Highlights
- Destiny 2's Timeline Reflections feature allows players to experience major events from the game's past, addressing the knowledge gap for newer players.
- Three missions are currently available, offering cinematic summaries of key moments in Destiny 2 history and providing special rewards for completion.
- Season of the Witch introduces the deckbuilding mechanic, allowing players to build a deck of major and minor arcana for seasonal missions and passive boosts.
During The Final Shape Showcase for Destiny 2, Bungie revealed the Timeline Reflections feature, which allows players to play through short missions to witness major events from the game's past. After launching all the way back in 2017, Destiny 2 has changed and evolved over the years since. Since the arrival of the Destiny Convent Vault, content has come and gone from the title, with numerous campaigns like the original Red War, Curse of Osiris, Warmind, and Forsaken to name a few being removed entirely, therefore leaving many players who may have come on late in the dust.
As such, one of the areas where Bungie has struggled is with what it calls the "New Light" experience. Newer players can quickly get up to speed in the Cosmodrome destination, though certain characters and events that are no longer available will ensure that some things in the current storyline won't make sense or mean as much as they could including the revival of the Hunter Vanguard Cayde-6 in The Final Shape. Thankfully, Bungie appears to be attempting to rectify this knowledge gap for newer players who may have missed out originally with a new feature.
As revealed within The Final Shape showcase, Bungie introduced a new quality of life update starting inside of Season of the Witch called Timeline Reflections. These missions are intended to help new players quickly get up to speed on major story moments in Destiny 2's history that they may have missed, or offer veterans a chance to relive them. Missions can be started from the Director and are currently designed to be relatively short, high-impact missions that server as cinematic summaries for these key moments in Destiny 2 history.
Currently, players have access to three specific missions Cayde-6's showdown with the Scorn from the Forsaken campaign, the introduction of Stasis from Beyond Light, and then the first appearance of the Lucent Hive from The Witch Queen. It seems likely that more missions will be added in overtime prior to The Final Shape, but to help incentivize players checking out the currently available missions, Bungie has added new cinematics and special rewards for finishing them. For example, the screenshot Bungie showed off rewards the Austringer hand cannon for finishing Cayde's Fate mission.
Season 22 also introduces another new mechanic in the form of deckbuilding. Season of the Witch gives players access to major and minor arcana as they play through seasonal missions like Savathun's Spire. These cards are essential to the seasonal gameplay loop, offering players a chance to build a deck of major arcana that can be used prior to seasonal missions or minor arcana which offers a passive boost that lasts the entire season.
Destiny 2 is now available PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
