Cayde-6 seemed... overly eager during the Cabal invasion such as trying to shoot Cabal ship/missiles down, Golden Gun slinging, amidst debris falling on him, but consider that he has been holed up in the Towerdoing nothing but desk job. Generally all of the goofiness about Cayde-6 in the game, both the trailers and the game itself, can be attributed to finally getting out of the Tower and back into the field to fight again.
Commander Zavala's Titan crochet course is played as a random ambient joke through the Tower P.A. However, the cinematic trailer featuring Zavala's journey and rise to Commander shows that he started off with nothing, but his spacesuit from his old life, and had to scavenge his armor the old fashioned way. Seems like crocheting was something he picked up as a survival technique.
The trailer also gives a good reason why everyone was singing the player's praises so early in the first game: we saw that it took time and a lot of deaths for Zavala to become the badass we know and love, even a Fallen Vandal being too much for him at one point. Meanwhile, the Young Wolf not only killed a boatload of Fallen immediately after resurrecting, they then killed an Archon on their first official mission. Granted, they were fortunate enough to find a working weapon and get some new armor at their arrival at the Tower, but even then their skill would have been obvious to the Vanguard at that point, i. e. "this is someone to watch out for." Even the Traveler seems to have taken note of it, since the player character was given the vision instead of the Vanguard or other more experienced Guardians like Saladin or Efrideet.
Taken:
If you notice carefully you will see that the regular Taken enemies are the only foes to use the same appearance from the original game. This can easily be explained by the fact that each of the other enemy species are different: The Red Legion are a larger, better-armed force with different equipment compared to the Cabal deployment on Mars. The Fallen House of Dusk are desperate and going to greater lengths with less resources, using equipment from all Houses. The Vex on Nessus and Io have a different purpose and function compared to the Vex and Mars and Venus. The Hive on Titan serve Savathûn instead of Oryx. The Taken, meanwhile, served Oryx, and without the Taken King they can't really change or adjust their orders or morphology. If Savathûun herself shows up in the future, there may be new types of Taken.
Even the Taken that were captured after Oryx's death are just reflections of the same Taken who were created before Oryx died. The Red Legion officer who was Taken in the Lake of Shadow Strike used the same abilities as any other Taken Centurion, just on a larger scale.
Another possible explanation is that, going by the original Taken Grimoire cards, the 'perfect shape' of said Taken creatures is static, meaning Taken Red Legion will look like Taken Skyburners, because they've all taken the same 'new shape.'
The redone equipment system is fairly easy to explain given that the City has been taken and all the Guardian's weapons lost. Their desperation means they are no longer picky or uniform in their equipment. They'll use any energy weapon if they need one, even if it means they're carrying two assault rifles.
During the Leviathan Raid, if you look closely, Calus' Cabal troops wield the classic slug rifles from the first Destiny instead of the new, more complex energy weapons carried by Ghaul's Red Legion. One lore entry mentions that the Sand Eaters, the main Cabal force on Mars, were loyalists who fought the "traitors" of the Red Legion when they arrived, and an adventure on Nessus mentions Calus inviting troops to rejoin his Loyalist regime. A lot of the Cabal troops on the Leviathan are likely loyalist troops who kept the "classic" Cabal weaponry or may have even been Sand Eaters who rejoined Calus' Loyalists and brought their old weapons and repainted their armor.
While the Cabal were able to easily invade Earth and drive the humans out of the City, they ultimately lost because of one simple fact: they can defeat the Guardians in an open battle with overwhelming force, but the Guardians are masters at guerilla warfare, sabotage, and assassination. The various adventures against the Cabal show the Guardians conducting a wide range of guerilla strikes and sabotage missions, with the main story missions against the Red Legion involve stealing ships and sneaking onto Cabal ships to kill leaders or sabotage their weapons. The Guardians were ultimately able to win because while they lost the open battle, they were able to leverage their asymmetric warfare abilities to devastating effect, rendering the Cabal military might useless by destroying their equipment, disabling their defenses, and surgically eliminating their greatest weapons and leaders without suffering any losses.
