68 Fun Facts About Destiny 2

Destiny was Bungie's first new console franchise since which series?

Halo stayed with its owner when Bungie went independent in 2007, so the studio had to invent a new universe; Halo: Reach, in 2010, was the last game it made in the series.

Which Titan oversees Destiny's Crucible player-versus-player matches as its handler?

Lord Shaxx led the counterattack that saved the Last City at the Battle of Twilight Gap, then left the Vanguard to run the Crucible and keep Guardians battle-ready.

Which company bought Bungie for $3.6 billion in a deal announced in 2022?

Sony promised that Bungie would stay a multi-platform studio and go on publishing its own games, so Destiny 2 remained on rival consoles after the takeover.

Which company acquired Bungie in 2000?

Microsoft bought Bungie in June 2000 and kept its flagship shooter series when the studio went independent again in October 2007.

In which US city was Bungie originally based?

Bungie was founded in Chicago in 1991; Alex Seropian and Jason Jones had met in an artificial intelligence course at the University of Chicago.

Which actor originally voiced the player's Ghost in the first Destiny?

Peter Dinklage voiced Ghost at launch, but critics called his delivery flat and phoned-in from the alpha onward, and Bungie later had a new actor re-record every one of his lines.

Who replaced the original Ghost actor when The Taken King launched in 2015?

Nolan North took over as Ghost and re-recorded every earlier line, because Bungie wanted one voice to wake players at level one and follow them all the way to level forty.

In a much-mocked line from Destiny's alpha test, Ghost says "that wizard" came from where?

The Moon: players turned Ghost's flat 'That wizard came from the Moon' into a meme, so Bungie sold a limited-edition T-shirt of the line and gave the proceeds to charity.

Which actor voiced Cayde-6 in the original Destiny and returned to the role for The Final Shape?

Nathan Fillion voiced Cayde-6 from the first game but sat out Forsaken, the very expansion that kills the character, before coming back when Cayde reappeared in 2024.

Which actor voiced Commander Zavala in the original Destiny?

Lance Reddick voiced Zavala from the first game until he died in March 2023, and players then flocked to the character in the Tower to stand vigil and salute him.

Who took over as the voice of Commander Zavala for The Final Shape?

Keith David was announced as Zavala's new voice in August 2023, and Bungie chose to leave every line recorded by his predecessor untouched rather than re-record the role.

Which actress originally voiced Ikora Rey, one of the Vanguard leaders?

Gina Torres voiced Ikora Rey through the first Destiny and the early years of Destiny 2, until the role passed to Mara Junot, who has played her since.

Which British actor voiced the Speaker, the Traveler's representative in the Tower?

Bill Nighy voiced the masked Speaker, the Traveler's emissary in the Tower, who was captured by Dominus Ghaul's forces during Destiny 2's opening campaign.

Which Guardian class has the Nova Bomb super?

Warlock: Bungie pitched the class as a 'space wizard' and pointed to The Matrix when explaining its powers, such as the Nova Bomb, a hurled sphere of Void energy that vaporises weaker enemies.

Titans were partly inspired by Stormtroopers and which of Bungie's own earlier characters?

Master Chief was a stated model because Bungie wanted Titans to read as the classic 'future soldier', so it drew on its own armoured hero and on Star Wars Stormtroopers.

Golden Gun, the Hunter super from the original Destiny, draws on which element?

Solar: the original Golden Gun lasted three flaming shots or about ten seconds, whichever ran out first, and in the Crucible a single shot was enough to drop a rival Guardian.

Cayde-6, Banshee-44 and the Stranger all belong to which race of humanoid machines?

The number in an Exo's name counts their reboots, so Cayde had been reset six times before the events of the games.

Who killed Cayde-6 at the start of Forsaken?

Uldren Sov, the Awoken prince, shot Cayde with Cayde's own gun in the Prison of Elders, then fled to the Tangled Shore.

Cayde-6 was murdered with which of his own hand cannons?

Ace of Spades: Cayde's exotic hand cannon was recovered during the Forsaken campaign and became an exotic quest reward for players.

Cayde-6's killer was later resurrected as an amnesiac Lightbearer known by what name?

Crow debuted in Season of the Hunt in late 2020 as the crime boss Spider's enforcer on the Tangled Shore, and Spider made sure nobody told him who he had been.

What was the name of Cayde-6's Ghost, whose destruction meant he could not be revived?

Sundance was destroyed by a single shot from Pirrha, the Rifleman, a sniper among the Scorn Barons, during the Prison of Elders breakout, which left the wounded Cayde with nobody to revive him.

Two weeks before Forsaken launched, Cayde-6 sent players to collect an expired coupon from which Tower booth?

The ramen shop: the Spicy Ramen Coupon carried Cayde's ode to his favourite dish, and its writer later said the long-expired slip was meant to foreshadow his death in Forsaken.

Destiny's first raid, the Vault of Glass, is set on which planet?

Venus hosts the Vault of Glass, which opened a week after launch with no matchmaking, so players had to recruit a full fireteam of six themselves before facing its time-bending Vex.

The antagonist of The Dark Below is the son of which Hive god?

