A major Destiny 2 cutscene has been revealed as part of Season of the Deep, shedding light on one of the FPS game‘s key elements. This development is being hailed as a watershed moment for the story of Destiny, marking a coming of age for Bungie’s serialized approach to storytelling.
The Path Ahead
The new cutscene, titled ‘The Path Ahead,’ introduces The Traveler’s ancient enemy, The Witness, and explores their relationship both past and present. It also introduces the concept of the Veil and provides players with a wealth of new information, answering long-standing questions while simultaneously raising even more.
While this reveal cannot retroactively fix the issues with Destiny 2’s recent expansion, Lightfall, it does offer reassurance regarding the narrative direction of the game going forward. However, the timing of this new development – in the middle of a season – feels inappropriate, and undermines the impact of the previous expansion.
What is the Destiny 2 cutscene?
The Path Ahead, a major Destiny 2 cutscene, was released as part of Season of the Deep’s fifth week, and portrays an intimate encounter between The Witness and The Traveler three billion years ago, immediately before The Witness turned on its erstwhile ally to ignite the Golden Age.
The scene also reveals that The Witness is, in fact, The Stranger. It deepens the connection between The Traveler and The Veil, giving players a clearer foundation upon which to build future storytelling around.
What does The Path Ahead reveal?
To understand the full significance of this reveal, it is helpful to understand The Flower Game, the origin myth of the Destiny universe. In The Flower Game, the Traveler created humanity, represented by The Gardener, and planted an elemental seed, symbolizing The Witness. The purpose of The Witness was to ensure that The Gardener does not become like The Traveler and so that humanity would live a freely chosen life for all eternity.
Fans have long suspected that The Stranger does not fit this narrative, and that there was long-standing information regarding their identity and role in the story. Those suspicions have been confirmed, with this cutscene confirming that The Witness is The Stranger and, implicitly, that The Stranger is The Gardener.
Cutscene director Joseph Chang said of this new reveal, “By far, this is the most important. We spent a lot of time discussing the pros and cons,” adding that this was not something they could hint at through a Lorecast or the Grimoire.
Chang’s words reflect an important point regarding Destiny’s reveal regarding The Witness – it deepens the direction of the entire lore of the game. While this is good in and of itself, it also serves as an indication that Bungie would have been aware of these issues for some time, raising questions about why it took four months after the release of the aforementioned expansion for this information to emerge.
Lightfall’s narrative suffered from a lack of information – we knew who Ghaul was and what he represented, but we had no real context beyond the immediate narrative of the expansion itself. Bungie recognized this, and has attempted to rectify it in The Path Ahead through supplementary material.
In my Lightfall The Crown of Thorns review, I note that “Destiny 2’s storytelling is at its best when it offers information in bite-sized chunks that organically fit within the gameplay but also serve to deepen our understanding of the game’s mythology and history.”
That philosophy has been evident in Destiny’s previous serialized untamed universe events, such as the ExoGenesis event, but it was noticeably absent from Lightfall’s story, which suffered from a lack of context. The Path Ahead could have been the perfect opportunity to retroactively rectify this by dropping in this key exposition during Lightfall or shortly after.
The decision to drop this major story beat in the middle of a season feels inappropriate and undermines the impact of the previous expansion. As Season of the Deep nears its end, players are left with a frustrating story that lacks the crucial context that this scene provides. It is hard