In the endgame, Ghaul seems to take some of the abilities of the Light, as he unleashes all three elements at you in the course of the battle in super-based attacks. But, why doesn't he come back to life after you defeat him (at least in the same form, he does come back as an Eldritch Abomination)? It's because Ghaul has no Ghost. Guardians know the value of these little guys, which seems to be a big reason why the Guardian goes out of his/her way to grab it when the Light is initially taken from them. Again, the Guardian doesn't grab a weapon, he/she grabs the one thing they know will bring them back from death. The thing Ghaul lacks. It is hard to tell with the helmet on, but the body language of the Guardian in the moment just screams anguish as your poor companion goes hurtling off the edge. Note the absolute defeated posture of the Guardian as Ghaul pushes them off his ship with his boot.
Furthermore, it's unlikely that Ghaul would have wanted to be dependent on something like a Ghost anyway; look at what he did to his consul, the person who he owed his life and literally everything else to when he basically told Ghaul to get real or he was going to lose the empire in his pursuit of the Traveler's Light. A Guardian has to trust their Ghost implicitly to have their back, that's why the Player Character and his Ghost make such a good team as Ghost searched for days in an occupied city to find you and risking his own existence; Ghaul, like any ambitious Cabal that had to claw his way from a place even lower than the bottom of his society, likely trusts no one. Ghaul would have left someone for dead in that same situation and, given the We Have Reserves mentality of the Cabal military, probably has.
Another interesting fact: Ghaul spent the entire game trying to prove that the Traveler should bless him with its Light as well. And failing until eventually he gives up and steals the Light. His dying words were that the Traveler finally saw him... as something to be destroyed. Why? Because Ghaul spent an entire game killing Guardians, destroying the City, and conquering everything he came across - in other words, operating under the same sword logic the Darkness espouses, despite not serving it. "When two things meet, they fight, and only the victor deserved to survive. And at the end of everything, there can only be one thing surviving in the universe." The Traveler would never bless anyone who thought similarly to its nemesis.
This last bit is somewhat borne out in the lore of the Imperious Sun shell, which describes Rhulk's experiments on a Lucent Ghost. When the Ghost is destroyed by a mysterious outside force (implied to be the Traveler itself), Rhulk concludes that the power of the Light can only be given, not taken. If the Traveler was willing to destroy one of its own "children" to prevent its power from being stolen, it's no wonder upon Ghaul taking and flagrantly wielding the Light, it shrugged off its prison to strike him down.
The Skyburner's Oath slug rifle deals bonus damage to Cabal. This makes sense, considering that not only are the slug rifles noted as being specialized in armor-piercing, but slug rifles are the signature weapons of Cabal Loyalists to Emperor Calus. Calus' Loyalist forces are not only expecting fight any number of dangerous alien enemies, but they're also expecting to fight Ghaul and his Red Legion, so naturally they would arm themselves with weapons best-suited to kill other Cabal.
Since Ghosts can survive independent of their Guardians, (as proven by Jaren Ward's Ghost being passed on to Shin Malphur) it's entirely possible that many of the Guardians who died fighting the Cabal between the Traveler's imprisonment and escape were ultimately recovered and resurrected by their Ghosts after they died. If not, it's also plausible that even with those Guardians lost, the Ghost can move on and raise up new Guardians from other dead they find later. As long as the Ghost lives, so too will the Guardian.
In some background chatter the new Tower, one of the NPCs describes this happening to a someone in the street after the city is retaken.
Savathun's Song Strike put emphasis on the theme of 'Sacrifice' ; a member of the fireteam you were sent to rescue ended up throwing herself at the mercy of the Hive just so your fireteam can have the chance to destroy the ritual. And many portions of the Strike requires a player willing to take one for the team in order to let the others finish their tasks to progress.
In the final mission of the Warmind DLC, Ana Bray's plan to overload Rasputin's Neural Net to power up the Valkyrie to fight Xol may come off as suicidally crazy, considering the Concierge AI is constantly warning you to evacuate as you disrupt each of the neural inhibitors. When you complete the Valkyrie upgrade, the AI even says you're already too close to the core, even though you don't suffer any ill effects whatsoever. The reason this is brilliance? Those warnings were made during the Golden Age: therefore they were meant for ordinary human (and maybe exo) workers, not Guardians, who have shields, health regeneration, and the ability to revive from complete disintegration within five-to-thirty seconds. What's a little radiation poisoning compared to all you've already been through?
