The Bare Story Essentials For ‘Destiny 2’ Heading Into ‘The Final Shape’

Destiny YouTuber MyNameisByf just released his absolutely epic, 10 hour recap of the entire story of Destiny 1 and 2 ahead of the release of the game’s final Light and Darkness expansion on Tuesday. I’m a few hours in and unsurprisingly, it’s the kind of high quality work he always delivers.

I absolutely recommend everyone watch it but…it’s admittedly a tall order and we’re now about 72 hours from release, so I would understand if you can’t devote 10 of them to a video. As such, I wanted to write a bare essentials piece here about the story which I think will set you up for the finale.

This is not a complete timeline piece. Not at all. This is mainly about the last year of content and what I deem are the most essential elements heading into The Final Shape based on what we know about it from recent events and the marketing. So, let’s go. Bullet points baby!

MAIN STORY

• Long ago, a race of people on a distant planet found The Traveler, a large sphere that granted them wonderous advancement for their civilization, but was totally silent in terms of guidance as they grew.
• Then, they found The Veil, an object of “darkness” in contrast to the Traveler’s Light. It was structure and stillness and a different sort of power. The race tried to merge both the Traveler and the Veil which they believed would form a perfect entity. The Traveler rejected this and fled the planet, causing devastation.
• Compiling all their power, the civilization formed into a single being to pursue the Traveler, The Witness, who aims to finish what the civilization started in order to create The Final Shape, the perfect stillness and preservation of all life without much of anything actually “living.” It has been stalking the Traveler endlessly with a black fleet of pyramid ships and has finally caught up with it on earth.
• The Witness, using The Veil and our Guardian’s connection to the Traveler, cut a hole in the Traveler and went inside. We have been unable to follow until recently where we sent new Guardian Crow through the portal using a combination of Veil energy and Wish Dragon magic. Now, we’re following him, and that’s where the events of The Final Shape start. We’re inside the heart of the Traveler The Witness is currently corrupting as he tries to form the Final Shape. We, the Guardians, who have been given power by the Traveler, are tasked with stopping him and saving the entire universe.

CHARACTER SPECIFIC STORYLINES

• Crow used to be a man called Uldren, who killed Cayde-6 our friend and the Hunter Vanguard. We killed Uldren as revenge, but he was resurrected by a ghost and became a Guardian named Crow with his memory wiped. He’s slowly been getting those memories back, but he’s still cool. Now, Crow may have been tricked by a Wish Dragon into wishing that he had never killed Cayde, and that may be the reason he arrives in the Pale Heart and find Cayde there, who doesn’t know how he got there or why he’s alive. But Wish Dragon wishes are often monkey’s paws, so there may be some problems to come. The wish concept is not confirmed yet, but heavily implied by recent lore reveals.
• Last City leader Commander Zavala will come with us into the Traveler. Centuries ago, he had a son who was killed by the Fallen in one of the first conflicts with that species. This caused a rift between him and his wife, who split from him and eventually died of old age as he was immortal as a Guardian. The most recent Final Shape trailer indicates The Witness is attempting to corrupt him specifically. We don’t know how, exactly, but I believe it could be something to do with bringing his family back (as I’m not sure what else could tempt him like this).

• The surviving Hive gods are hanging around, but we do not know what/if they will play a role in the story of The Final Shape. But just in case, we should know Hive trickster Savathun, now a Guardian, has been resurrected and is currently off doing…something…somewhere and she’s had such an essential role in Destiny’s storyline it’s hard to believe she won’t show up at some point. Meanwhile, her sister Xivu Arath is a servant of The Witness, but has recently been made mortal by a ritual from Eris Morn, our brooding witch friend.
• Our biggest non-human allies are Mithrax, the leader of House Light, a friendly faction of Fallen who follow the Traveler and aid our cause. And then there’s Caiatl, the current Cabal leader that we have a standing alliance with after Xivu Arath destroy their homeworld. She may or may not have a crush on Zavala. We know they will help us in this fight to some degree, as seen in trailers.
• Xivu Arath’s Hive, Witness-controlled Taken and a faction of the Vex are the Witnesses main forces, but we also have learned he has created a new race based on a dead world’s population, Lubrae, doing experiments with the light and darkness. They are the Dread, and we’ll fight them for the first time in this expansion.

Those are the basics? Again, a very brief overview and not for players who know absolutely nothing about the story, but I hope this helps. See you Tuesday.

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