the Witch Queen campaign, and especially the new Vow of the Disciple raid, is the biggest update to Destiny’s ongoing space opera since The Taken King and also completely changes the meaning of so much of what came before.
Zack Zwiezen: Boy howdy are things getting exciting! I fully admit that I bounced off Destiny 2 around the first expansion/season. I came back briefly for Shadowkeep and have now been back since Beyond Light. And the way Bungie has really kicked the narrative into high gear these last two or three years has been exciting. And Witch Queen’s campaign and ending are just increasing the momentum of it all so much. I’m honestly pumped to see what happens next. That wasn’t always the case in the past with Destiny 1 or 2.
Ethan: Yea it’s a big change, and I’m curious if it will ultimately be for the better. For so long Destiny’s most interesting stories were in its ancient history. But the biggest events are now about to go down in Light Fall and Final Shape.
Zack: Right! And I do wonder about that too. But it’s awesome that now all that stuff from Taken King, those tomes of old shit, are finally relevant in a big way in-game. It also feels like Bungie paying off story threads that were established years and years ago. Which I never expected because of it being a live game.
Screenshot: Bungie / Kotaku
In my head, Destiny 2, GTA Online, WoW, etc are games that just…never end. But it seems like Witch Queen and recent seasons are actually building to a big end. A finale. That’s really interesting to me.
Ethan: We’ll see! Promises of building to something have been made for years, and even now Final Shape is a way of kicking the can down the road (Bungie’s official line is that it needed more time to tell the story).
Zack: That’s a fair point. Perhaps I’m just too naive. Too hopeful. But the ending of Witch Queen has me pumped. I can’t help it!
Ethan: I do think the future feels more open than ever, because with these new twists, there aren’t really the same established rules. What had you most pumped coming out of the campaign?
Zack: Well, before we go any further, and I assume this will be made clear above this but: SPOILERS!
Anyway, I’m excited about how Beyond Light and Witch Queen have really destroyed the idea of Darkness being an inherently evil force and the Light (and Traveler) being a force of good. Instead, we see that these are just two things that have always existed and can be used for good, bad or anything in between.
The Hive can use the Light. We can use the Darkness. And Witch Queen really does a good job of tossing curveballs at Zavala and other characters who, for so long, seemed to know it all. They got how this all worked. No more. And that isn’t even touching on The Witness and what that all means for Destiny 2 moving forward. How did you feel about Witch Queen’s twists/turns and narrative?
Screenshot: Bungie / Kotaku
Ethan: I think it definitely helps add stakes the game has never quite had before. Destiny has always had this front-of-the-box problem. A friend picks it up and asks you what it is and there’s no one character you can say it’s about. There wasn’t even a defining antagonist. It was like Star Wars if you took out Luke and Vader. Now we have that, sort of. It’s you vs. The Witness and his army of disciples and Black Pyramids.
Zack: Yup. The Darkness was always this vague, hard-to-care-about threat. Now, we have The Witness and his army and the Guardians and their allies. We have a war coming. And that feels big.
We also got some interesting lore revelations about Savathûn and her connection to The Witness. That she was ultimately tricked by The Witness into becoming what she became. It also means that our new bad guy is responsible for creating The Hive, in a way. So he feels more established already. A real threat that Destiny has lacked.
Ethan: Yeah, the Hive have always been in this weird position. Unlike the Fallen and the Vex, which are alien races with lots of factions pursuing their own agendas, the Hive were the closest to the Darkness and driven by pure evil. It’s satisfying in a way that there’s actually a pretty good (as far as Destiny goes) explanation for that now.
Screenshot: Bungie / Kotaku
What do you think Savathûn’s end game was? The campaign shows that the Traveler gave her the Light willingly, but then she tried to capture and hold the Traveler hostage, to what end it’s still unclear. Do you think she’ll come back (her ghost Immaru is still at large)?