Oryx, the Taken King, came to avenge his slain son, and his defeat in the King's Fall raid closed The Taken King's story.

The Dreadnaught, the Hive ship explored in The Taken King, sits in orbit around which planet?

Saturn: the Dreadnaught arrived by destroying the Awoken fleet that ambushed it there, then settled among the planet's rings as The Taken King's new patrol zone.

Which of the original Hive siblings carries the title "God of War"?

Xivu Arath began as Xi Ro, one of three Krill sisters on the world Fundament who fed the worm gods in exchange for immortality and so became the first Hive.

Eris Morn first appeared as the sole survivor of a fireteam that had tried to take on which enemy?

Crota: Eris Morn's six-Guardian fireteam, led by Eriana-3, descended into the Hellmouth to kill the Hive prince, and she alone escaped, years later and without her Ghost.

Which Destiny expansion introduced the Prison of Elders arena and Trials of Osiris?

House of Wolves, released in May 2015, was the only Destiny expansion to ship without a raid: the three-player Prison of Elders arena took its place as the endgame.

Rise of Iron's Fallen enemies were empowered by what self-replicating Golden Age nanotechnology?

SIVA was designed to build colonies, but it turned on the Iron Lords who sought it, and nearly all of them died sealing it away long before the Fallen Devil Splicers dug it up.

Which Crucible mode, added with Rise of Iron, has players collect crests dropped by defeated opponents?

Supremacy: every defeated Guardian drops a crest worth points to whoever collects it, so a teammate of the fallen player can snatch it up first and deny the other side its score.

Gjallarhorn, the Year One fan-favourite exotic, is what type of weapon?

Rocket launcher: Xûr sold Gjallarhorn in Destiny's second week, when few players saw its worth, then not again for almost a year, by which time raid groups were demanding it.

Xûr, the weekend exotic vendor, is described as an agent of whom?

The Nine: these unseen dark-matter beings made Xûr their first Emissary to help them understand Guardians, and he insists that his will is not his own.

Which enemy race is described as a military-industrial empire of gigantic amphibians?

Cabal: the hulking soldiers that Destiny players first fought on Mars were only scouts for an empire that had already seized much of the galaxy around its homeworld.

The Vex are made of microscopic organisms that survive in what organic fluid?

Radiolaria, the milky fluid inside every Vex frame, houses the microscopic organisms that are the true Vex; the metal bodies are only their shells.

The insectoid nomadic pirate race called the Fallen are also known by what name?

Eliksni is the Fallen's own name for themselves; the Traveler once visited their homeworld Riis, where they revered it as the 'Great Machine' before it left.

Which former Beatle collaborated with Marty O'Donnell on the music for Destiny?

Paul McCartney worked with O'Donnell on the symphonic suite Music of the Spheres, then wrote and sang Destiny's closing song, 'Hope for the Future'.

Roughly how much did Destiny sell in its first five days, then a record for a new game franchise?

$325 million is what players bought in those five days; the $500 million Activision announced on day one counted copies shipped to stores, not sold.

Which faction, commanded by Dominus Ghaul, attacked the Last City at the start of Destiny 2?

Red Legion troops under Ghaul caged the Traveler and stripped Guardians of their Light, leaving the survivors to regroup at the Farm.

Before it moved to Steam, Destiny 2's PC version launched exclusively on which storefront?

Battle.net took Destiny 2 in October 2017 as the first game on Blizzard's launcher that Blizzard had not made, because publisher Activision was its corporate sibling.

Under what title did Destiny 2 go free-to-play alongside Shadowkeep?

New Light, launched alongside Shadowkeep, gave free players a remade version of the original Destiny's Cosmodrome opening mission as their introduction.

Which PvE/PvP hybrid mode, hosted by the Drifter, debuted with Forsaken?

Gambit has two teams of four race to bank motes dropped by PvE enemies while invaders cross over to disrupt their rivals, and Bungie let everyone try it free for 24 hours before Forsaken launched.

Beyond Light took Guardians to which moon of Jupiter?

Europa: on this frozen moon the Fallen Kell Eramis wielded Stasis, a power of the Darkness, and Guardians ended the campaign by claiming that same power for themselves.

In Beyond Light, the Stranger reveals she is the sister of which Warmind-era character?

Ana Bray is the sister of the Stranger, Elisabeth 'Elsie' Bray, who has lived through a dark future in which Ana falls to the Darkness and keeps coming back to try to save her.

Which new weapon type, with both melee and short-range attacks, debuted in The Witch Queen?

Glaive: players forge their first one, The Enigma, right after The Witch Queen's opening mission, in a tutorial that doubles as the introduction to weapon crafting.

Who is the final boss of the Vow of the Disciple raid?

Rhulk, the first Disciple, is fought inside his sunken Pyramid, where Guardians learn he enslaved a worm mother to breed the larvae that every Hive carries.

Lightfall's city of Neomuna is located on which planet?

Neptune: colony-ship survivors founded Neomuna there after the Collapse and kept it hidden for centuries, guarded by the cybernetically augmented Cloud Striders.

Which movement tool does the Strand subclass, introduced in Lightfall, give Guardians?

