Destiny 2 Shadowkeep: The Past Haunts Us

Destiny 2 is at an interesting point in its life right now; it’s broken up with its longtime partner and is trying to thrive in a different way. Last year, I wrote a small love letter to Destiny 2’s DLC launch of Forsaken in 2018, which is my favorite campaign launch from Destiny to date. This love letter comes from a different place, considering the change in pace of the releases and also the change in content. Ever since Bungie broke from Activision, things were different. They had the freedom to listen to what the fans want, and really implement these things in game. With the release of Shadowkeep, we got a taste of how the year 3 content in Destiny 2 would be like moving forward as an independent game company. 

Similar to Forsaken, year 3 content is being released in seasons, this one being the Season of the Undying, focused on the Vex. Shadowkeep was a smaller campaign with entirely less story content than Forsaken, but the change of pace was a way to get people to continuously play throughout the season to learn more, instead of finishing the campaign and moving directly to endgame content. The way the game flourishes now is through a season pass where players are rewarded for playing consistently, and through constant updates of content week after week. Destiny 2 has never felt more alive, and I think this change of pace was exactly what longtime fans needed.

Getting past the nitty gritty of what Bungie has done differently, I want to talk about my love for the story content we received in Shadowkeep. My favorite character in the Destiny series has returned, with a chilling and unexpected story that makes you appreciate the thought gone into the lore. Eris Morn, a shady looking character with Hive (one of our enemies) eyes and a glowing orb in her hand, appeared to us first in the original Destiny game. She spoke to us about Crota and how we needed to stop the Hive prince from his rituals and schemes, or we were to be doomed. Eris Morn lost her fireteam, her ghost, and her eyes to Crota, but she persisted with vengeance to guide us to victory in the original campaign. She hasn’t appeared in Destiny 2 until Shadowkeep, and the reason for her appearance was unsettling.

Destiny players have learned about the Darkness, a looming threat to our existence, since day 1. We have only heard about this enemy in passing, but knew that the threat was always there in some way. We didn’t realize how close the Darkness was until we found it on the Moon. What Shadowkeep does so well in this campaign is similar to what the best horror films do. They show off something shocking in the distance and make you sit in something uncomfortable to really take in its horror. In the first mission, you’re guided through the Moon (a familiar place to Destiny veterans) and are led on a path of eerie discovery. We dive deeper into the Moon to find tucked in its cracks a large, black ship shaped like a pyramid, and what we know to be the Darkness. What’s really unsettling is how Bungie set up the scene, where you are running through a maze of this cavern with floating “nightmares” of dead guardians sitting around. Once you finally get through this, you have to round a big corner and smack in the middle of this open space is the Darkness. If your guardian is running through the space, the game makes you stop running when the pyramid appears so that you have to slowly walk towards it, really making the environment feel shocking and spooky. 

Even throughout the map, when you’re exploring the Moon you will have patrols that scream out to you for help. When you realize that these patrols are nightmares of dead guardians, it feels even more creepy. The nightmare hunts and part of the campaign were to take out old enemies that we had slain before, but in a new fashion. What better way to haunt someone than with the strongest enemies of their past? The ones who brought the most pain to the people around us, the main enemies from each campaign in Destiny, were reborn in this campaign; the best part is that they were reborn from the Darkness, which has been looming here for some time. Our enemies are back again because we are frightened of them, and that’s how the darkness has a hold on us. There is a really unsettling scene at the end of the campaign where we are face to face with the Darkness for the first time, but they are in the form of your guardian. When you talk to them, even though they have your same face and voice, their mannerisms are frightening and inhuman. 

What resonated with me the most about Shadowkeep is how the game depicts trauma and loss. Eris has been a very strong character throughout the series, but she has lost everything. In this game, the Darkness uses the nightmares to manifest Eris’s dead fireteam members and friends around her, where we can physically see them tormenting her throughout the story. This was a really good depiction of how trauma can affect people daily and how we can try to work through these issues we face. Every week, we were given a quest to learn more about each member of the fireteam, find memorabilia of that person, and return it to Eris. Each time we did this, Eris relived the traumatizing moment that they died and talked about how they were as a guardian and a friend. Each time, the nightmare disappeared and Eris thanked us for finding the item. It was a beautiful way of showing how getting help and coming to terms with these thoughts can slowly help over time; maybe the nightmare won’t go away forever, but it will heal for now. 

Destiny 2 is at a really great place right now in its new living world, with constant updates to the game and the space at large. The current season is wrapping up and left us with more questions of the Darkness and how long it’s been working in the shadows. After this campaign, I still feel confused as to what the Darkness and the pyramid is, what they truly want, and how they will impact the future of Destiny. Bungie is setting us up for a long road of content and I’m excited for the ride.Now we can look forward to the future of the content in hopes that the next season pass answers some questions, while keeping the grind fun and rewarding.