Zack: Maybe this is me being too hopeful, but I think she was actually trying to protect the light. Now what she would do with the Traveler and all the death that might follow, that’s probably bad. But I do think she really is afraid of the Witness. Or at least, sees him and his army as a credible threat to the galaxy. And she wanted to protect the Traveler to give her a tool to defeat him and reshape the galaxy as she wants to via Sword Logic or what have you.
As for if she comes back, I don’t think so. She was killed on her throne world. But she also had the light. Hard to say. 50/50 on that one.
Ethan: Where do you think this leaves the Vanguard? The start of Destiny 2 saw the Tower destroyed, the Traveler attacked, and the Speaker killed. Since then we’ve lost Cayde-6 and a bunch of planetary vendors once the Pyramids moved in.
Last year showed Zavala is as reliant on the other factions we’ve sometimes fought with as much as his own people, and Ikora Rey is grappling with having dished out Guardians’ deepest secrets to Savathûn when she was disguised as Osiris, who, speaking of, is taking a really long nap and is Ghostless. It’s not looking good for that whole crew!
Zack: We are definitely entering the famous “All Is Lost” moment of the saga. I think the next few seasons may focus on Zavala and crew having to rebuild, relearn and prepare for what’s coming. I also think his faith in the Traveler and the Light is fading, and how he deals with that will be a big part of the upcoming narrative beats.
Screenshot: Bungie / Kotaku
Do you think we encounter the Witness before the next expansion, during one of the upcoming seasons? Or is that a big tease that Bungie holds onto for another year?
Ethan: I think they hold it. The final showdown might not even come until Final Shape, at which point the saga of Light and Dark ends and then we’re left with a new set of possibilities. What’s your current theory on what the conflict between The Witness and the Traveler is even about? Do you think the Traveler is just a space ball or is there actually someone inside? Now I’m getting flashbacks to the end of Mass Effect 3.
Zack: Oh, I’ve been thinking about this a lot! One theory I have is that someone of the same species as the Witness is inside the Traveler. That perhaps this has all been part of a conflict between two people. Another option is that the ball contains pure light, which is dangerous if just…left out in the universe.
I also think that Destiny is building towards a finale that is all about how light and darkness together is the future. That balance between the two forces is what is needed for peace. And that we may one day play a Destiny 3 where Fallen and Cabal are fighting alongside guardians, all wielding the light and the darkness to maintain balance. (But that is a very out there theory, I know!) What do you think is inside the Traveler and how does this conflict go down between it and the Witness? Is it a war? Or are we wrong to expect that?
Ethan: I’m not sure! I like your idea of there being another person from the Witness species in the Traveler. It does feel like the Light and Dark are very shackled at the moment, and there’s a possible future where those forces are unleashed and dispersed on a much larger scale that sort of rests the universe so to speak. And instead of focusing on the conflict between them, Destiny can just tell weird stories about space wizards. The alternative is to keep pulling back a new curtain to reveal a deeper layer of intrigue underlying the world. That way seems fraught (as we’ve seen with Horizon Forbidden West) and prone to an arms race that results in multiverse stuff (there have been gestures in that direction I feel like with The Nine and some of Destiny’s more mysterious neutral third-parties).
We’ve covered Savathûn’s turn, where this leaves the Vanguard, and what could happen with the Witness down the road. Two other things before we split. What do you think of Rhulk and what are your thoughts on torturing Lucent Hive?
Screenshot: Bungie / Kotaku
Zack: So I’ve not played the new raid starring Rhulk aka an anime villain transported into Destiny. But I do like the idea that we might start to learn that so much of this universe has been manipulated and controlled by the Witness and his minions of darkness. Maybe someone like Rhulk was the reason the Traveler left the Fallen?
As for that whole bit about the lucent hive and torturing them to get information, I think I disagree with Crow. The Hive have, unlike basically any other enemy faction in Destiny, been basically pure evil. They kill and destroy everything they find. So I think if the best way to get what we need is to get some Cabal psychics together and mentally torture them for a bit, I’m not against. But I also have bad memories of getting killed by Hive in the Dark Below raid. So maybe I’m just angry about that still…
Ethan: But these are Light Hive, so it remains a question! I think Saladin’s story about an orphaned thief is also a really interesting window into how might doesn’t make right even when it comes to the Light.
