Destiny 2's new Momentum Control PvP mode, which launches on Tuesday, will add instant respawns, increase all weapon damage and supercharge your supers, turning you into a "1,000-pound gorilla". Not literally, obviously, although that would really shake up the meta.

Momentum Control, announced earlier this month without details on how it would work, is a variant of the regular PvP Control mode, but with an emphasis on making every weapon viable. The damage boost will make "everything in your arsenal...a contender", Bungie said in a blog post, and you're encouraged to be as aggressive as possible.

Despite the focus on gunplay, supers have been souped up too. When you pop your super ability you'll gain extra damage resistance—but you'll also be more vulnerable to heavy weapons. Speaking of, heavy weapon ammo will respawn faster, and in greater quantities than normal.

Momentum Control will speed up zone captures and shed the radar tracker, which could create chances for sneaky plays. Abilities will require a fair amount of effort to charge, Bungie says, so make sure you play the objective.

You can read the full blog post here. Momentum Control launches Tuesday, October 29.

For Phil's review of Destiny 2: Shadowkeep, click here. If you're new to Destiny 2 and want a beginner's guide, go this-a-way.

My Name is Byf has been producing videos on Destiny's lore since the beginning of the series. Here, we've asked him to tell the story of the Guardian who's had the greatest impact on the universe's recent history: you, the player. For more detailed lore dives into Destiny's story, visit My Name is Byf's Twitter, YouTube and Patreon pages.

I often use simple descriptions to describe Destiny to new players. For example: "the Fallen are an enemy alien race," or "you're a Guardian and the hero of this story". These general facts act as a guiding framework for the player's actions, but they are relatively static compared to the more immediate story told through campaign missions and activities. Destiny's best stories are often hard to find, squirreled away in lore tabs, lost journals and strange artifacts in otherwise ordinary activities.

Over time, the pillars of this world and our understanding of it grows. The Fallen turned out to be more complex than we realised, with some even becoming our allies. Guardians now feel more comfortable inhabiting a moral grey area—less likely to be figures of absolute morality. This world is, for the most part, vastly different from the one that launched in September 2014 with the first Destiny game. There is however one part of the story which has remained shrouded in mystery, impacting the world in only subtle ways: the Vex.

That changed with the current season of Destiny 2, the Season of the Undying. Bungie's narrative team is challenging some old assumptions, lifting the veil on old characters while telling new stories about the Vex. This results in some fascinating tie-ins with old lore, and changes to the world that are more visible than ever before. Destiny's story is moving forward at a pace that feels bracingly unfamiliar.

In order to understand the way in which the world has started to shift, you need to understand what's happened already during the Season of the Undying. And in order to do that, you need to understand the Vex.

The problem is that it's hard to actually know much about the Vex. You can find commonality between ourselves and Destiny's other alien races, but the Vex are so utterly different. Realise, for instance, that the robotic frames you fight aren't actually the Vex. Their glowing cores—the liquid crit spots that you shoot—are radiolaria—a miniscule form of life suspended in fluid. This is what the Vex really are.

The Vex are fundamentally alien to us—to the best of our knowledge the Vex don't even use language to communicate. Their only goal is to create a universe in which they are ultimately victorious. Whenever we talk about the Vex, we're talking about what can be observed or learned through study, but we cannot truly understand their perspective in the way we might the Fallen or Cabal. This is why, when a lore book such as Aspect arrives to present bold statements about the Vex, the question it raises is "how do we know this is true?" The Vex are still a puzzle, but we can now see the pieces of it.

Season of the Undying starts with the Vex of the Black Garden, a contingent of Vex known as the Sol Divisive who worship the Darkness. Back in 2014, at the conclusion to the first Destiny's original campaign, we destroyed the Dark Heart of the Black Garden—a living aspect of the Darkness—and stopped the Vex of the Sol Divisive from binding themselves to its power.

A few months later, the Sol Divisive attempted to retake the Black Garden using a Vex Hydra known as the Undying Mind. During a Strike mission added with The Dark Below DLC we destroyed the Undying Mind, although apparently not for long. Now, as of Season of the Undying, the Sol Divisive has started making incursions on the Moon. According to the Aspect lore book, this is due to the return of the Undying Mind, which rose back into being when the Sol Divisive detected the return of the Darkness (presumably when the Pyramid on the Moon was discovered). Its primary function is to reclaim the Black Garden from the Guardians. Its secondary directives will apparently lead to our complete destruction. 

Ikora, the Warlock Vanguard, has a plan to deal with the Undying Mind. Our goal is to blunt the Vex attacks on the Moon and to invade the Black Garden in order to buy time for the real objective, which can be seen progressing behind her in the Tower each week.

