Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate

Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate
Cover art featuring the Emissary of the Nine with the three Guardian classes (Hunter, Warlock, and Titan) in front of a 21st-century subway train car on Kepler
Developer(s)	Bungie
Publisher(s)	Bungie
Director(s)	Tyson Green
Artist(s)	Dave Samuels
Writer(s)	Alison Lührs Robbie Stevens
Composer(s)	Pieter Schlosser Josh Mosser Rotem Moav Brendon Williams Laryssa Okada
Series	Destiny
Platform(s)	PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 Windows Xbox One Xbox Series X/S
Release	July 15, 2025
Genre(s)	Action role-playing, first-person shooter
Mode(s)	Multiplayer

Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate is a medium-sized expansion for Destiny 2, a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie. Representing the ninth expansion for the game, it was released on July 15, 2025, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. The expansion is also the start of the eighth year of extended content for Destiny 2, referred to as the "Year of Prophecy", which will include the next expansion, Renegades, in December 2025.

Following the conclusion of the "Light and Darkness" saga (2014–2024), The Edge of Fate begins a new major narrative for the franchise called the "Fate" saga. The expansion sees players exploring the planetoid Kepler in the Solar System's Oort cloud. It had a major overhaul on the game, essentially resetting players back to a base level with a rework on gear and how it affects the players' stats. This is also the first of at least four planned shorter expansions, each lasting six months with each receiving one major update three months after each expansions' release, rather than the previous year-long expansions with multiple seasons/episodes. While each expansion is paid content, the major updates will be free for all players. The major update for The Edge of Fate will be Ash & Iron in September 2025, with this first half of Year 8 referred to as the Season: Reclamation.

Synopsis

In the previous expansion, The Final Shape, the Vanguard and their allies defeated the Witness and its three Echoes that were created from its defeat, concluding the "Light and Darkness" saga that began with the original Destiny (2014).

As the Vanguard dealt with the final Echo of the Witness, Orin, the Emissary of the Nine, gave the player's Guardian an invitation from the Nine, a pantheon of mysterious, dark matter-based entities that have been caught in the gravity wells of the sun and eight major planets of the Solar System, to visit the planetoid Kepler in the Oort cloud, before disavowing herself as the Emissary, no longer willing to do their bidding. The Nine continue to send these invitations, and eventually draw the Vanguard's attention by sending a 21st-century subway train car to bring the Guardians to Kepler. When they arrive, they are greeted by Lodi, a human from Earth's Space Age that worked for the fictional U.S. Department of External Observations that tracked alien activities. Lodi was pulled into the future after answering a phone call from a disconnected handset, and ended up on Kepler, where he was saw too by the Aionians, humans that had originally arrived at Kepler on a colony ship centuries prior. Lodi explains that Kepler is held together by a singularity, which would destroy the entire Solar System should it collapse.

To protect the singularity and hold Keplar together, Lodi and the Aionians help the Guardian to locate four stranglets that they can use to stablize the singularity. The guardian learns that there are two major factions that seek the singularity. One is the House of Exile, an Eliksni house headed by the Archon, who worship the singularity as the "Giver", while the other is a faction of the Vex under command of Maya Sundaresh, who had become their Conductor using the Echo of Command, and who seeks to take the power of the Nine through the singularity. Orin also arrives, using her knowledge from being the Emissary to try to explain the Nine's plans, as well as the Drifter, who recognizes that the Haul he has been towing around Sol for centuries may be needed. Lodi appears to be chosen by the Nine as their next Emissary, and in revealing some of the truth to him, he learns that the Nine have purposely brought everyone to Keplar at this exact time for yet-known reasons. This includes Ikora, who Lodi reveals had been one of his co-workers in Earth's past, but had been killed when her car was hit by a train sent by the Nine such that her body would be found where it was to become a Guardian.

