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Bungie premiered the launch trailer for Beyond Light at 10 am EST on YouTube today, and while it wasn’t exactly groundbreaking or show off anything too new, it had just enough going for it to reignite the hype for fans.

The trailer itself was more or less the usual for Bungie, showing off chunks of curated gameplay with specific voice lines from a handful of characters. What this trailer did do was show more of the Exo Stranger, Eris, and Drifter in action than we’ve seen at any point in the franchise’s six-year history.

Most interestingly, we’re getting more Eris Morn, meaning she’s spent more time in the limelight than most of the other NPC’s that players have come to know with the exception of possibly the Vanguard leaders themselves.

As far as new story elements, Varik’s appearance and his lines make me think that his role could be limited to cutscenes, especially as the “Forged in the Storm” ViDoc from a few days ago showed the Exo Stranger would be the planetary vendor on Europa. It’s possible that Bungie is going to pull a Dreaming City on us and introduce a second location, but it seems unlikely, especially since Variks could die in this story.

We also saw more of Eramis, and what look like her take on the Scorn Barons, which I’ll call the Stasis Barons. They have wildly different appearances and seem to use Stasis in different ways from one another, so it seems like Bungie took my favorite part of Forsaken, remixed it, and is serving it back up. While I’m not a big fan of reusing ideas, when done properly, it can reinvigorate a relatively bland campaign approach.

Perhaps the biggest shock of the trailer was that the Exo Stranger is using Stasis actively and with full control, which means it wasn’t some random chance. She knew what she was doing when she blasted some Fallen with Stasis to freeze them solid.

Destiny 2 Beyond Light Launch Trailer

More importantly, it seems like we’ll see a “final stand” sort of cinematic featuring Eris, the Drifter, and the Exo Stranger. While we don’t know exactly how it ends, it seems pretty unlikely to me that Bungie will kill off any of these characters. The Drifter is in charge of Gambit, and love it or hate it, it’s a fundamental part of the game now. Eris is one of the only NPC’s players have any connection with now that Cayde-6 is dead, and the Exo Stranger is the planetary vendor. It’s entirely possible we’ll see one or more of these characters go down in this cutscene, but the Stranger seems to save the day by unleashing her Stasis abilities.

It begs the question as well of just what the Exo Stranger is. She isn’t a Guardian, as she doesn’t have a Ghost or the Light-based abilities we all know. We do know she has Darkness abilities and a companion we haven’t seen before, and that the Pyramids are the anti-Traveler. I’m betting she’s the Darkness version of a Guardian, possibly one from the future going rogue to save the Last City and the Traveler for some reason.

If you’re planning on watching the trailer for potential gameplay elements, I’ll save you the time and say that there isn’t much. We saw a rocket launcher that leaves behind a Stasis wall on detonation, and some more Stasis class gameplay, but besides more looks at the new Fallen and Vex AT-ST walker-type enemies, there’s not much new to see here.

While we didn’t see much from this trailer, what we did see was things I don’t think anyone was really expecting, and I’m as excited as the rest of the community to get my hands on the expansion and start playing around with the Stasis abilities. November 10th can’t come soon enough.

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