Rhulk is fascinating to me because with him comes an entire new alien race and history that helps give some texture to the sprawl of Destiny’s world building. It’s been roughly a billion years since he created the Hive. In the time since, they’ve obliterated and conquered countless other alien civilizations, including the Cabal. Rhulk was also a victim of the Light and its inability to make people better through advanced tech and plentiful resources. The Hive wasn’t even the first alien race he tried to subjugate.
In some ways it almost makes me feel like there’s no way a final war in Earth’s solar system could be grand enough. It really feels like a backwater. Maybe the Traveler will flee again and we’ll have to follow it this time.
Zack: Ohhhhh, now that is an interesting theory. Destiny 2 ends with us and others chasing after the light and the Witness in pursuit too, maybe licking his wounds after a big fight. Hmmmm. I think, regardless of what will happen, I’m excited to see the next chapter in Destiny’s storyline. Which is great! The shooting and looting in this game has always been fun. But now that the story is also ramping up and getting better, I find myself even more down to play Destiny. As marketing teams love to say (but it’s true now), this really is the best time to be a Destiny player.
Destiny 2’s long-awaited Witch Queen expansion is finally here and players are starting to dig in. Unless they’re on PS4. Thanks to a unique set of circumstances players on Sony’s last-gen console are currently waiting in line just to download a giant 72 GB update.
Long queue times when a new Destiny 2 expansion or season goes live are practically a ritual at this point. Players boot up the game after server maintenance is complete, click to log on, and then wait. It can take anywhere from 10 minutes to a couple hours before the majority of players are all able to re-enter the game. On PS4, however, players are having to wait in these queues today just to get the chance to start downloading all of the new content they need.
“Due to an unforeseen issue, PS4 Required Content is not yet available for download,” Bungie wrote on Twitter last night. Unlike players on PS5, Xbox, and PC, those on PS4 weren’t able to pre-load any of the roughly 72 GB update. Today after Witch Queen officially went live, they realized they still couldn’t download it until they were inside the game itself.
“UPDATE: PS4 players must log into the game to start the rest of their Witch Queen download,” Bungie revealed shortly after the 12:00 p.m. EST launch. Some players reported having downloads start in the background while they were still in queue, while a few seemed to have trouble getting it to start even after they got in.
Witch Queen will of course be just as good a few hours from now, though it’s always a bummer when people make plans to dip into the latest content only to be foiled by technical hijinks. 72 GB is also no small amount of data for players relying on WiFi or who live in a place with slower or metered internet connections.
“Sorry to my PS5 friends who will be waiting for me to get on so we can start the campaign,” wrote one PS4 player on the Destiny subreddit. “ I’ve tried to get hold of a PS5 I really have. On the plus side, if there are any server issues, hopefully they should be ironed out by the time we get on a couple of hours later.”
Sony announced last month that it was purchasing Bungie, so maybe it will have the PS4 situation sorted out by the time the Lightfall expansion hits sometime in 2023.
Today, after months of waiting, Destiny 2 players were finally treated to Season of the Lost’s big reveal, setting up next week’s massive Witch Queen expansion. At least, that is, the players who could get the new cutscene to work. For everyone else, the only way to partake in the big moment was to watch it on YouTube.
Season of the Lost, which began back in August 2021, saw its final mission, Exorcism, go live earlier today. In it, players venture across a sky bridge they saw pieced together one week at a time to defend Awoken queen Mara Sov’s inner sanctum while she performed a ritual to purge the worm god inhabiting the Witch Queen, Savathûn.
It’s a fun little mission with big stakes and an even bigger showdown against the Hive forces storming Sov’s palace. There’s just one problem: It’s currently busted. Some players can’t get the game to count them as having completed the mission. Others can’t get it to progress to begin with. And then there’s another group who can’t get the mission’s pivotal cutscene finale to play.