After locating and securing all four stranglets, the Nine speak to the Guardian through Orin and Lodi, recognizing that the fate of the sol system hangs in the balance and chosing the Guardian to be their weapon to stop both the Archon and Maya, though they find III, the entity associated with earth, to not reply. The Guardian fights their way to the singularity, discovering that it is a stable black hole created by the death of III, pulled into this universe from its own by Maya using the Echo of Command. The Archon wants to speed up the collapse of the black hole, but the Guardian is able to defeat him before he can implement his plan. With the route to the singularity secured, the Drifter sends the Haul into it, which briefly revives III. III, speaking through Lodi, warns that it will die again, and that may trigger a chain reaction that will consume the sol system. As it communicates to the Guardian, Maya attempts to draw III's power for her own, but cannot complete the transfer in time. III dies again, making the singularity inert and neutralizing the threat to Keplar, while Maya flees. Lodi accepts the role as the next Emissary to the Nine, recognizing that III's death will create a power vacuum among the Nine.

Gameplay

Main article: Destiny 2 § Gameplay

Destiny 2 is a first-person shooter with roleplay and massively-multiplayer online gameplay elements. It takes place in the Solar System in the far future; the system was visited by a massive spherical object called the Traveler that granted humanity with knowledge to create a Golden Age, but its arrival also drew warring alien species to the system to gain the Traveler for themselves. The Golden Age was followed by the Collapse, wiping out most of humanity, but the remnants of humanity survived with the aid of the paracausal Light of the Traveler, which granted certain beings the ability to be resurrected as Lightbearers, also known as Guardians, and use the power of the Light to fight off these aliens, some who wield the Darkness, the counterpart of the Light.

The player in Destiny 2 creates their character from one of three classes: Hunters which specialize in stealth and trapping, Titans that specialize in melee combat and shielding allies, and Warlocks that heal and buff allies while using magic-like like abilities. These classes also have subclasses that the player can freely switch between; initially with Destiny 2's release, three subclasses were available based on the Light classes, Arc, Solar, and Void, which three more have been added through expansions, the Darkness subclasses of Stasis and Strand, and the Prismatic subclass which combines both Light and Darkness powers. These subclasses define which abilities the Guardian can use in combat, as well as a powerful Super ability that requires recharging over time. Players earn gear by performing missions, earning armor pieces, kinetic, energy and power weapons across a range of weapon archetypes, and resources that can be used to improve gear to take on more challenging missions. Available content is a mix of gameplay modes across player-versus-environment (PVE) in the Vanguard playlists, player-versus-player (PvP) in the Crucible playlist, and player-versus-player-versus-environment (PvPvE) in the Gambit mode. There are also dungeons for three-player fireteams and raids for six-player teams, along with various patrol zones across the planetary environments in the Solar System.

The Edge of Fate introduces several major changes to the base Destiny 2 gameplay. The game's main navigation menu, the Director, remained, but Bungie designed a new "Portal" page that allows the player to navigate between various classes of activities, such as solo and fireteam content, along with multiplayer Crucible playlists. From the Portal, players can add additional modifiers as to increase the difficulty of the content and seek better rewards from completion. While the game's Vanguard and Crucible activities were expanded to incorporate new changes with The Edge of Fate, Bungie plans to hold updates to Gambit in check until a future expansion, keeping the game mode in legacy play.

Gear also saw a major change. The character's armor uses a new "Armor 3.0" system. In this, a new set of six attributes (Weapons, Health, Class, Grenade, Super, and Melee) replaced the previous attributes, which can be enhanced through armor mods. Armor now only has points in three of these attributions based on one of six armor archetypes, which help to favor two specific attributions with the third attribute randomly selected from the rest. Armor archetypes can be directed by players to favor specific archetypes, and more difficult activities can generate armor with more points within the archetype's attributes. New armor introduced from The Edge of Fate onward also include set bonuses, where, by wearing at least two pieces from the same set, the player's Guardian receives additional bonuses. A player's existing armor was converted to the new Armor 3.0 attributes upon the launch of the expansion, maintaining their current attributes under their new names, while exotic armor pieces were converted to use the armor archetype based on their current attribute distribution. Weapons also now drop with a tier from one to five, which depend on the difficulty of the content being played. Higher-tier weapons have higher attributes and enhanced perks, and at the highest tier, gain a unique appearance. In addition to the existing archetypes, The Edge of Fate adds a new heavy weapon type, a crossbow that fires a single, recoverable bolt.