A grappling hook: Strand's grapple sits in the grenade slot, so every swing spends the grenade charge unless the Guardian latches onto a Tangle, which hands it straight back.

The Final Shape's 12-player finale, Excision, pits Guardians against which villain?

The Witness: Excision, a 12-player assault inside the Traveler, unlocked after the first team cleared the Salvation's Edge raid, which itself opened days after launch.

What is the name of The Final Shape's destination inside the Traveler?

The Pale Heart, the landscape inside the Traveler, echoes locations from across the series' history, and it is where the Vanguard reunites with the spirit of Cayde-6.

Which sixth subclass, added in The Final Shape, lets Guardians mix Light and Darkness abilities?

Prismatic is found inside the Traveler, at a spot where Light and Darkness mingle, and it lets Guardians mix abilities from the five older subclasses before fusing both forces in a burst called Transcendence.

Bungie's revived Marathon, unveiled in 2023, is what kind of game?

Extraction shooter: the revival, released in March 2026, has no traditional single-player campaign; squads of Runners drop in, grab loot and must get out alive past rival players.

Sparrows, the Guardians' personal vehicles, closely resemble which Star Wars vehicles?

Speeder bikes: Sparrows hover and are ridden astride in the same way, and in December 2015 Bungie gave them a Sparrow Racing League in which six Guardians race three laps.

The Grasp of Avarice dungeon from Bungie's 30th Anniversary Pack is set inside which infamous Destiny location?

The Loot Cave let launch-era players farm endlessly respawning enemies until Bungie patched it out; seven years later the studio rebuilt it as a dungeon about Guardians ruined by greed.

Curse of Osiris centred on which Vex simulation inside Mercury?

The Infinite Forest, a procedurally generated simulation overseen by Panoptes, Infinite Mind, was later re-dressed as the Haunted Forest for the Festival of the Lost.

Which horde mode, fought in the open patrol zone on Mars, was added by the Warmind expansion?

Escalation Protocol sent seven waves of Hive and a weekly rotating boss at a fireteam capped at three, so beating it meant other Guardians in the area piling in to help.

Which enemy faction introduced in The Final Shape was the first new race since Forsaken?

The Dread are the personal soldiers of the expansion's villain, and the Tormentors that players first fought a year earlier in Lightfall turned out to be the first of their kind.

At Destiny's launch, experience stopped at level 20, so what carried Guardians to 30?

Light on armour: only gear from the Vault of Glass raid carried enough of it for level 30, and players left waiting on one last drop coined the phrase 'Forever 29'.

Which Destiny 2 expansion, released in December 2025, was themed around Star Wars?

Renegades, released on December 2, 2025, was made with Lucasfilm Games, which is how Guardians ended up with the Praxic Blade, a lightsaber in all but name.

Which Guardian led the ill-fated Vault of Glass fireteam alongside Praedyth and Pahanin?

Kabr, the Legionless, was the Titan who led Praedyth and Pahanin into the Vault; he sacrificed himself to forge the Aegis relic, and only Pahanin escaped.

Which ancient AI, built to defend Earth, is at the centre of Destiny 2's Warmind expansion?

Rasputin's true core turns out to lie beneath the polar ice of Mars: the presence Guardians met in the first Destiny's Cosmodrome was only a fragment cut off after the Collapse.

Who was the final boss of Rise of Iron's Wrath of the Machine raid?

Aksis, Archon Prime, had fused himself with so much of the Devil Splicers' nanotech that he was more machine than Fallen when Guardians reached him inside the Cosmodrome Wall.

Which Guardian led the fireteam the Fallen lured into the Cosmodrome in Grasp of Avarice?

Wilhelm-7 led the doomed fireteam, and the messages he left behind trace how greed over the endless treasure turned its members on one another until he died as well.

Which Hive Wizard is the Deathsinger fought in The Dark Below's raid?

Ir Yût, the Deathsinger, starts a song called the Liturgy of Ruin, and if the fireteam fails to kill her before it ends, every Guardian in the raid dies at once.

Which Chinese company invested $100 million in Bungie in 2018 for a minority stake and a board seat?

NetEase bought its stake in June 2018, and the partnership later produced Destiny: Rising, a mobile spin-off that the Chinese company developed itself and released in August 2025.

Which studio joined Bungie and Activision on Destiny 2's development team in December 2016?

Vicarious Visions, an Activision studio that had made two Skylanders games, signed on in December 2016 and handled Destiny 2's PC version, the first time the series reached Windows.

What was the only thing that carried over from a Destiny character into Destiny 2?

Their physical appearance carried over if a character had reached level 20 and finished the Black Garden mission; Bungie dropped gear and power so the sequel could be built 'unencumbered by the past'.

Which game topped the 2017 US annual sales chart, finishing ahead of Destiny 2?

Call of Duty: WWII led the NPD Group's 2017 chart, with Destiny 2 third behind NBA 2K18, which gave publisher Activision two of the year's three best-selling games.

Which Destiny 2 raid, launched with Forsaken, is set in the Dreaming City?

Last Wish opened days after Forsaken, and the first team to finish it set off a curse on the Dreaming City for every player, starting a three-week cycle that unlocked new missions.