Destiny 2 Beyond Light: We Don’t Have To Be Ruled By Our Darkness

I’ve been playing Bungie games for nearly 20 years, but I’ve never emotionally connected with one of their stories like I did with Destiny 2: Beyond Light. Since Bungie split with Activision in 2019 a lot of players, including myself, have tempered our expectations and have been happy to see what they can offer on their own while maintaining a good work-life balance. 

2019’s Shadowkeep was a solid story expansion that I enjoyed, but it was smaller than 2018’s Forsaken  and reused enemies while offering little new content. The Year 3 season pass content continued along a similar path and offered mostly serviceable repeat events with maybe one or two new things a month, but overall not a lot to do unless you were a Destiny 2 diehard grinding for god rolls or pinnacle gear. But with Beyond Light, Bungie is firing on all cylinders, and it finally feels like they are making the game they’ve always wanted: an action MMO with memorable characters, stories, and best-in-show gameplay. 

Beyond Light’s new destination, Europa, is a gorgeous area with some of Bungie’s signature breathtaking skyboxes, and this expanison’s sizable story is designed to take you to every corner of this world. The story follows the player character confronting Eramis, an Eliksni (Fallen if you’re nasty) leader who has communed with the long-teased pyramid ships and has gained the ability to wield The Darkness. In order to beat Eramis, we too must commune with the pyramid and learn to wield its secrets ourselves.

I can’t get much more into it without spoiling Beyond Light so stop reading here if you don’t want to be spoiled.

When the pyramid ship was discovered on the Moon in Shadowkeep, it terrorized us with nightmare versions of enemies from Destiny’s past. I’ve always felt haunted by past mistakes and have struggled with guilt for my entire adult life. I got chills seeing the twisted forms of fallen guardians all over the Moon, because I saw them as my past failures. 

When the pyramid ships appeared all over the system in June’s Season of Arrivals, they reached out to us again with vague messages implying that we are being held back by the Traveler and the Light, and need their Darkness to evolve. “Salvation” is their offer, according to the final cutscene of Shadowkeep, but the nature of that salvation is unclear.

For Eramis, salvation comes in the form of recreating her past. She uses the power of The Darkness to create a new identity for the Eliksni, fittingly named House Salvation. She uses The Darkness’ gift, Stasis, to try and recapture the power she had when she fought for The Traveler.

I understand Eramis and relate to her on some level. I’ve often felt ruled by my guilt and I’ve let it seep into so many aspects of my life from trivial things like feeling bad for not opting into newsletters when I make a new account on any given website and entire personality traits like the fact that I have trouble taking compliments because they make me feel guilty for being proud of myself. But where my guilt and regret motivate me to cherish the people in my life, here and now, Eramis’ pain only pushes her towards revenge and hatred.

“One by one we will rise again,” she tells her disciples before giving them their own shards of Stasis. “This is our future, our enemies stand no chance against this power. The Great Machine will finally know our pain.”

We see throughout the cutscenes of Beyond Light that Eramis isn’t fully in control of Stasis, as the splinter that gives her power occasionally covers her arm in ice.

In the final confrontation of the story, Eramis uses Statis to freeze the player’s ghost and takes away our Stasis splinter, seemingly rendering us powerless. It’s only when we look inside ourselves and “focus [our] power” that we’re able to once again wield Stasis and defeat Eramis.

In her last moment, Eramis loses control of Stasis and turns to the distant pyramid ship screaming in frustration and anger. Stasis engulfs her and the final shot of the story shows her alone, reaching towards the pyramid, consumed by Stasis. 

As players make a final journey to the pyramid to permanently unlock the Stasis subclass, our ghost tells us that they’ve got our back and we aren’t on our journey alone. 

“I’m here with you,” Ghost says. “Through Light or Dark… We’re partners. Always.”

My past, my losses, my regrets, my Darkness, can be useful. It humbled me, hardened me and made me appreciate things more. But it also held me back and kept me up countless nights of my teenage years fraught with guilt.

The Exo Stranger tells us at the end of the story that she has seen the Darkness consume many people, including guardians but tells us that this time we’re different from all the others.

“Light and Dark swell within you, side by side, giving you strength,” she says.

I know that I’m always going to carry my guilt with me. As much as I wish I could get rid of it, it’s a part of who I am. But years of working on it and having a better support system have meant that I don’t have to let my darkness define who I am, and Beyond Light made me realize that I’ve come farther in that journey than I ever thought I would.

I can’t use my Darkness to make giant walls of ice, but I don’t have to let it freeze me in place either. 

I, like most of the playerbase, balked at losing my hard-earned guns and armor from three years of this game but the change has meant that I’m playing the game like I haven’t in years. I’m trying new guns, hunting rolls and coming up with builds that would’ve been redundant before.