Season of the Chosen
As Season of the Hunt comes to a close in its final week, Bungie has finally released their first new trailer for Season of the Chosen and it goes without saying that fans are excited. This season focuses around the Cabal daughter of Calus; Caiatl, who has put together an army of Cabal in hopes to form an alliance with the Vanguard to fight back the Hive.
In the closing of Season of the Hunt, we pushed back Xivu Arath’s forces and Caiatl sees this as the perfect opportunity to attack back. Going by what we can see in the trailer, Caiatl hosts a meeting with Zavala and Osiris whereby she proposes her alliance. She finishes her sentence by asking the commander to bow to her – it goes without saying that this didn’t go well. After taking a firm stance, Zavala rejects with a simple, “no” and very quickly after, Cabal laser sights start to aim in on both Zavala and Osiris.
Season of the Chosen is set to launch for players on February 9th 2021.
Trailer Analysis
The trailer opens with Caiatl’s ship slowly coming into land on the Cosmodrome, you can see just below it that the Cabal have already setup base here with a new colour theme.
When Destiny 2 first released, the Cabal was the main focus of the storyline, followed by having a very red themed colour scheme, and in the Season of the Chosen trailer, we can see that the colour theme is now blue.
From the screenshot on the right, you can see the new symbol glowing a bright orange in the background which represents Caiatl’s new forces. Blue flags have risen, blue barricade shields have been placed onto the ground, and blue reinforced walls have been built in the background.
As the trailer continues, we get introduced to the scene that I described at the start of this article, however, fans have caught their eyes on something that comes after this. We get introduced to the new armour of Season of the Chosen which appears to be the new season pass armour. The season pass will rank up the more you play the game, like the battle pass from Fortnite. The more you unlock ranks, the more rewards you get as you play the game.
Further on from this, the camera pans out as three Guardians are walking away from what appears to be a war table in the center of the room. With the city in the background, Vanguard flags hung up, and last city bots placed around the area it feels pretty safe to say that this is a new tower location.
Nothing has been confirmed as of yet, and with the new season launching next week, Bungie might wait for players to get their hands on the new season before releasing more new information.
Players have been asking for quite some time for an update to our current tower social space, and going by the Season of the Chosen Bungie page, this is where Commander Zavala will be stood too. Data minors have also leaked a new tower social space which has full 3D models that have been developed by Bungie, we think this will be a new tower added to the game for Destiny 2’s fall expansion; Witch Queen.
Throughout the voice-over commentary from Caiatl, the trailer shows us a huge tank-like structure that has set itself into Nesus. Caiatl talks about this as if it’s sentient, a living structure like the leviathan; home to her emperor father, Calus. Text appears saying, “New Strike Inbound – Breach the Moving Fortress”. This confirms that we have a new strike.
The scene after shows us the battleground arena. This is the area where Caiatl will throw her most dangerous combatants at you, testing both your might and skill.
With each foe getting stronger and stronger, Bungie also uses this time in the trailer to introduce players to the new exotic bow; Ticuu’s Divination. This new addition to the exotic loot pool fires multiple Solar arrows that can track several targets at once.
We are currently unsure whether or not Ticuu’s Divination is a special weapon or a heavy weapon. Because we know that the bow fires solar rounds, we can rule out the kinetic slot.
The fact that the bow fires solar tracking rounds on multiple targets means that enemies are going to experience a burn effect. This could mean that this exotic bow takes its reign in the heavy slot.
Game modes such as PvP, weapons that track targets are usually placed into the heavy weapons slot, Bungie does this for balancing reasons. The community has voiced their opinions very loud and clear about the state of PvP, personally, I feel that adding a weapon that tracks targets for you, placing that into the energy slot, would be a tough decision to make.
Classic strikes return to the game as shown next in the trailer, strikes that veteran players of dating back in Destiny 1’s Cosmodrome will remember. These strikes include: Proving Grounds, Devil’s Lair and more. Battlegrounds also open up into more locations as we see Cabal raging war on Europa.
We see Caiatl’s Cabal firing at a Guardian team of three, we know it’s Caiatl’s Cabal due to the blue flags that have been risen from the snow. That’s not the only thing we see, though! The trailer cuts to a first person shot of a Hunter as if we are playing the game. We see three new weapons that the hunter is using, all themed around Trials of Osiris. First, we see the Hunter in the air using a rocket launcher, it appears that the rocket launcher has the same skin as the rocket launcher; ‘Sins of the Past’, which was a Leviathan raid rocket launcher reward back in Destiny 2 vanilla.
