It finally happened. The Exo Stranger will finally have time to explain and, while it might seem weird to some people, that is more exciting to me than Darkness subclasses, Vault of Glass maybe coming back, or anything else revealed today during the future of Destiny livestream.
If you’re a Destiny 2 New Light player, or never really cared for Destiny 1, it might sound like I’m being hyperbolic but I could not be more serious. I am so hyped to finally learn more about perhaps the most mysterious character in all of Destiny.
What’s ironic is that I don’t believe Bungie really intended to have the Exo Stranger be this mysterious figure, but their failure to properly put together a coherent storyline for Destiny 1’s vanilla campaign has over time turned the Exo Stranger into a legend.
Unlike your character and their allies, the Exo Stranger is not born of light and it’s clear that she knows something about the Darkness that we do not when we meet her at Venus in Destiny 1. Because of how quick she was to rush back to whatever she was doing, you know, not having time to explain why she doesn’t have time to explain, it felt that she was an important part of this bigger conflict that was looming at the background that we weren’t capable of fully understanding yet.
That was always so intriguing to me while playing the original game and I remember wanting so badly to learn more about what her deal is and what she knew.
Part of that is because at the time she was the keeper of more knowledge about the notion of “the Darkness,” an entity that reminds me of one of my favorite enemies of all-time: the Reapers from Mass Effect. The idea of an enemy that you can’t reason with, and that have motives that we are not capable of understanding is one of the most frightening and intimidating villain archetypes.
While the Darkness in Destiny 1’s vanilla campaign wasn’t nearly as fleshed out as the Reapers were in Mass Effect, I assumed that at some point players would have that conversation with Sovereign moment, and that the Exo Stranger would play a part in that.
Unfortunately, though, that moment never happened. In fact, Bungie slowly backed away from the conflict between the Light and the Darkness and instead focused on more in your face threats such as Crota, Oryx, Skolas, Calus, and others.
This persisted pretty much until the most recent Destiny 2 expansion, Shadowkeep, released in 2019, when the Darkness emerged from the shadows and became the main threat… at least for a little while.
Bungie, as they are one to do, got very distracted from the Darkness as an enemy and went right back to hitting their favorite punching bag, the Red Legion, a few more times over the course of Year 3.
Fortunately, as of the stream today, it finally sounds like that for the first time ever there’s a long term plan for the Destiny story, at least one that is visible to the fans.
We are entering an era of the Darkness in Destiny and from what we’ve seen so far in the trailers in Beyond Light, it’s going to have an impact on everything that happens from this point on in Destiny.
The Fallen are uniting under Eramis and The House of Darkness, Savathun will finally do.. something, and Guardians, under the tutelage of the Exo Stranger are finally going to embrace the Darkness and confront this entity head-on at some point between now and 2022 when the ominous-sounding Lightfall is released.
The Exo Stranger said that the line between Light and Darkness was thin, and we’re going to see just how thin it is soon enough. After over six years of waiting, it’s finally time to see what the Exo Stranger knows and I cannot wait until Sept. 22 when Beyond Light releases to find out.
