Destiny 2: Beyond Light is mere hours away from release and the servers are currently down for the maintenance in pre-preparation of the expansion. With Season of Arrivals now behind them, players can fully look forward to what Beyond Light will bring. Among the many gameplay additions to rejuvenate the sandbox, the expansion will also feature various visual updates to the game's many assets.
Beyond Light is the beginning of the next era of Destiny 2. It lays the groundwork for a trilogy of expansions and aims to reshape how fans play Destiny. The expansion not only will introduce the first of the game's long awaited Darkness subclasses, it will also offer a true newcomer questline. Thus, the game will feel fresh for veteran players and also be more welcoming to new ones.
Menus in Destiny 2 Beyond Light
Bungie granted the community its wish and will finally be adding a dark title screen to Destiny 2. This is curiously one of the most frequently requested features of the game, but the studio didn't stop there and changed all of the game's menus to have a darker background. From Triumphs to Inventory, players can expect to find gloomier menus when playing the game this November.
Weather
The team at Bungie has put extra effort into making Europa, the main location of Beyond Light, feel as foreboding as possible. To reinforce the harshness of this destination, the studio has created a new weather system that dynamically alters environments and the battles that take place within. Europa will feature several stages of snowstorms, and Bungie is confident that this will be one of the selling features of the icy moon.
Lighting
As the studio gave this special treatment to Europa, it was necessary for the developers to bring the two oldest locations, EDZ and Nessus, up to year 4 standards. That's why the Lighting and Skies teams have done "relights and global lighting updates" to numerous corners of these legacy destinations. While this isn't a complete reimagining of the zones, Bungie claims to have upped the visual quality and interest of EDZ and Nessus and has made them more enticing to explore.
Character Faces
Leading up to Beyond Light, Bungie engineers have done complete makeovers to many background systems so that Destiny 2 is more flexible and modern. One example to this is the character face system. The revamped foundation of the character face customization will allow Bungie to add more options in the future without too much hassle. While implementing this, the studio has decided to tweak existing facial models to increase diversity. After the update, some players may notice slight differences in how their Guardian looks. With transmog also arriving soon, the next step would be to add a "barbershop" to freely customize characters.
The Director
As planets have been cycled into the Destiny Content Vault, a remake of the director was to be expected. Destiny 2: Beyond Light will still use the director feature as before, but the map will sport a complete visual overhaul. With Earth becoming even more central to the experience, featuring 2 zones, keen eyed players will notice also that the Traveler has healed back up, returning to its Destiny 1 form. This trend of re-capturing the charm of Destiny 1 is something Bungie wants to continue tapping into as the years progress.
Destiny 2: Beyond Light releases November 10, 2020 for PC, PS4, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The PS5 version will release on November 12.
