Skip to main content

Delve into The Dark Below with the opening cinematic for Destiny’s first add-on

Someone leaked the opening cinematic for The Dark Below, the first downloadable content expansion for Bungie’s massively multiplayer shooter Destiny, which comes out on December 9. In the video you meet Eris, a central figure of the new expansion and the quest-giver for the new story content.

Eris is the sole survivor of an expedition into the Moon’s Hellmouth, where they encountered a Hive entity named Crota, the big bad of The Dark Below. The main story is divided into three quests: “The Dark Below” introduces you to Eris and lets you prove your worth to her. “Ritual of Sacrifice” brings you down into the Hellmouth and its sacrificial chambers. Finally, “Fist of Crota” brings you face to face with the potential threat to Earth that is gathering power deep beneath the Moon’s surface.

Recommended Videos

The expansion also has a variety of bounties, a new Strikes, exotic gear, and a new six-player raid, most of which centers again around Eris and the Hellmouth. The Dark Below arrives on December 9 for all platforms.

Will Fulton
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Will Fulton is a New York-based writer and theater-maker. In 2011 he co-founded mythic theater company AntiMatter Collective…
Destiny 2 studio Bungie hit by layoffs, internal game delays
A runner runs in Marathon.

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.

Read more
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."

Read more
Destiny 2: Where is Xur for the weekend of December 30
destinys weekend vendor xur extends stay psnxbox live hacks destiny

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.

 

Read more