Warning: This article contains spoilers for Destiny 2’s latest expansion, The Edge of Fate. We recommend you complete its story campaign before reading further.
Destiny 2‘s 2024 expansion, The Final Shape, was the conclusion of stories the game and its predecessor had been telling for 10 years–which means that its newest chapter, The Edge of Fate, is setting out on a new course. That puts The Edge of Fate in uncharted waters (or maybe uncharted space) as it lays the groundwork for a new story, and determines the direction Destiny will head for the foreseeable future.
And a lot has changed with The Edge of Fate. The expansion takes players to Kepler, a new planetoid, with a story that hinges on the Nine–powerful interdimensional entities tied to the planets of the solar system. The Nine have been string-pulling entities existing mostly in the background of Destiny 2 for its entire run, but with The Edge of Fate, they’re putting fingers on the scales and driving the narrative in the most direct way ever.
Central to the story is Lodi, a new character introduced with the expansion who’s different from those we’ve seen before. Lodi isn’t a Guardian, resurrected by the Traveler with special new powers and immortality; instead, he’s a man out of time with a perspective closer to those of the people playing the game than of the futuristic space wizards we’ve been dealing with up to now. He’s also from a different background than other characters. Lodi was a member of the US government’s Department of External Observation, an alien-hunting outfit from the 1960s. That has brought a whole lot of new lore into the Destiny world, with a closer look into the past than the game’s story has ever provided before. The Collector’s Edition of The Edge of Fate gives a closer look at the DEO, and even suggests it investigated the Kennedy Assassination–which had fans wondering if Lodi was the man on the grassy knoll.
So many changes coming to Destiny 2 have led to quite a few new questions, as well. GameSpot put a few of those questions to narrative director Alison Lührs in an email interview, discussing the new additions in The Edge of Fate and how Bungie is approaching the game’s ongoing story in its new chapter.
GameSpot: Between Lodi, Ikora, and Orin, there are some really interesting themes of fate, free will, and identity that are going on with The Edge of Fate. Can you talk about what you wanted to portray with the expansion, and what you want players to take away from it?
Alison Lührs: Our primary goal was to kick off the Fate Saga with a question, and that question is a deliberate challenge to one of Destiny’s core beliefs: “Guardians make their own fate” … but do they? In this release, each of our characters is challenged by fate in a different way, and their response tells us more about who they are and who they’re becoming. We want players to engage with that big question themselves and start asking big questions about the world of Destiny.
Something that was really cool about the Light and Darkness Saga was that it caused all the stories being told in Destiny 2 to synergize with each other, but it took a while for the game to get there, with a lot of earlier expansions and seasons focused on smaller, one-off stories. I know that storytelling for Destiny 2 often requires planting a lot of seeds that might grow into something later, providing options for story beats that can come up in the future, rather than following a rigid plan. So in crafting the next “saga” for Destiny 2, what’s the team’s approach?
AL: We already know how the Fate Saga ends! When we set out to plan the next saga, we knew we wanted to set ourselves up for storytelling success by having a goal to work toward. We treat the story structure like a skeleton–we know the basics, but how we achieve them is flexible and adaptable. That means we can seed elements now that will pay off at the very end. As a result, we’ve got a story that feels rich while allowing us as creators flexibility as we go.
What did you learn from the Light and Darkness saga and everything culminating in The Final Shape? How did that shape or alter Destiny 2 storytelling going forward?
AL: The Final Shape was my first expansion (no pressure!!), so the biggest takeaway was proving out a theory–that our players are invested in our characters, and that when we invest in them, it brings everyone along for the ride. The Final Shape was an ensemble character study, and that story’s success proved to us we can go deep on character the way our fans want to. Expect more new friends, deeper time with familiar ones, and a bigger focus on characters moving the world through their choices.
It seems like The Edge of Fate sets up a lot of long-term story threads, but Renegades sounds like it’ll be more of its own thing. So how are you approaching storytelling going forward for Destiny 2 overall, from expansion to expansion? Is there still interest at Bungie in telling big, long-term stories the way the last few years of Destiny 2 have done?
AL: Renegades picks up where Edge of Fate left off, actually–it is a direct continuation of the Fate Saga! We made the deliberate choice not to make this a bottle episode or a one-off, and instead knew our players would engage more deeply if we made Renegades an inherent part of the broader story. We’ll be dealing with the ramifications of III’s death and what the other Nine are doing in response.
Recent seasons were able to put a tight focus on character development, giving one or two characters a lot of attention without the requirements of a bigger, higher-stakes expansion story. How does the change in seasons and episodes affect how you’re looking at telling Destiny 2’s story?
AL: We think we can have our cake and eat it too. We want to keep focus on central characters while seeing how their choices and relationships impact the world in high-stakes ways. Edge of Fate is a good example of this model–rather than cramming in 10-plus characters, we focused on just a handful so we could go deep with them.
One of the more interesting elements of this campaign, from a structural standpoint, was the way a lot of its missions could be played out of order. It created a lot of small moments with specific characters where you got to know them. Can you talk about how you approached telling The Edge of Fate’s story and how you went about creating those missions so that they could be interesting and add to the whole, without needing to take place in a specific order?