That’s what happened to me after I finished Exorcism. The screen cut to black and then…I was back in space on the selection screen. I replayed the mission and…the same thing happened. My mission progress registered but I couldn’t watch the finale, which was meant to have answered one of Season of the Lost’s biggest questions. I now know the answer not because I got to watch the cinematic but because an NPC on the last leg of the quest told me what happened.
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It’s not entirely clear whether the cutscene isn’t playing for people because of bugs plaguing the rest of Exorcism or because players are exiting it too early after killing the boss. Because it’s a six-player matchmade mission, you’re at the mercy of the strangers you’re with, and it seems like whenever some players leave early it cancels the entire cutscene for everyone. Bungie confirmed on Twitter that it’s currently investigating the issues.
It’s a somewhat deflating wrap-up for what has been, on the whole, one of Destiny 2’s stronger seasons. Despite being the longest, it still had a healthy smattering of interesting character arcs, loot grinds, and fun refreshes with the mid-season addition of the 30th Anniversary update. The only real drawback was that it was stretched over half a year, double the normal runtime. Backloading the finale onto the week before Witch Queen goes live was clearly meant to help build hype for the new expansion, but now it also means players will only have one week to actually catch the closer before almost everything from the last year of Destinydisappears.
The studio was generous enough to lower the recommended power level from 1270 to 1170 so at least now everyone else can enjoy Season of the Lost’s conclusion, at least once it starts working.
Destiny 2 is in a weirder spot than usual right now. Anticipation for its upcoming Witch Queen expansion is through the roof, but the game’s current seasonal story hasn’t progressed in months. Nothing highlights the gap between the growing hype and the current snooze better than the game’s latest weekly update. While construction on the mysterious bridge in the background of the Dreaming City finally reached completion, Season of the Lost’s most suspenseful questions remain unanswered.
Over the weekend, Reddit user Killomainiac pointed out something most Destiny players hadn’t noticed: a bridge was forming between Queen Mara Sov’s tower in the Dreaming City and a launch platform off in the distance. Reddit user TheTealMafia then shared a helpful timelapse showing construction began back in August of last year. Players speculated that the last piece would be added today and with it the latest twist in Destiny’s arcane, ever-growing lore. The bridge’s final piece did arrive, but any associated story twist remained MIA. “So i guess we will burn that bridge when we get to it,” quipped one player.
Season of the Lost started with a bang and confirmed that Savathûn, Hive god of mischief, had kidnapped the Warlock Osiris and impersonated him for almost a year. In the weeks that followed, Destiny 2 players were treated to a tense and intimate series of exchanges between resurrected anti-hero Uldren Sov and his power-hungry sister Mara all while Savathûn played mind games while trapped in a magical cocoon, like some alien Hannibal Lecter.
Then in early October 2021 these story beats ground to a halt after a reveal players had been waiting for for years forced Uldren to confront his dark past. That was fine. With The Witch Queen delayed to the following year, Season of the Lost would have to span six months, longer than any previous season. Plus the excellent Bungie 30th Anniversary update arrived in December, breathing new life into the live game with new missions, loot, and a mystical horse.
Six months later the bridge is complete, but not the story behind it. Screenshot: Bungie / Kotaku
It didn’t bring any meaningful additions to Season of the Lost’s familiar drama, however. Neither did January. Now it’s February, and with just one more weekly reset to go before The Witch Queen goes live, it’s clear Bungie is waiting until the last possible moment to bust Savathûn out of her enchanted sack and show players the fallout from her meddling.
That could take the form of a final story mission dropping next week, or just a simple cutscene. The weekend before Beyond Light launched in November 2020, Bungie invited players to participate in a live event that saw the Traveler (Destiny 2’s giant white sphere) healed for the first time since the game began. So that was a thing. Or there’s always the chance Season of the Lostwon’t see any final resolution until after Witch Queen begins.
At this point, no matter what the outcome, it would be hard to put a damper on excitement for the new expansion. But even so, Season of the Lost’s questionable pacing has certainly made Destiny’s longest season feel somehow even longer.