For years, Destiny 2 gamers have been questioning when the sport would take them to a location teased manner again earlier than the unique Destiny was even launched: Old Chicago. With the discharge of its newest growth, Fringe of Destiny, it seems to be like we would have at the least a imprecise reply: quickly.
Echoes of Destiny appears delicate on this level, at first. Although the story is ready on Kepler, a brand new location flung manner out towards the sting of the photo voltaic system, it offers so much with time-bending seems to be again into the previous, and some hints towards the long run. You get your first trace about Chicago when Lodi, the growth’s new character, will get a glimpse of the long run. He mentions standing with the Guardian, Destiny’s participant character, on the shores of Lake Michigan–the Nice Lake on whose shores Chicago is discovered.
After which there’s the prepare. The marketing campaign’s opening cutscene sees collection mainstay Ikora Rey practically getting run over by a subway prepare seemingly zapped throughout time to look in Destiny 2’s far-flung futuristic post-apocalypse. Trains are all around the growth, appearing as a narrative touchstone, a type of reality-bending entry level for various areas within the new location of Kepler, and the growth’s defining picture.
That prepare automobile certain seems to be like Chicago’s “El” prepare, the elevated railway that runs all through the town, when you’re primed to search for it. And in case you zoom in on the Fringe of Destiny key artwork, you possibly can see the prepare’s vacation spot printed above the door. It says “Ravenswood,” a north Chicago neighborhood.
However any sleuthing turns into pointless when issues get actually specific in a while, as you close to the tip of the marketing campaign. In one of many ultimate missions, Destiny 2 mainstay Ikora Rey actually says one thing to the impact of, “Perhaps quickly we’ll go to Chicago.”
Old Chicago is an enormous deal to Destiny gamers who’ve been round for some time. The situation has been questioned about, mentioned, and even teased for years. Bungie first dropped the potential of visiting Old Chicago again before the original Destiny was even released. Since then, references to the town have come up repeatedly in lore and story. When Bungie first confirmed off photographs of its 2022 growth, The Witch Queen, gamers speculated the situation in its first trailer is perhaps the swampy outskirts of Chicago.
It would be a major location to go to, as a result of whereas Destiny 2 has locations set on Earth, they’re pretty nondescript. The European Lifeless Zone, or EDZ, takes gamers to a destroyed, fictional European city referred to as Trostland. There’s additionally the Cosmodrome, an airplane and spaceship graveyard and management facility situated someplace in Russia. However each places are invented for Destiny 2–they do not actually reference anyplace particular from our world.
Chicago, however, would be a recognizable place from our actuality, and it could be the primary. Whereas the previous cities of Earth are all destroyed a whole lot of years earlier than the occasions of Destiny 2, absolutely the town will nonetheless look just like the Chicago we anticipate, and seeing it in its ravaged, post-alien invasion state can be attention-grabbing in and of itself.
It’d even be the primary American location to get Destiny 2’s futuristic therapy, so we might get to see how Bungie may play with the town and alter it by way of the course of each a whole lot of years of progress and a whole lot of years of decay. That is to say nothing of what gameplay alternatives the ravaged metropolis may afford, or story implications of the potential of any people nonetheless eeking out a dwelling there.
There are hints inside the Fringe of Destiny marketing campaign that Chicago could possibly be an necessary location as Destiny 2’s story develops, too. Cutscenes within the growth leap again in time to Earth in what seems to be the Sixties, and one features a distant metropolis skyline. That metropolis can also be the obvious location of the Division of Exterior Commentary, a authorities company from the previous targeted on the potential of alien contact and abduction, which performs a major position within the growth. So if Chicago is, in actual fact, a future vacation spot, it appears very possible the DEO is just too.
That is a variety of hypothesis, nevertheless it actually looks like Fringe of Destiny is establishing Chicago as its subsequent huge vacation spot. If that is the case, it’s going to be the end result of ready and hypothesis that is lasted all of Destiny’s life–almost 12 years.