The first thing you hear aboard the Glykon when you finally make your way inside is a low, frightening growl. As you're creeping through a ventilation duct to find a way into the derelict spaceship's structure, it's impossible to pin down where the sounds of scratching, breathing, and heavy footsteps are coming from. It isn't long before you discover the bodies and the wreckage. There's no one aboard. Something awful happened here. Whispers emanate from the walls, and shadows move in the corners, and slowly you realize that everyone is dead, but you are not alone.
Investigating the Glykon is Destiny 2's latest mission, Presage, and it's a standout moment in the game. I spent more than an hour wandering the ship when I discovered it, finding my way through its twisting hallways and infrastructure, listening to the sounds of something alive creeping around in the dark. The level evokes the likes of horror sci-fi such as Alien, Dead Space, or Event Horizon, sending you into the bowels of a dead ship with only your gun and your flashlight as comfort, without a clear sense of what you'll find--or what it might do to you.
Missions with a unique tonal shift like Presage only come along every once in a while, and they're among the best things that developer Bungie makes for Destiny 2. Unlike the rest of the game right now, Presage places you into a full-on horror story for a short stint. It throws puzzles and obstacles in your way with little or no explanation of how you might make your way through them and trusts you to figure it out. It demands you explore and understand its space, rather than just sending you from gunfight to gunfight--huge portions of the mission contain no enemies at all. And it throws in some very cool ideas that I'll try not to spoil, with one fun section taking after an iconic Star Wars moment and another that, if you squint, could have been ripped from Halo 2.
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