Leading up to the announcement of Destiny 2: Beyond Light, the community was starting to feel increasingly uncertain about the future of the franchise. Ever since Bungie split from Activision, it had made great leaps forward with cross-save and New Light but had struggled to keep up the pace on seasonal content due to having fewer resources at hand. This made players even more surprised when the studio doubled-down on Destiny 2 and announced three years worth of content and expansions in the form of Beyond Light, The Witch Queen, and Lightfall, plans for cross-play, and a next-gen upgrade for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.
Bungie went a step further with the announcement of Destiny 2: Beyond Light and brought back a fan-favorite character from the original Destiny campaign, a story thread players have been wanting answers on for six years. The return of the Exo Stranger and the arrival of the Pyramid Ships is nothing short of exciting and makes the story of Beyond Light feel far more significant than last year’s Shadowkeep expansion.
However, Bungie also appears to be repeating old mistakes and ignoring one of Destiny 2‘s biggest unanswered story threads, Prince Uldren. After the surprise resurrection of Uldren Sov at the end of the Forsaken storyline, when will the former Prince return and start his road to redemption?
Prince Uldren Sov is the Queen of the Reef’s brother and first appeared in the original Destiny vanilla campaign all the way back in 2014. After a brief appearance at the beginning of the Taken King expansion for Destiny, Uldren Sov was presumed dead and wouldn’t make another appearance for three years until the release of Destiny 2: Forsaken in 2018. After the disappearance of his sister in the Taken War, Uldren begins to hear the voice of his sister who needs his help to escape from a mysterious realm, leading to the beginning of the Forsaken expansion where Uldren stages a prison break at the Prison of Elders, frees the Scorned Barrons, and kills the hunter Vanguard, Cayde-6.
Uldren becomes corrupted by the darkness on his quest to reach the Awoken homeland and free his sister. In reality, the voice is coming from an Ahamkara by the name of Riven (the final boss in the Last Wish Raid), who is tricking him into freeing her. Once Uldren reaches the Dreaming City, he is attacked and devoured by a creature called the Voice of Riven but manages to survive and the Voice of Riven is killed by the player. At the end of the Forsaken campaign, the Awoken Prince Uldren Sov pleads to the player and Petra Venj, claiming that everything he did was done to save his sister. Of course, nothing was going to stop the Guardian or Petra from getting revenge for the death of Cayde-6, the screen fades to black, and a fatal shot can be heard.
Bungie did a great job at masking who pulled the trigger but the outcome remained the same regardless – Uldren Sov was dead. At the end of the Forsaken campaign, players embarked into endgame territory where the Dreaming City opened up and new threads began to evolve such as the Last Wish Raid and the Taken Curse. Every three weeks, players were able to go and visit Mara Sov in her Ascendant Realm and gain new bits of information about the larger world like her allegiance with the Nine. Three months on from the beginning of the curse and launch of Forsaken, players uncovered a brand new cutscene that saw Prince Uldren revived as a Guardian by a Ghost called Pulled Pork – a very important moment as Ghosts don’t just revive anyone they find.
And that was it for the story of Uldren Sov, at least for the time being. Bungie capped the story of Forsaken with one of the biggest moments in Destiny history and then went completely silent on the subject for an entire year. In December 2019, almost an entire year since Uldren was revived as a Guardian, a new piece of lore was found on an Exotic Ship in the Dawning that revealed what Uldren had been doing since he was revived. With no memory of his former life, Uldren and Pulled Pork ventured to the EDZ and spent the year in hiding, sad, lonely, and lost, due to unexplained anger from anyone that recognized Uldren. Bungie made a point of letting players know where Uldren was and what he had been doing all this time for a reason, likely as a way to start leaving small bread crumbs that will lead to his eventual return in an upcoming expansion.
Once upon a time, Bungie stated that the story of the Exo Stranger ended with the Destiny campaign and that she wouldn’t return at any point in the future. Naturally, no one believed that statement because the character was too ambiguous and too many story threads had been left open. With the release of Destiny 2: Beyond Light, the return of Exo Stranger fit perfectly with the direction that Bungie wanted to take the series; she was always going to come back but it couldn’t be forced, it had to make sense. That’s the same thing it’s doing with the story of Uldren Sov and why he didn’t just die at the end of the Forsaken campaign.
During the development of Destiny 2: Forsaken, Bungie may have been in early negotiations to end its contract with Activision and had some sort of rough outline for the future. Major characters like Savathun (The Witch Queen) had already been teased for the entire first year of Destiny 2, and while her 2021 expansion wouldn’t have been planned, Bungie knew that she was coming. All of this set up means that Bungie knew and knows that Uldren Sov is an important character with more story to tell in the world of Destiny and it kept him alive until the time is right for him to return. With the Pyramid Ships about to arrive, Uldren Sov will likely come back in a big way for The Witch Queen or Lightfall, even if it’s ignoring the story thread for the time being.
Destiny 2: Beyond Light releases November 10, 2020, for PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One. PS5 and Xbox Series X versions are in development.
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