The second weapon appears to be a submachine gun, we don’t see much action with this gun, other than the Hunter seems to be firing it from quite some range. So I would imagine that the range stat on this new weapon to be very good. Last but most certainly not least, the hand cannon. It is very, very clear that this is trials themed just from looking at the retina symbol which is the Eye of Osiris. Bungie already showed us a sneak peek on their Twitter as to what the new Trials amour looks like, have we just the three new weapons too? Trials of Osiris is set to return to Destiny 2 with all its new gear and weapons on February 12th, 2021.
Continuing on from the trailer, we see more action between three Guardians and the Cabal on what seems to be the Cosmodrome base location, then the trailer cuts to a cutscene style point of view where we can see Zavala and Crow across from Caiatl and two of her Cabal legions. In the center there appears to be a chest with a weapon on it that a Cabal Sion picks up and presents to Caiatl. She takes out her blade and says, “I will see you on the battlefield”. Could this indicate that we do in fact team up with the Cabal to fight back against the Hive?
The trailer then continues on to show a very quick and snappy montage of action packed gunfire and finishers, before fading to black and showing us the inevitable cliff-hanger of the trailer.
What we see here before the trailer ends is a damaged and destroyed Cabal ship. The damage appears to be pretty intense with bits of broken pieces above the ship.
We also see the hanger door left open below the ship indicating that what ever has happened here, this ship has seen better days. Dark mist surrounds the ship, with a blue-like shine in the background. The last time we seen a shine like that was when Bungie brought to us any Nine related content.
During this short clip, Osiris is speaking in the background, he says, “There is no light here”. These five words are so very important because this heavily implies a lot. The damage of this ship is something we have never seen before in Destiny, only ever described in it’s written lore. Going by the black fog I would say that it’s safe to make the assumption that we are at the edges of our solar system.
To further validate this, Osiris states that there is no light here which instantly puts the thought into our minds that this is the attack of the Darkness. Where else is the Darkness currently in our solar system? That’s right, the edges of our solar system. which would explain the black mist surrounding this damaged ship. Of course this is all speculation, however, Osiris’ words do heavily scream ‘Darkness’.
And with that said, this brings the trailer to its end, thus revealing the new artwork for Season of the Chosen, followed by its release date of February 9th and its closing date of May 11th.
Roadmap
Over on the Bungie website, we can see that the new Season of the Chosen web page has been published, and with this comes the new road map. A road map is something that Bungie provide us with at the announcement of every new season which accurately and visually shows the player what content is coming throughout the season and which date we can expect it by.
Opening Season of the Chosen on Feb 9th will be the Behemoth Hailstone Battlegrounds, Devil’s Lair and Fallen S.A.B.E.R strikes. The H.E.L.M also comes online which players will be directed to when launching into the game. New Stasis aspects are being introduced to the game which also goes live on Feb 9th. Luke Smith has already confirmed that new Stasis aspects will be released with every new season that we get with Destiny 2 for the foreseeable future. The quest to start this journey will be avaialble via the Stranger on Europa.
February 12th brings us Trials of Osiris whereby players can gather their fireteam and jump into the most competitive game mode in all of Destiny. Trials bring the players new armour and weapons to grind for, including the continuation of the newly added adept weapons when going flawless. Also on Feb 12th will be the new Cleansing Battleground.
Oracle Battlegrounds and the return of Iron Banner comes into the game on Feb 23rd, as well as the new Proving Grounds strike which is only available to season pass owners on March 23rd. Continuing on brings us to March 30th whereby the Proving Grounds strike enters the playlist for all players, this includes Nightfall’s too.
Iron Banner once again returns to players on April 13, then on April 20 – May 9th, players will be reunited with the beloved game mode, Guardian Games. For those who are new to Destiny, Guardian games is an annual event whereby all three classes (Titan, Hunter, and Warlock) all compete against each other to see who is the best class of the year! Last year, Titan took the crown. Come on Warlocks, this is our year!
This brings us to the end of the roadmap, however Bungie says that there is still more content to come and we as players all look forward to that. We of course have some new exotics to chase, and players have already found data mining leaks which shows some new exotic quests coming this new season too. Bungie also bring back the return of Umbral Engrams, which are darkness infused legendary engrams. These engrams were first introduced to us back in Season of Arrivals, and I am excited to see their return.
There is still so much more to talk about, but this article has gone on long enough. Although be sure to keep tabs on MGN Destiny 2 as we will be bring you all the latest on Season of the Chosen. Stay safe out there, and I’ll see you soon, Guardians.
Links
Get Destiny 2: Beyond Light on Steam
Official Beyond Light website by Bungie
Popular Beyond Light videos collected by MGN
Credits
| Program | Freedom! Scholarship |
| Author | Brad Hahn |
| YouTuber | Brad Hahn |
| Publisher | MGN TV |
| Game | Destiny 2 |