Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate
A paid expansion for Bungie's online shooter Destiny 2, The Edge of Fate drops the Guardian onto Kepler, a planetoid at the rim of the solar system, and starts the Fate Saga with a new storyline. Its launch also reworked the base game: a new activity menu, a rebuilt armor system and tiered weapons arrived for every player, owner of the expansion or not.
Top 3 Reasons to Play
- Kepler plays like a puzzle box: winding terrain hides secrets behind vents and platforms that only the right ability can reach. Bungie's narrative director cited Metroidvania games among the influences on the expansion.
- Solo Ops: self-contained runs of around ten minutes that a single player can finish without assembling a fireteam.
- Difficulty that scales. The campaign launches with Brave and Legendary world tiers, and Fabled and Mythic become available once it is finished, each paying out stronger rewards.
Story and Lore
Once the Light-and-Darkness saga has closed, the Nine send out an invitation, and a time-displaced train car carries the Guardian to Kepler, a planetoid in the Oort Cloud. Bungie frames the setup as a reunion with the Nine and a confrontation with an ancient threat that predates the Traveler.
Kepler's central problem is a singularity at its core. Should it collapse, the Solar System goes with it, and holding it together means gathering strangelet capsules and delivering them to the Altar of Relativity. Two rival factions are circling it for their own reasons, and the campaign follows them through an Eliksni-run power plant and a reactor on the verge of meltdown before ending in the space beneath the singularity itself.
The campaign runs through 14 missions. The Invitation starts it and The Message closes it; the twelve in between are Fallow, Nostos, Commencement, Saturnism, Transient, Gouge, Morphology, Charge, Disruption, Calculus, Quarantine and Criticality.
Gameplay and Mechanics
Combat keeps Destiny 2's familiar frame: first-person shooting, the Titan, Hunter and Warlock classes, and ability-driven builds. The overhaul targets the systems around it.
Kepler is split into four major regions with free-roam encounters, and three destination powers handle traversal. Matterspark turns the Guardian into a glowing energy sphere that squeezes through vents and can power machinery with an electric discharge. Mattermorph throws projectiles that turn glowing objects into walkable pathways. The Relocator, an energy cannon placed at fixed points, opens temporary portals across gaps and hazards.
Beyond Solo Ops, the Portal groups the remaining activities into three lanes:
- Fireteam Ops: group runs through PvE content from past seasons and expansions, strikes included, for up to three players.
- Pinnacle Ops: longer content such as Exotic missions.
- Crucible Ops: the PvP playlists.
Modifiers can be stacked before launching any of them. Banes buff enemies, while Boons buff the player at the price of a lower Reward Rank, and a higher Reward Rank improves the end-of-activity score and loot. Bungie introduced 50 new modifiers with the Portal.
Armor 3.0 renames the six stats Health, Melee, Grenade, Super, Class and Weapons. Each piece belongs to one of six archetypes that fix its two highest stats, with a third rolled from the remaining four, and two matching set pieces unlock one bonus while four unlock another. Weapons and armor both drop in Tiers 1 to 5; a Tier 5 weapon carries a unique shader and an on-kill effect. New weapon types include a crossbow with reclaimable bolts, a spread-shot hand cannon, a longbow with intrinsic overpenetration and a rocket-assisted pulse rifle.
Finishing the campaign awards the Graviton Spike, a hand cannon that switches between Arc and Stasis damage. Other Exotic weapons from launch include New Land Beyond, a sniper rifle with stacking precision-damage multipliers, and the scout rifle Third Iteration. Exotic armor arrived as Moirai for Hunters, Melas Panoplia for Titans and Eunoia for Warlocks, and a Legendary-difficulty campaign run guarantees a new Exotic armor piece.
The Desert Perpetual raid serves as the group endgame, available to players who own the expansion and have finished the campaign. It accepts one to six players and ends against Koregos, the Worldline. An Epic version with extra mechanics and an alternate final boss was added later.
Characters and Factions
- The Nine are the powers behind the invitation; their Unknown Space, reached through Kepler's singularity, is where the raid takes place.
- Orin, formerly the Nine's Emissary, has since disavowed the role.
- Lodi is a new ally pulled out of the Space Age, a former worker at the U.S. Department of External Observations.
- Warlock Vanguard Ikora Rey meets the Guardian on Kepler in the opening mission.
The Aionians, descendants of a colony ship's crew, live around the Aionian Campus. The House of Exile, an Eliksni house under Archon Levaszk, worships the singularity, and its Fallen Corsairs are one of the expansion's two new enemy types. The other, the Vex Kobold, is a drone swarm. Maya Sundaresh leads the Nessian Schism Vex: an Exo known as the Conductor, she was a Golden Age scientist before her consciousness ended up in the Vex Network, and she wants the Nine's power for herself.
Editions
- Standard Edition: the campaign, Kepler, access to the raid and one active Rewards Pass.
- Year of Prophecy Edition: Edge of Fate plus the Renegades expansion, a dungeon and four Rewards Passes covering both expansions and both major updates.
- Year of Prophecy Ultimate Edition: everything in the previous tier plus an Exotic emote, an Exotic Sparrow, the Dark Side Legends bundle of Star Wars-themed armor ornaments, the New Land Beyond sniper rifle with its catalyst and ornament, and a Secret Stash of upgrade materials and cosmetics delivered each season.
- Collector's Edition: the Ultimate contents together with physical items from the Bungie Store, among them a 1/8-scale statue, sold with or without a game code.
Steam also carries Destiny 2: The Collection, a ten-item bundle that gathers Edge of Fate and Renegades with the earlier expansions, content packs and the Dungeon Key Pack.