Check out Destiny: The Taken King’s opening cinematic

By Gabe Gurwin August 6, 2015

Destiny: The Taken King arrives next month — almost exactly a year after the original game launched — and to get you one step ahead of the game (to be exact, you’ll be two minutes and 18 seconds ahead of the game), Activision has released the expansion’s prologue cinematic early.

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“Once, I looked up at the stars,” the narrator says. “I was a Guardian. I stood against the Darkness. My eyes saw hope and a future full of Light. Six of you went down into the pit. You sought revenge for those I lost. You slew a god: Crota. With his last breath, he reached out across the night, and now the night has answered.” The voice sounds an awful lot like Jen Taylor, best known for her work as Cortana in the Halo series. However, a keen-eared reader has informed us that it’s actually Eris Morn, voiced by Morla Gorrondona.

Crota, for those who didn’t play the previous Destiny expansions, is the final boss of The Dark Below in a raid very ambiguously named “Crota’s End.” The “Taken King” is Oryx, his father, and if the opening cinematic is anything to go by, he’s going to be a bit tougher. As you can see in the above video, his arm pulses with energy, which he then directs at one of his servants as his Dreadnaught drifts through space … along with a massive fleet of ships.

“We have slayed his brood. We have murdered his son. And now the Taken King comes for us all.”

Destiny: The Taken King arrives September 15 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, and Xbox 360, and contains a new campaign, new multiplayer maps, and a new raid. It will set you back $40, but If you’re just jumping onto the Destiny train, a $60 “Legendary Edition” is also available, containing the original Destiny game and both of its previous expansions.

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Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…

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Destiny 2 studio Bungie hit by layoffs, internal game delays

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Amid a wave of layoffs at Destiny developer and Sony subsidiary Bungie this week, Destiny 2: The Final Shape and Marathon have both reportedly been delayed.
On Monday morning, tweets from developers revealed that Bungie, which was acquired by Sony in January 2022, was suffering layoffs. This was followed up by a report from Bloomberg that went into more detail about the layoffs and their impact on Bungie's future games. Sony and Bungie have not officially commented on the delays yet, although the Bloomberg article mentions that Bungie CEO Pete Parsons will hold a team meeting later today to discuss the layoffs further. This all follows contractor layoffs at Sony studio Naughty Dog earlier this month, which happened as that studio struggles to develop and release a The Last of Us multiplayer game.

Bloomberg suggests that these layoffs, like others at Sony this year, are tied to internal game delays. While Destiny 2: The Final Shape is publicly slated to come out in February 2024, Bungie reportedly told staff that it's now going to come out in June 2024. Meanwhile, we learned that Bungie's revival of Marathon was apparently targeting a 2024 launch -- although no release window was given officially -- but will now come out sometime in 2025. These delays make the PlayStation 5's 2024 game lineup look pretty sparse right now outside of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and it suggests that Destiny 2's next season will be one of its longest.
As of now, Sony and Bungie have not publicly commented on the layoffs or delays, but we will update this post when they do say more about it.

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Destiny 2: Lightfall fails to deliver its Avengers: Infinity War moment

A titan wielding a grenade launcher in Destiny 2..

The comparison between Destiny 2: Lightfall and Avengers: Infinity War is immediate from the opening moments of Bungie's latest expansion. There is no more exposition to get through; the Witness, a mythical villain that represents the root of the Darkness that Guardians have fought against for close to a decade, is here, and the Traveler who has given our heroes the Light and their god-like abilities is under direct threat. The stakes couldn't be higher, but Lightfall doesn't live up to that moment.

I'm not drawing connections here that shouldn't be made -- the bombastic opening moments of Lightfall call back Infinity War's unrelenting momentum in its first act. The Traveler is under siege in Lightfall and Guardians are dismantled by a flick of the Witness' wrist, echoing the immediate slaughter brought by the hands of Thanos moments before he arrived on Earth. That feeling is the same; our antagonist is here, and there's nowhere else to run. In the final moments of the campaign, a member of my fireteam even exclaimed, "hey, that's a line from Infinity War."

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Destiny 2: Where is Xur for the weekend of December 30

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Seasoned Destiny 2 players know they can count on the elusive merchant Xur to make an appearance with special exotic items every Friday, but what's not so clear is where you'll be able to find him. Below, you'll find a map with a marker that indicates where Xur is, as well as a list of his wares.

Who is Xur?
If you're new to Destiny 2 and need a bit more information about how this works, you should know that Xur is a special vendor who sells exotic weapons and armor. Each week, he comes to the solar system with a slate of goods, including an exotic weapon and one piece of exotic armor for each character class. As of The Witch Queen, he now stocks legendary armor and weapons and sells additional exotic weapons with random rolls every week.
Where to find Xur (December 30 to January 2)
The trouble with Xur is finding him. We always know when Xur will show up -- at the 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET reset each Friday. The question is where Xur will be. Previously in Destiny 2, Xur’s location was marked on the map. He’s now unmarked and harder to find each weekend. Here’s where to go to track down Xur, the Agent of the Nine, as well as everything you need to know about what he’s offering this week.