The new destination Kepler is not a patrol zone as most previous destinations in Destiny 2 have been, but is designed for a single player to explore in the style of a Metroidvania game. The player acquires new, dark matter powers by completing missions on Kepler, gaining the ability to access previously-blocked areas and find other secrets, as well as gaining access to higher tier activities. One of the key powers is the Matterspark that uses the strange energy of Kepler to allow the player's Guardian to turn into an Arc ball and roll through narrow corridors as well as to attack enemies. Other existing abilities of the Guardian are also enhanced by the mysterious energies of Kepler, such as Matterweave, allowing players to move or manipulate certain objects using Strand and use them as platforms or to open new paths; the Relocator Cannon, allowing players to teleport from one area to another using Void and Eliksni technology; and Rosetta, allowing players to unlock doors by translating Aionian script on nearby consoles. A new raid, "The Desert Perpetual", will be released on July 19, 2025, and will take place in unknown space in the realm of the Nine. Like prior years, there will be a Contest Mode for the raid enabled for 48 hours during the launch weekend. Additionally, once the world's first team clears the raid, the normal version will unlock for all owners of the expansion.

Development

After finishing development of The Final Shape campaign, Bungie opted by September 2024 to move away from annual expansions to shorter expansions. Game director Tyson Green said that "Expansions have started to feel too formulaic and are over too quickly with little replay value", and that "Seasons and Episodes keep getting bigger but can still feel like you are just going through the motions." Instead, Bungie wanted to be able to offer more exploration experiences and try different approaches to gameplay, such as non-linear campaigns, and opted to make future expansions shorter to allow them to try these experiments. At that time, the first planned expansion after The Final Shape was given the codename "Apollo".

Several of the design elements of Kepler, and the new Matterspark powers, were directly inspired by the Metroid Prime series, according to Green.

As much of the development work occurred during the 2024–2025 SAG-AFTRA video game strike, several established characters in the English version were voiced by new actors in their roles; notably, Ikora who was normally voiced by Mara Junot, had her lines recorded by Debra Wilson, the voice actor for Savathûn in the game. Other characters, though speaking, lacked voiceovers and instead shown as subtitles in game. As the strike completed days prior to The Edge of Fate's release, Bungie plans to have the original actors redo these lines and update the game to include these.

Release

The Edge of Fate was released on July 15, 2025, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. It is available as paid downloadable content (DLC). In addition to the standard version, the expansion is also included in the "Year of Prophecy" pack, as well as the "Year of Prophecy – Ultimate Edition" pack. Pre-orders for any edition included immediate access to an exotic ghost shell and a legendary emblem (as early as the Rite of the Nine event in May 2025 during Episode: Heresy, or Season 26). The "Year of Prophecy" pack includes both Year 8 expansions, The Edge of Fate and Renegades; pre-orders for this version also included an exotic ship and another legendary emblem for the latter which will be added to players' inventories with the Ash & Iron update in September 2025. The "Year of Prophecy – Ultimate Edition" additionally includes an exotic emote, an exotic sparrow, the Dark Side Legends Bundle, which features Star Wars-based armor ornaments for the three character classes (General Grievous for Hunters, Darth Vader for Titans, and Kylo Ren for Warlocks), as well as the No Land Beyond exotic sniper rifle (including its exotic catalyst which became available with the launch of The Edge of Fate). There is also a physical collector's edition which includes a 1/8 scale statue of the three character classes, as well as The Edge of Fate soundtrack, among other items; however, this does not include the expansion.