Join The Club
After announcing the upcoming conclusion of its live service development, Bungie has started providing more details about Destiny 2's final update. In the first of its planned Dev Insights blogs covering what will be included in the coming last hurrah, Bungie laid out the loot and activity reworks accompanying the return of the Director.
While the June update will ease Destiny into its indefinite hiatus with reprised fan-favorite weapons and the return of the Sparrow Racing League, the Monument of Triumph update's best—and most bittersweet—change is the reemphasizing of Destiny 2's long-neglected patrol zones, giving Guardians reasons to reconvene in its public spaces like we did in its early years.
"Destinations have always been a foundational part of Destiny, whether you touch down briefly for a Public Event, roam areas for patrols and secrets, or find various factions moving against each other. Our first steps as Guardians were in the Cosmodrome and beyond that we've spent over a decade patrolling the wilds of our Sol system to protect the Last City," Bungie said. "With the return of the Director, we felt now was a better time than ever to thrust players back into these frontiers."
In Monument of Triumph, those patrol zones will be fully incorporated into Destiny 2's current gear paradigm. Both public events and destination activities, like the Dreaming City's Blind Well and the Moon's Altars of Sorrow, will offer tiered loot pools like you'd find in Portal playlists, consisting of returning fan favorite gear that's been updated with new perks and set bonuses.
Activities in the Cosmodrome, for example, will now offer retuned Rasputin weaponry like Seventh Seraph weapons that were originally available in Season of the Worthy, now boasting expanded perk rolls and a new origin trait. Other samples of the overhauled destination loot pools include Pluperfect joining a Vex-themed arsenal on Nessus and updated Braytech arms like High Albedo—now a kinetic micro-missile sidearm—on offer at Europa.
Guardians returning to Destiny 2's planetary Destinations will find new threats waiting for them, too.
"Over the past few years, Destiny 2 has focused more attention on structured campaigns, exciting playlists, and challenging cooperative activities. This has led to Patrol mode feeling left behind; without strong rewards or a clear reason to return, many players have had little incentive to explore the wilds of Sol," Bungie said. "To remind Guardians of the allure of wandering these worlds, we're introducing a new feature on seven destinations: Distortions."
Cycling on an hourly rotation, Distortions will tear the sky open above a patrol zone, empowering its enemies for an additional challenge and offering "a small injection of new things to do and new rewards to discover." Completing activities in a Distortion-afflicted destination will offer higher-tier loot, and you'll also be able to earn guns from a new Distortion-exclusive weapon set.
Bungie says the goal of Distortions is to revitalize "the connected areas that players patrol where they can encounter other Guardians and work together on shared goals," and I'm glad to see public destinations being championed once again.
Patrol zones were where I fell in love with Destiny: They were venues to casually revel in its still-peerless gunplay, linger in the hallways of its history, and cross paths with a stranger as they chase their own aims—a passing, transformative moment that makes any world believable as something bigger.
It's no coincidence that I grew more distant from Destiny as it grew more disinterested with its public spaces, shifting its focus to the pinnacle gear chase that was increasingly siloed away in cordoned playlists. After watching it shrink into a setting of corridors and closed-off chambers, it's comforting to see Destiny rediscover its appreciation for the spaces its players shared years before—even if it's just so they can offer their farewells.
If you're playing Destiny 2 when the Monument of Triumph update arrives on June 9, I'll meet you planetside.
