‘Destiny 2’ Scrubbed These Season 17 Guardians From New Map Art

We are just under ten days out from Destiny 2 launching season 17, and as of yet, it doesn’t even have a name, much less any clues about where the story is going from here, other than more generalized hints about year 5 buried in The Witch Queen.

We have gotten details about the Iron Banner rework and we know a new 3.0 element is coming, but even through that and some weapon reveals, we know absolutely nothing about the theme of the season, nor even the race it focuses on. Until now, maybe?

In an effort to keep everything as absurdly close to the vest as possible for as long as possible, Bungie actually went in and erase the above three Guardians from the art of the new PvP map, Disjunction, that was shown off in this week’s TWAB.

Here’s the original art:

And here’s the replacement:

No more Guardians. What are they hiding? Even blowing this up it’s pretty hard to tell, other than the fact that they are wearing new armor sets and wielding new weapons.

The biggest clue is the Hunter cloak, which many believe looks like it has Fallen symbols on the back. Looking up past Fallen symbols I will say that yes, it’s probably closest to that “style” of symbol, though I have not found any exact house matches. But between the symbols and the frayed edges, yes, I am at least some Fallen vibes as well. It doesn’t really look Cabal (we’ve gotten hints about Calus’ return) or Rasputin-based (we’ve gotten hints about Rasputin’s return).

This would make some amount of sense given that we have not had a Fallen-focused season since the current Beyond Light expansion. Chosen was Cabal, Splicer was Vex (where Fallen were the good guys and we got Fallen armor), Lost was Scorn and Taken, Witch Queen was Hive and Scorn.

Given that a portion of the Fallen are now our allies, this raises questions about which Fallen faction we might be fighting, and that circles back to some hints we’ve gotten that Eramis, the frozen leader of House Salvation whom we left chilling on a dock somewhere on Europe. There have been hints that we have not seen the last of her from her, so that could be where we’re heading this season.

But there’s a second theory. Other than the cloak, the only thing I can glean from this image is what appears to be a new Claymore style sword on the back of the Titan. I assume it’s not the same one from the 30th anniversary, as shots like these usually show off new gear. I am less sure what the weapon is on the back of the Warlock, some kind of primary, auto, pulse, scout, something like that. And it’s gold which is more… Cabal, but we’ll see. I do see other hints of Cabal-style design in these other sets, so who knows, maybe we are on the way to the Calus-based season after all. There have definitely been more hints about Calus’ return both this season and over the past year.

I’m reaching here, but it’s all we’ve got. I expect to see something concrete around reset on Tuesday.

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