Brilliant Destiny 2 secret mission opens a mysterious can of worms
Wicked whispers.
Most Destiny players agree the Vault of Glass - the game's first raid - is up there with the best Destiny has to offer. For me, it's not just the best thing Bungie's ever made for Destiny, but it's one of the greatest first-person shooter experiences of all time.
Now, nearly four years after Vault of Glass made its debut, Destiny 2 has thrown up one of the coolest secret missions seen in the franchise yet - and it includes a mysterious Vault of Glass-related puzzle that's got fans excited to find out more.
THERE MAY BE SPOILERS AHEAD!
Let's start at the beginning. This week, Destiny 2 players uncovered a new secret mission in the game.
To access it, you have to wait for the Taken public event to start in the Lost Oasis area on Io. Kill the Taken champion who spawns as part of the public event then enter the portal that pops up in the area. This triggers The Whisper, a secret mission with a 20-minute countdown timer. The Whisper includes one of the most fiendish platforming sections I've even seen in a first-person game. This platforming puzzle is not for the faint of heart. Be warned.
Make it through and you'll face off against waves of rock hard Taken enemies and three bosses. Defeat those and you get an exotic sniper rifle called Whisper of the Worm, which is, essentially, Destiny 2's Taken-themed take on Destiny 1's Black Spindle, which was itself a reward for completing a super cool secret mission. Like Black Spindle, Whisper of the Worm has the White Nail perk, which means rapidly landing three precision hits refills the magazine. Nice!
You can see how the whole thing plays out in the video below from YouTuber Kackis.
That's that, you'd think. But there's more. Players have found The Whisper contains hidden chests as well as Oracles next to a Vex gate that shows Vault of Glass on the other side.
It looks like redditor Mblim771_Kyle was the first to uncover these Oracles (anyone who played Vault of Glass will be familiar with Destiny's Oracles, which bong to announce their presence and must be destroyed in a certain order and within a certain time limit).
What's super cool for Destiny fans is that if you look through this particular portal you'll see Vault of Glass on the other side. It's kind of like this portal is a link between Vault of Glass and the unnamed location in which The Whisper takes place. Are we in an alternate dimension? An alternate timeline? Both? Or perhaps we're in both places at the same time. The Vex work in mysterious ways.
Move close to the portal and Oracles appear. There are seven Oracles that can spawn near the gate, but to spawn them all you must collect all five hidden chests in The Whisper mission. (You can only spawn the chests in the heroic version of The Whisper.)
Shoot the Oracles in the correct sequence, which Destiny 2 players have already worked out, and you get an exotic ship blueprint from a chest that spawns near the gate. To build the ship, you have to complete The Whisper with three weekly modifiers. The first, Arc Singe, is available from The Whisper's heroic version this week. The second will be available next week, the third the week after that, which means we won't find out what the ship looks like for another two weeks.
What could this ship be? Indeed, what does The Whisper mission mean? Destiny lore fans are currently speculating away, as you'd expect. Destiny lore fans are also having fun making sense of the lore tab on Whisper of the Worm (did Hive god Xol survive his death by coming back as a weapon?). And, remember I mentioned three bosses found at the end of The Whisper secret mission? They're Taken versions of three well-known bosses from Destiny 1: Urzok, the Hated, Valus Ta'aurc and Drevis, Wolf Baroness. How can they be Taken bosses in Destiny if players already killed them in Destiny 1?
We don't have the answers to these questions yet, but what we do know is The Whisper is just about the best thing to happen to Destiny 2 since, well, since the game came out. Destiny 1 was packed full of amazing secrets and mysteries players spent hours trying to uncover. It's great to see Bungie rekindle that spark with Destiny 2.