Guardians Will Be Able To Tap Into The Darkness In Destiny 2 This Fall

Destiny 2's wrapping up Year 3 and looking to plunge headlong into Year 4, details of which were revealed in a livestream today. The stream started with a tribute to George Floyd and a call to action for charitable donations, followed by General Manager Mark Noseworthy and Game Director Luke Smith sitting together on a blank stage -- their first time together in months, Noseworthy said -- to showcase the upcoming content.

Destiny 2's fourth year, Beyond Light, will debut on Sept. 22, 2020 on all platforms, and Smith called it the "beginning of a brand-new era." Players will visit Europa, the birthplace of the exo, with its "long-dormant secrets hidden beneath the surface." They'll also encounter Eramis, who draws power not from Light, but from Darkness, and seeks revenge against the Traveler for what it did to her people.

Guardians will actually have the ability to wield the Darkness for themselves, a brand-new damage type alongside Solar, Arc, and Void. "It's a lot of work" to add it to the game, Smith said, as he showed off the Stasis ability. Beyond Light kicks off an "era of darkness" that will continue into the next major expansion, The Witch Queen, coming in 2021, and Lightfall in 2022.

For people planning to upgrade to next-gen consoles, you'll be able to play Destiny 2, with all your expansions, at no additional cost. There are also plans for inter-generational cross-play, allowing, say, people on PS4 to play with people on PS5 -- and, as has long been promised, eventually full cross-console cross-play.

To deal with the massive amount of older content in Destiny 2 -- which already totals 115 GB -- Bungie plans to move some of the less-played content into the Destiny Content Vault, or DCV. This will also allow the team to take some content from the first Destiny game and provide it in the sequel, "unvaulting" content at various times. The Cosmodrome will be one of the areas returning, with all its strikes, and the Vault of Glass raid. You can learn more about the DCV in an article on the website.

Meanwhile, the next season, Season of Arrivals, which is now live, will tie up a number of loose threads in the year. There's a new Darkness-themed dungeon, a new public event with the label "Make First Contact" and the Road to Ruin exotic quest. The dungeon, Prophecy, doesn't launch until later this afternoon (5 PM Pacific), and it "involves the Nine," as Smith said -- and that's all he was saying for now.