AL: First, we wrote out the simple story for what we wanted to tell–think of a short seven-sentence kind of story. Then we thought about all the different areas of knowledge that would fit underneath that story–facts about characters, revelations about the world, worldbuilding–and divided them up by locations we knew we’d be visiting. Each area, or biome, has a different narrative theme, and each of those areas would hold knowledge specific to that area. That way, when the player goes through, one area isn’t dependent on learning something from the other. You can play either first area in the order you like, and then the side quests you unlock are dependent on your progression. It was fun to think of story in this way, and we learned a lot!
The Nine are one of the weirder and more interesting elements in Destiny 2 lore. Can you talk about the challenges of transforming the Nine from a sort of unknowable background element into characters who interact with the player?
AL: The challenge of the Nine is staying true to how alien they are while still making sure that players can understand them. Not just understand them, but understand who they are and what they want. We started by understanding what lore existed, the divide between them, and then started exploring what each of the Nine want as individuals. We did a lot of research on what text for the Nine already existed and then had a lot of fun exploring how to build on that foundation and flesh out each of them as characters.
I’m also wondering if the plan is to lean into just how weird (complimentary) the Nine can be, given the Space Horse, Xur, and all the possibilities of dealing with extra-dimensional beings. Is it tough to balance all those disparate elements of the Nine’s “character”?
AL: It’s fun! One of the joys of telling a great big space epic is finding places to organically tie things together. Storytelling is the act of listening: listening to what we’ve already established, and listening to what players are interested in. Discovering how everything ties together is a really fun exercise in weaving connections.
Lodi is the first Destiny character who feels similar to actual players, since his frame of reference is a lot closer to our time than the many people from the Golden Age in our future. He’s more of a regular guy than any of the Guardians, which provides an interesting new perspective. Can you talk about bringing a more contemporary character into the game–what drove that decision, what the inspirations were for Lodi, and what the challenges were in adding a character like that into the story?
AL: As soon as we knew we were telling a story about time, we knew we needed a character to embody that in our ensemble. Time travel is a thing in Destiny, so we knew we’d be playing with a familiar element, but we wanted to do it in an unexpected way. That means taking a big risk–we could have just had our time traveler come here from the Golden Age, but to the player’s eye, the Golden Age still looks like the future. We also saw opportunity–if our time traveler was from an era closer to the player, there’s tons of space to play with knowledge. What does the character not know, but what do they know our other characters don’t?
Once we decided we wanted to open that door, the most important thing was making sure they felt like they absolutely belonged in Destiny. We did that by making sure they, as a character, embodied principles inherent in Destiny: themes of hope, identity, and a close connection to existing Destiny elements.
With that as our guide, the pieces fell into place. This character must be an optimistic one; their journey must involve a search for definition of identity, and–convenient!–we know we need a new Emissary.
For Lodi the character, we had fun imagining the best possible candidate for time travel. To us, that meant a diplomat, someone gifted with language, someone with a high charisma stat block, and most importantly, someone we would want to spend time with.
The Department of External Observations is a big but mysterious part of The Edge of Fate, and different from the usual scientific organizations we usually hear about in Destiny 2. What were your inspirations there, and what led to bringing it into the story?
AL: We pitched the DEO as NASA meets the Men in Black. Destiny does a lot of Big Science, and we were excited to show the organization that was the foundation behind so much of our world’s philosophical approach. The DEO believes in meeting extraterrestrial life with open arms–that value carries forward all the way into the future. The genre of New Weird is a deep one with tons of examples across media, and we’re excited to explore more.
The introduction of the DEO was a more direct look into some of Destiny 2’s past than I think we’ve ever gotten. With the Nine having these time-manipulation powers, how, if at all, are you thinking about approaching the history of Destiny 2? Time travel has always been an integral and fascinating part of the story, but are you expecting to make it a larger part of the experience from here?
AL: Fear not, [as] we’re not going full time travel; we won’t end up on an island in the 70s with the Dharma Initiative or anything. We want to treat time travel extremely carefully since it’s easy to mess up–I don’t anticipate time travel as a larger part of our experience moving forward.
It is important to note, though, that in Destiny’s world, we want to think of our past with the same optimism that Destiny thinks about its future. The past in Destiny is not the same as ours.
So–did Lodi assassinate JFK? Was it the Nine? Do you have a big string board set up in the Bungie office? Is the answer to all these questions yes?
AL: Lodi has an ironclad alibi. He was with his brother in Illinois at work, and heading out later to watch his nephew’s peewee football game.
More seriously, though, this is a fun Easter egg we’re excited to see fans get excited about! Lee Harvey Oswald was the culprit in this world, same as ours, but the weapon was suspiciously extraterrestrial. The DEO got hold of that weapon, was able to reverse engineer it, and used that discovered technology to begin the Graviton Project. Dr. Nella Davis, mathematician for the DEO, helped write the proofs for that technology, and later, the Graviton Lance. Yes, that one.
If Destiny 2 were to, say, hypothetically, send players to Old Chicago in the future, would the Bean be there?
AL: No, but weirdly enough, Adams/Wabash station is totally fine.
Anything you want to add?
AL: We’re hard at work on Renegades, we’re polishing our story so it’s the best it can be, and the best part about it is ██ ██ █ ████████ ████ ██ ███ ████ ████ ███ ████ ██ █████ ████.
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