Destiny 2 Resurrected A Character Who Could Change Everything In The Story

Story was never an exceptionally strong suit of the Destiny games--all the best lore and stories have been locked into text files rather than presented in-game. But things have gotten better on the story front with Forsaken, Destiny 2's big expansion for its second year. Rather than drop everything in one big campaign players immediately burned through, Bungie has slowly been delivering new story tidbits with each weekly update, while making good on old lore teases and tidbits. Many of these new pieces of the puzzle specifically relate to the Dreaming City, Forsaken's big endgame area and the home of the Awoken race, and the Curse, a strange phenomenon that's keeping the place trapped in a three-week time loop.

Though the time loop continues, there recently was a change in one of the repetitions: a new cutscene. That suggests a very big twist for the story--one that likely has serious implications for Destiny 2's story going forward. The trouble is, the cutscene was in a weird place and easy to miss, and now that the loop has continued forward, there's currently no way to trigger it. Here's where to find the new story cutscene in the Dreaming City during the right portion of the time loop, and what it all means. You can also watch it above.

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point!

The cutscene is located in Awoken Queen Mara Sov's court, which you can only access during the third week of the time loop, and by completing Petra's weekly bounty for the Blind Well. To get to the court, you'll take the offering you receive from finishing the bounty to the Observatory, where you can make contact with Mara Sov. During the third week of the cycle, when the Curse is strongest, you're able to jump through the Oracle Engine's portal and visit Mara's court, where usually, you can talk to her in person.

During the last peak of the cycle, however, Mara was missing. Things had changed slightly in her court as well--on the left side of the room, where a purple hologram usually sits. Last time players could visit, the hologram showed a gazebo like those that are found around the Dreaming City, and maybe more notably, in the Ascendant Realm. If you approached the hologram, you were prompted to "lean closer," which triggered a cutscene.

In the video, we see a lone Ghost floating through the Dreaming City, before it happens across a body covered in a white sheet. A second later, the Ghost revives the body, revealing it to be Prince Uldren, Mara Sov's brother. The scene mimics the first thing we ever saw in Destiny, when Ghost first discovered and revived the player character. It seems Uldren is going to be a Guardian, just like the rest of us.

Uldren's resurrection is a pretty loaded twist for the story of Forsaken. The expansion began with Uldren murdering Cayde-6, one of the game's major characters, and the first half of its campaign was all about hunting Uldren down and getting revenge. Players were aided by Petra Venj, the queen's regent, in stopping and killing Uldren. But it turned out that Uldren was being manipulated by the Taken and wasn't fully in control of himself. In fact, the Taken used Uldren to open the way to the Dreaming City and start the Curse to begin with.

So Uldren coming back could be big for dealing with the Curse, and Mara's absence from the throne room suggests she might have had something to do with it. Each visit to Mara has suggested she's working on a plan to stop the Taken and the Curse, but she's not really willing to explain it to anyone yet. Before the week in which the new cutscene became available, though, we saw Mara talking with an emissary of the Nine, a secretive and apparently powerful group we know about only through our interactions with Xur, the vendor who sells Exotic weapons and armor on the weekends. Soon after bargaining with the Nine, Mara's brother is back to life--that seems pretty significant.

A big lingering question is how this is going to affect the characters of Destiny 2. Petra took part in the hunt to stop Uldren, and while the Guardian leaders who were friends with Cayde didn't sanction your quest for revenge, they didn't do much to stop you either. Meanwhile, Mara has always seemed a little weird about her brother's possession and death. We also know that Guardians don't remember their past lives--so will Uldren be a completely different person now? Will he still be the bitter jerk we knew briefly in Destiny 1 and in Forsaken? Will he remember how he wound up where he is in the first place? Will he seek revenge against you?

Apparently, we'll need to keep waiting to see what changes Uldren's resurrection will have on Destiny 2's week-to-week story. Between live content, like the upcoming Crimson Days holiday event for Valentine's Day, and the new Forge activities of The Black Armory, there's plenty going on in Bungie's shared-world shooter. Hopefully the story Bungie is telling lives up to the effort players are putting into discovering it.