Cayde remembers what it was wish to die and return to the Traveler’s Mild, he says. He remembers the heat, the peacefulness of that place, and being reunited with Sundance, his Ghost. The Traveler doesn’t communicate to us in “Future,” however our Ghosts do, and Cayde believes it’s all linked anyhow: the Guardians, their Ghosts, the Traveler, the Mild. Separateness, in different phrases, is an phantasm; we’re all one. This perception alone is our widespread floor with the Witness (Brett Dalton), a many-armed god in search of to dominate and management all life within the universe.
We search for consolation and that means within the acquainted, discovering sure patterns and shapes time and again — in nature, in mythology, in artwork. And “Future” is an enormous, gloriously bizarre tapestry of exhausting sci-fi and fantasy, impressed by every thing from “Star Wars” and “2001” to “True Detective” and historic Mesopotamian fantasy. Typically, the sport may be fairly opaque, whereas different occasions it’s somewhat apparent and simplistic in the way it presents its ideas. (It is a saga of concrete Mild and Darkness, in spite of everything.) However its closing battle is easy sufficient. A titan of smoke and shadow has imprisoned entire civilizations inside its hivemind, bending victims’ wills to no matter objective it sees match and turning their our bodies to stone. Humanity is its subsequent goal, it’s right here, and the facility of the Traveler is our solely hope to cease it.
In final yr’s enlargement, the Witness tore a fantastic triangular gap within the Traveler, and “The Ultimate Form” takes place nearly totally inside it. This results in a aircraft of actuality known as the Pale Coronary heart, a “surreal area of reminiscence,” based on the in-game map of our photo voltaic system. Cayde and his mentor as soon as swapped theories for what may be contained in the mysterious machine floating above the Earth. “Nothing,” mentioned Cayde-6. To which his mentor countered: “Every part.” And he was nearly proper. The Traveler’s inside is cosmically, impossibly huge. Nonetheless, its terrain can be acquainted to gamers who’ve performed the unique “Future” or the unique “Future 2” marketing campaign (which has been inaccessible since 2020). For some builders, this might be a ridiculous swing. However Bungie has been constructing worlds for a very long time, and these environments are breathtaking in a manner that “Future” hasn’t been since I first laid eyes on the European Lifeless Zone and Nessus seven years in the past. The studio’s artists have set a brand new bar for themselves with the Pale Coronary heart, a spot I believe I’ll be spending much more time in because the yr goes on.