It looks like we may be headed back to the Dreadnaught in the coming months of Destiny 2. Fans report seeing the Dreadnaught landing sequence from The Taken King, complete with the same ominous music, when joining certain activities.
The clip – posted to Reddit by u/AlanahNahNah – shows what is clearly a Destiny 2 ship and loading screen arriving at the rings of Saturn, distinctively punctured by the Dreadnaught’s superweapon. Jarvenis has posted similar footage, showing a Destiny 2 ship flying through those rings in another loading screen from The Taken King.
It could just be a bug – both Destiny games have contained content that were unintended for use, and could be glitched into – but as Eurogamer points out, this bug has no precedent in Destiny 2, meaning these files were probably added recently.
Consider also the post-credits sequence from the Destiny 2 base game (warning: Destiny 2 vanilla spoilers incoming). The burst of Light given off by the Traveler’s reawakening was shown hitting several locations in order: first Mercury, then Mars, then the Reef, then Saturn and the Dreadnaught. Fans have long speculated that this was foreshadowing the places we’d visit next after seeing off the Red Legion, especially since it has proven accurate: the Curse of Osiris DLC took us to Mercury, then the Warmind DLC to Mars, then Forsaken to the Reef.
A return to the Dreadnaught would also fit with Forsaken’s subject matter. Another warning: Forsaken campaign spoilers incoming.
#Destiny2 #Dreadnaught #Bug pic.twitter.com/O5vOYOp8tn
— 🕷️🕸️🦇AlanaUTUMN🎃🍁🍂 (@AlanahNahNah) October 12, 2018
If you’ve finished Forsaken, you know it was never really about Uldren Sov and his barons. Forsaken’s rich endgame has been building up Savathûn and (to a lesser extent) Xivu Arath as successors to Oryx, The Taken King whom we defeated in the expansion of the same name. Savathûn in particular is presented as the mastermind behind the curse that Riven, a Taken Ahamkara and final boss of the latest raid, has unleashed upon the Dreaming City. It would make total sense to return to the Dreadnaught for answers as to how to break the curse, or if one of these other Hive gods had taken up residence there.
It would also fit with what Bungie has said so far about what’s coming in Forsaken’s annual pass. “We’re going to have new places to check out,” project lead Scott Taylor says. “Sorry, I should be specific. What we call ‘bubbles’ or new spaces; I’m not saying new planets.” Game director Steve Cotton then clarified this line: no new planets.
It sounds like an attempt to downplay expectations after Curse of Osiris and Warmind promised new locations, and the former – in particular – disappointed with the scale of what followed. Discovering (or rediscovering) new ‘bubbles’ on the Dreadnaught could be just the thing.
Here’s AlanahNahNah’s original post on Reddit. Personally I’d say the reinclusion of Dreadnaught assets is a conclusive bit of evidence for an otherwise pretty airtight theory about where we’re heading next, but we’ll find out for sure when year two’s first DLC, Black Armory, lands in December.