If you’ve you’ve been living in the world of “Destiny” for a while, you know that it is full of running story threads — very few of which are fully resolved. And as we get our first look at next week’s “Black Armory” expansion for “Destiny 2,” I can’t help but think that some old story topics are about to resurface very soon.
In particular I’m thinking of SIVA, the substance that wrecked parts of Earth in the “Rise of Iron” story in the original “Destiny.” It was a little bit frustrating that this spring’s “Warmind” expansion didn’t really do anything with SIVA, considering the AI Rasputin was the reason SIVA had been wreaking havoc in the first place — he was basically using it to defend himself.
But after spending a lot of time staring at some of the new designs for armor, weapons and ships in “Black Armory,” I feel like there’s a good chance that “Destiny 2” is about to pick up those threads. So let’s take a look at one of these real quick.
This is a shot of one of the forges that will be the subject of the new horde mode that “Black Armory” is adding to the game. Let’s look at a couple others real quick.
A few things immediately stand out: The forge itself on the left, which looks pretty much exactly like something out of a warmind bunker; the red in the armor being the same sort of dried blood red as SIVA; the rubbery textures and geometric shapes recalling the Yuga Sundown robes that players can earn from Escalation Protocol on Mars, seen below.
In the long history of Destiny armor, there’s really not much to compare these new sets to — they really are their own thing. So it’s tough to look at them without seeing the SIVA red and all those triangles.
It’s important to note that SIVA has not ever looked solid like that. What we saw in “Rise of Iron” always kinda looked like a bundle of ropes. But SIVA was a programmable building material that could be used for essentially any purpose, so it would follow that it could be molded into say, armor plating.
It’s also important to note that these forges are from the Golden Age, back when people actually knew how to use SIVA. All the SIVA we saw in “Rise of Iron” was either mindlessly running rampant or being hacked together by the Devil Splicers in a way that it was certainly never intended to be used.
Now, these new weapons and armor were not designed by Rasputin — if they were, those guns would just be new IKELOS weapons. They were designed, rather, by the humans who built the forges. But there’s still so much we don’t know about “Black Armory” and it makes it difficult to piece all this together. And I’m guessing that since this expansion will roll out over time, with only one forge available at the start, it’s going to take some time to figure it out.
But just based on these shots, I’d bet the Farm on Rasputin and SIVA being involved somehow.
And I hesitate to even go in such a direction, but where have we seen black triangles before? That’s right, the post-credits scene for the vanilla “Destiny 2” story campaign, in which some mysterious black-triangle ships lit up when the Traveler awoke. I’d say this would be an odd place for those to be teased, but last month we spotted a hologram of on of those triangle ships in Mara Sovv’s court. So they’re at least starting to give us some movement on that front.
How the triangle ships would have anything to do with the armory or the forges I have no idea. It’s more likely that it’s just a cool design thing, or if Rasputin is involved it’s just because he likes triangles and other basic geometric shapes, as we’ve seen with the IKELOS weapons and the Yuga Sundown robes. But anything is possible here. The use of black as the primary color, for example, probably is not a coincidence given the way “Destiny 2” has been taking more of a shades of grey approach with “Forsaken” and the the Drifter and all that.
But it looks like we’re going to have to wait until next week for any other substantial clues about what’s in store with “Black Armory.” So sit tight.