So what did they change in the final patch? I was told it was what players wanted for years and yet Bungie never gave.
On the topic of D1 alpha left overs, did they ever explain the origins and purpose of exos, and Clovis Brea?
Did they ever resolve the Future War Cult, and New Monarch? (I guess what became of Dead Orbit as well)
When I stopped playing, Clovis Brea was the focus of the plot, but it was clearly nu-destiny fanfiction and not what was supposed to be about.
Dev articles have been posted upthread and I've added some summaries (still kind of long because I'm shitty at brevity). With regards to actual content, the big stuff is Distortions (hour-long events on various destinations buffing difficulty and rewards), Pantheon 2.0 (a reprisal of the boss rush mode from before TFS) and the long-awaited return of SRL from D1. Systems-wise, a massive loot refresh making pretty much every activity relevant again, simplifying the Portal to not take so much setup to start an activity, adding catalysts to all remaining exotic weapons, and throwing in a bunch of old artifacts for good measure. There's a lot more (and still more previews to come), but those are the highlights in my opinion.
With regards to lore stuff, obviously I can't speak for what may or may not have been the original intention, but the gist of it is Clovis Bray used what he called "Clarity" (some Darkness power related to the Europa Pyramid he found) and Vex nanomachines to create Exos as essentially an evolved humanity in your usual "fuck mortality I'm gonna live forever" kind of story. He eventually succeeded in uploading himself to an Exo mind from which he could oversee operations on Europa, then implanted a copy of himself in another body which later rebelled, fought off the Vex he'd unleashed on Europa, and after dozens of resets eventually became Banshee-44, the gunsmith, with no more memory of who he'd been. The giant head Clovis was reawakened by us after we crashed the orbital station into the Deep Stone Crypt. He popped up again in Season of the Seraph where he wanted to take control of Rasputin's warsat network directly, but he got locked out of the system and hasn't really been heard from since. (Or ever, now.)
As for the factions, they all went kaput after Season of the Splicer. FWC had a lot of egg on their face after Lakshmi-2 incited violence against the House of Light refugees, even to the extent of aiding a Vex incursion into the city, and when she got killed by the Vex in the process, the whole faction disbanded. New Monarchy was supportive of FWC's efforts and also skeedaddled out of there after the invasion was stopped, and Dead Orbit had had enough of everything and just left. Really it was just Bungie's way of saying "stop asking about factions, we're done, we're not doing anything with them anymore," even though they still left all their regalia up in the Tower.
it's still indev but most of the things are many qol changes like being able to tier up your guns but i think it's only for new guns so your old shit will remain old, removing the need for retarded gunsets as champion-breaking mods are now per gun, even though they could have gone with the fucking mods just like back in the day when they rolled the fucking champion update but nah, there's always these tiny fuck-yous bungie does every time, even in death they still give you the middle finger because fuck you that's why.
I mean, is it really that big of a deal to not be able to pick exactly the anti-champ effect you want for every single gun? Every single weapon category in the game will have multiple anti-champion options without even needing to do anything special, just pick the intrinsic and go. This also makes it more likely that some rando in your group can actually counter champs even accidentally, and you don't have to rely on them slotting a mod in before starting the activity. Maybe it sucks if your particular favorite gun doesn't happen to match the champion you want it to, but considering the fact that this applies to every weapon in the game giving you hundreds of options to choose from (even old stuff), on top of exotics and elemental keyword anti-champ counters, I don't think it will be an issue that your Bygones can't stun an Overload champ.
