Gorgeous new Destiny 2: Forsaken art is hiding a few secrets

We learned a lot about Destiny 2's upcoming Forsaken expansion during its official unveiling earlier this month. As fans had hoped, it looks to be a major overhaul on par with the Taken King DLC released for Destiny 1, with new weapon slots, nine new supers, a new weapon type (bows!), a challenging new raid and some big patrol areas, plus a promising "PvPvE" mode called Gambit.

Yesterday, Bungie stoked the fires again with an E3 trailer showing the apparent death of Hunter Vanguard leader (and fan-favorite goofball) Cayde-6. As you may have noticed, we've been at E3 as well, and you'd better believe we've got Things To Say about Forsaken. Those things will be coming later this week. In the meantime, we got access to a whole bunch of cool Forsaken artwork that we wanted to share. So let's dive right in, starting with...

New environments

The main area of Forsaken, the Tangled Shore, is in the Reef, an Awoken-run strip of purple space stuff.

The Tangled Shore is overrun by "Barons," a bunch of big bad dudes who broke out of the Prison of Elders.

Big bad dudes like this guy, to be exact. Each Baron has their own powers, and you've got to hunt them all down via—you guessed it—special missions called Baron Hunts.

It's cool to finally get a look at (what looks like) the inner workings of the Prison of Elders.

Thank goodness we have prisons for despicable creatures like this.

It's not just Barons and Fallen, mind. The Cabal Red Legion are still around. In fact, there are a few familiar faces in Forsaken...

New and returning characters

Cayde-6 sure looks lively here, but this shot could easily have been taken before his demise. RIP.

And this was the Awoken whodunnit: Uldren Sov, the so-called Prince of the Reef and Master of Crows.

Luckily some friendly Awoken are back as well, like your favorite Queen vendor Petra Venj.

Not to mention whoever this guy is. This image is just concept art, so he may not even be in the DLC, but I sure hope his sawed-off hand cannon thing is.

If you saw Forsaken's reveal stream, you'll probably recognize this guy as the enigmatic vendor for the new Gambit mode. Speaking of which...

Gambit

Gambit is a 4v4 PvPvE mode where both teams race to kill dudes while interfering with the other team. Fighting dirty is part of the experience, so you'd better pick your teammates wisely.

At certain points, you can send one player from your team into the other team's area to sabotage and kill them. I'm always going to call that player the Black Phantom, and nobody is going to tell me otherwise.

Side objectives aside, the gist of Gambit is killing dudes and depositing the Motes they drop to raise your score. Here we see a Hunter about to deposit the hell out of a Mote.

Bungie also just released a new trailer for Gambit. Have a gander:

New gear and abilities

I play as a Warlock on PS4 and a Hunter on PC, so I'm excited to see what space robes the Forsaken is packing.

It's also got some cool swords and cloaks.

I'm digging the platemail look of the ever-stalwart Titan, too.

Here's a better look at one of the new Hunter supers, which I'm calling Dark Drinker in honor of the best sword in Destiny 1. You can see some more supers in Forsaken's official reveal trailer.

Finally, here's a cool new Warlock ability. I don't know if it's due to a new super, a new skill tree, a new exotic, or perhaps some story-specific item that obviates this whole paragraph, but it sure looks like this Warlock's Rift is buffing that Hunter via some kind of Indiana Jones light. Are solar Warlocks finally useful? Here's hoping

Austin freelanced for PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and has been a full-time writer at PC Gamer's sister publication GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a staff writer is just a cover-up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news, the occasional feature, and as much Genshin Impact as he can get away with.