Why is Zavala so darn sure that you can defeat a Worm God like Xol without Rasputin's help? Sure, he doesn't trust Rasputin at all with some legitimate basis for that, but remember that you're "the Guardian (he) never shuts up about" and you've got an impressive head count even if your Guardian wasn't imported from the last game (and if you were you're practically a Living Legend, killing gods is your day job without a suspect super-computer for help.) He only changes his mind after Xol literally buries you.
While Glimmer's lore was introduced first in Destiny, it is easy to realize that the lore is demonstrated in-game when you stop to think about it. Just as engrams are an example of matter-encryption, Glimmer is so valuable a resource because the matter can be programmed to take on nearly any shape. When you buy items with Glimmer, what you are doing is giving Glimmer to someone who programs it to take on the shape of whatever item you are 'buying'; when you "reacquire" weapons, armour and items in the Collections menu in Destiny 2, among the materials used are Glimmer pieces "programmed" to be used in the forging of the selected item, armour or weapon. It can't replicate every part, because gunsmith materials and legendary shards are needed for essential components, but Destiny weapons and armor, even Exotics, are literally made from Glimmer.
Why is the Drifter carrying a coin with two of the same face? Because to him, Light and Darkness are two sides of the same coin.
The Traveler is naturally associated with spheres and round, smooth objects, while the Darkness is more angular and its representatives are shaped like tetrahedrons (or three-sided pyramids). Tetrahedrons are the simplest complete object you can create using polygons in a three-dimensional space, while spheres are almost impossible to fully replicate with polygons (most modelling programs only give you an approximation). In other words, a tetrahedron is a sphere that's been run through the Sword Logic until all superfluous curves and softness have been removed.
Mara not only likes The Tempest but sees herself as a Prospero analogue as she weaves her mystical machinations on her island (read: The Reef/wherever she is post-Forsaken) and has no concern about being seen as villainous as she works at her goals.
Of course Shadow Price makes its re-debut featuring the Bottomless Griefnote kills completely refill the magazine if all other teammates are dead perk when viewed in Collections. It's Toland's gun, so it makes sense that the firearm that preceded the Hive and Ahamkara-based Bad Juju would have a weaker ammo restoration ability themed around death, just like String of Curses.
The reception to the sixth repressed memory in Duality - where Calus admits he was only attempting to groom the Guardians rather than show any genuine adoration of them - was mixed, mainly due to a good chunk of players not actually understanding the implications of some of his earlier writings and actions. Then again, the whole point of grooming is to convince the victim that you haven't actually done anything wrong, and that simply means Calus was so good at it, it pervaded the fourth wall.
Rasputin's dialogue at the end of Season of the Seraph is more than just waxing about The Power of Friendship. Although he is truly dead, Felwinter is technically not his only descendant. Through the Ishtar Collective, Rasputin also created a "daughter," Neomuna's creator Soteria. She attained sapience much like her "father," and sent NEFELE STRONGHOLD to Neptune because it was both mathematically and morally correct, a kind of choice Rasputin lamented he was never able to carry out. And despite the process nearly killing her, she has her own reintegration protocol through the Hierarchy of Needs, which the Young Wolf is carrying out by using the bow. There is no need for Rasputin not just because we have our friends, but also because in the end, Neomuna and Soteria are proof everything's going to be okay without him.
Amanda's death seem to come right out of nowhere, being brutally sudden... which was likely the entire point. For the rest of the Vanguard and the players, Death Is Cheap. They can go on however many risky missions they want because they'll have their Ghosts to revive them unless the absolute worst happens. But for a normal human like Amanda, no matter how much of a Badass Normal she is, she's still not a Guardian. She doesn't have the same revival safety net that they do, and it ultimately ends up being her demise when she starts joining in with Guardian missions. It's a reminder that no matter how badass the player's non-Guardian allies are, there's a reason why the Vanguard are the main ones in the field.
Of course Nezarec sees the Shadow Legion as a joke and little more than cannon fodder for the Guardians - they're all literally braindead clones of Cabal, Psions, and Warbeasts to serve the Witness' bidding. When they're not actively fighting or doing something as ordered, they just stand there like statues. They don't have any hopes, dreams, or anything resembling personalities or souls. As far as the Final God of Pain is concerned, they're useless beyond delaying the Guardians, as he can't break their nonexistent minds with unimaginable agony and relish in their despair.
Fridge Horror
The game opens with the complete destruction of the city from what we've seen. Fridge horror sets in when you remember that in the first game, each subsequent update was a foe more dangerous than the last. When we've already dealt with Oryx, Destiny's equivalent of Darkseid, Pushed back SIVA, and are about to dismantle the Cabal Empire, what could possibly follow after this?
You can only import your character (cosmetically, anyway) if you completed The Black Garden in the first game, so what happened to your character if you never made it that far? Presumably, they were one of the many nameless Guardians who were Killed Off for Real when the City fell.
Even worse still, what if you DID play through the original campaign, but on a different device or account entirely? The Young Wolf's exploits are spoken of in the game, whether or not you technically ARE the Young Wolf. Since the champion you created wouldn't be able to be imported from one device to another, it's possible that the champion you previously created- a legend who slew foes of godlike status- actually met their permanent end during the Red War.
Look at Asher Mir's arm, and remember how Kabr said that he was no longer himself anymore. Now remember that the Vex have the Pyramidion, a dedicated facility for converting other beings into Vex, and they're all too willing to take prisoners for experimentation. What's the likelihood that one of those Vex you've been shooting was human at some point? Additional lines support things; suggesting that both Vex milk and the Vex themselves are organic (or at least, not entirely synthetic). And there is a set of adventures that suggest that the Vex can upload memories, if not personalities, into their networks or units for preservation and study.
Hell, the lore for it makes for a worrying tale; the MIDA was designed by a "dumb" AI to be able to do almost literally anything. Gun? Check. Navigation system? Check. Flotation device? Check. "List continues", the game notes. And how did they discover the past information of the MIDA? Oh, it was easy. They just used the built-in hacking protocols, ON ITSELF, to access the contained records. Which means that cyberwarfare is not only on its list of functions, it's so good at it that practically no defenses can stop it!
Due to the radar perk and low-damage drop off allowing for 3-shot kills, the MIDA is a weapon that should be expected to be seen at least once a match. Seems the enemy the MIDA kills best is Guardians.
The lore tab for the Truth exotic, and the associated quest, reveals something rather unsettling in hindsight: we didn't just find it, we stole it from someone else who was supposed to find it. Even worse, it's implied that Mithrax, the one Fallen trying to start uniting his people with the city, had intended it as a gift for another Fallen he rescued long ago as a hatchling and considered a daughter, even stipulating that she was supposed to find it while allied with other Guardians. Our greed might've just shot down our chance at a City-Fallen alliance.
Osiris has spent subjective decades inside the Infinite Forest, exploring uncountable timelines, witnessing more Bad Futures than any sane man could handle...and now he's found something that not only made him leave the Forest, but walk right up to Rasputin, rifle in hand, and ask the last Warmind what side he's on. What the hell did Osiris see?
The Darkness makes it very clear that it wants the Guardians to join it, or at least leave the Traveler behind. With the way it just casually lifts the player character into the air on the Moon and on Io, and how those Pyramid ships seem invincible... it raises a rather frightening prospect. The Darkness has chased after the Traveler for quite a long time, and yet this go around, it's not trying to attack. If it wanted to, it could probably annihilate the Traveler and its Guardians for good, and humanity with it. As it stands, humanity is extremely lucky that the Darkness seems more interested in conversing with them instead of turning them into little more than dust and ash.
The Lament exotic quest contains a huge revelation you never expected. After you completed the final step to create The Lament sword with the help of Clovis Bray's AI, you discover that part of Clovis Bray is none other than Banshee-44, the gunsmith in The Tower. And the sword originally belonged to him. He tore through several Vex in his bid to save how many Exos he could in the Bray Exoscience facility and escape from Europa by using this sword, and you get to give it a field test as the Vex try to raid the facility again, this time to stop you from getting the sword. Now you look at Banshee's number right along his name and it hits you: He went through a lot of hell to survive the worst that the galaxy had to offer during and after his escape from Europa until he found his place in the Last City, This makes his case extra special, as no other Exo went through reboots/revives as Banshee-44 did... and that he was also quite the badass in that distant past.
During Expunge: Corrupted Tartarus, Osiris explains that Tartarus itself serves as what amounts to a glorified garbage dump for the Vex, sending failed projects and scrap to be recycled back into other assets. As with all of the other regions of the Nexus in Expunge, the Oppressive Mind in charge (Dimio in this case) helps prop up the Endless Night... and with Dimio managing Tartarus, its intended role in the collective can be described as "head janitor." If the janitor can help maintain such a devastating simulation, then humanity should be counting their lucky stars none of the Vex with even slightly better occupational roles have managed to reach the City with their work.
Lakshmi's failed coup against the Vanguard has made it clear that the Vex tech the Future War Cult uses is not just for seeing into the future, but even has the power to summon Vex right into the City. If she wanted to, Lakshmi could have dropped an entire army's worth of Vex wherever she wanted, and there would have been significantly more damage. Hell, she might have been able to drop a really powerful mind on top of Zavala and/or Ikora, making it much more likely for them to die and for the factions to take over. It's only due to Lakshmi's Irrational Hatred of the House of Light that the City still stands after her attempt to take over.
Notes in the book shipped with the Collector's Edition of The Witch Queen indicate that Stasis, being an amalgamation of perfect crystals (structures totally devoid of entropy) and time crystals (structures capable of molecular motion without interacting with energy), has a nonzero chance that every crystal formed from the stuff contains a constant evolution race of simulation computers due to the Darkness's evolutionary tendencies connected to the "final shape." Comparisons are, of course, made to the Vex, raising some serious questions of whether or not many of the Stasis fragments (often frozen Vex tech) are just garbage and dysfunctional equipment given symbolism by the Winnower. Not to mention, if the Darkness came first, is it any wonder that the Sol Divisive would idolize it like so?
Though Nezarec's fate and alignment are up in the air as of Season of the Haunted, the various reveals strongly implying he is or was a Disciple one-up the reveals of Clarity Control and the Lunar Pyramid (which he himself is implied to be the owner of). As he was worshipped as a god before the Golden Age, this pretty much confirms that the Darkness was always a leg up over the Traveler if it could influence humans through him.
Confirmed in the Season of Plunder: Nezarecs's remains were discovered in the Lunar Pyramid by Mithrax's mother, and the Fallen Pirate crews harvested the remains for their dark power.
The Vanguard's rule banning Guardians from trying to look into their past lives which while can be seen as a way to keep them from going on a wild goose chase in the event any record of said past were long lost, it also makes sense that it's for a very good reason. As since the line between Light and Darkness is much more blurred, the known requirements to end up being resurrected as a Guardian (devotion, bravery, sacrifice, death) don't necessarily mean that the person getting resurrected was a good person in their pre-guardian life. And if said Guardian were to discover their past, it's just as much possible they'll continue that lifestyle as it is they'll be disgusted by it and see themselves being resurrected as a Guardian as a chance to right any wrongs they did. For all we know, there could be a Guardian running around that was Jack the Ripper in their previous life and could end up deciding to get their killing spree up and running again were they to find that out. It definitely makes Zavala's frustration towards Ana regarding the matter much more understandable.
The Bequest sword from the Deep Stone Crypt was dedicated to Clovis I's ex-wife Lusia in his own twisted idea of compassion. It's later revealed that Clovis genuinely thought he was doing the right thing at all times, convinced that he would give humanity immortality and use that to fix every other problem he had caused — whether that was compensating his victims, being a loving family member, or simply becoming a better person overall. In fact, being faced with failure is what finally causes his human self to relent and send a written apology to Banshee. Now consider that Eramis carries the same sword and is similarly estranged from her mate Athrys, also legitimately believing that her atrocities are the only way for her race to survive. How much more bloodshed will she have to endure before she goes through what Clovis did?
, Pushed back SIVA, and are about to dismantle the Cabal Empire, what could possibly follow after this?