If you head to Ikora you'll see that her view over the Last City is now obscured by the construction of a massive portal, which is progressing week by week. Ikora's plan is to use this portal to assault the Undying Mind in any timeline where it has hidden itself. By doing so, we can push back the Sol Divisive, granting humanity another stay of execution. This may not, however, be the most important story in the season, because I believe there's a larger arc being moved forward—a story that began to unfold when we first discovered the Vault of Glass in vanilla Destiny.

The Aspect lore book, which was released this season, hints towards the events of the last few months being part of a much grander story. The lore book covers the actions of characters that are lost within the Vex networks. Praedyth, one of the original members of the fireteam that raided the Vault of Glass, is communicating with a cast of characters from the original grimoire cards on the Vex. These characters are each 227 simulated copies of four Ishtar Collective research team members from the Golden Age. These copies and Praedyth are trying to communicate what they've discovered about the Vex and what's been seen within the timelines to anyone who will listen—namely dark visions of the future and the possibly inevitable darkness that's on the way.

Aspect suggests that Praedyth sets one of his pieces of gear into the timestream so that he can use it to warn people of the coming Darkness. He inscribes a warning onto that piece of gear in hopes that it'll be found. The common connection that has been drawn is to No Time to Explain, an exotic pulse rifle from Destiny 1, which, according to its flavour text has the word "Soon" etched into the barrel. Intriguing enough, but it also puts the context of our mission into perspective. Defeating the Undying Mind is the first step to holding back an oncoming tide of Darkness. The story at play behind the Vault and Praedyth is starting to unravel and is clearly a part of a far greater narrative involving The Vex and the coming of The Darkness.

With the way this season and its lore are starting to unfold, it seems the Guardians of today are taking part in a larger story arc, one that has been going on, mostly hidden, for a much longer span of time. It all started with the Heart of the Black Garden, and has now found a new chapter in the Season of the Undying. Even the most static foundations of the game—such as the mysterious nature of The Vex—are starting to shift to tell that bigger story. Characters untouched for five years are now being given new stories and lore.

Destiny is changing in terms of tone and feel, and The Season of the Undying is, in a way, about those changes. The arrival of The Darkness and the resurgence of The Vex seems almost like the ending of the first act of Destiny's greater story. Where it goes next will be revealed when we defeat The Undying Mind, likely a couple of weeks from today, and when the next season—notably titled Season of Dawn—begins.

Last week at PAX Australia I had the chance to speak to Destiny 2 design director Victoria Dollbaum. She was in Melbourne to celebrate the free-to-play launch of Destiny 2: New Light, as well as its accompanying premium expansion Shadowkeep. It was a good time to catch up on some of the changes, big and small, that the shift in model has ushered in.

Below we discuss the difficulties new players might have accessing old content, the future of Xur, the looter shooter scene in general, and Dollbaum's dreams to have a Destiny arcade game.

Shadowkeep has brought in major changes to the way armor works, and the return of a revamped location, but there's been frustration that the world loot pool—ie stuff that drops when you're just exploring—is largely the same as vanilla Destiny 2. At what point under the season pass model can we expect that pool, and the tower vendors, to get a refresh?

Rewards are always prioritised based on what we are building, so if we spend a significant time building the world pool it means new reward sources that we’re building potentially have either fewer end reward sources, or weaker reward sources. It’s a game, you have only so many resources and you have to spread them out where you will, and we tend to focus on the new things rather than the old things, because even though you’re experiencing world drops once in a while it would not be fun to go play something new and not get something new.

The level of customization with the seasonal artifact has been fun for build crafting. Will the Season of Dawn bring in more solar focus mods?

So, each season will have its own set of mods that come with that. I think there's a static set of mods, and then there's some that are seasonally focused. So the team will select what the theme of the release is, and then build mods according to that theme. They could dramatically shift from season to season to get you to play in a different way. So there could be solar.

Bungie has acknowledged that New Light can be intimidating for new players, and I know from experience. Are there any plans afoot to make that transition easier, or is it going to stay the way it is?

We are focusing on Destiny being an evolving world, and New Light is in that same vein. We have a team that is dedicated to looking at New Light and continuing to evolve it, and improving places where players are getting stuck or the systems are not optimal. We’ll start to see that as the game evolves.

We’re trying to shift the focus away from campaigns that are in the past and are now history. We’re trying to focus on the time period we’re in, and the future where these stories will lead us. So for players coming in, we want them to come in at the present and not the past. Being able to just jump in and play with your friends, and then to do all those other things as more optional content comes is actually better, because when you jump in and you’re starting in the Red War, and you say "hey I want to come play with you, how does this work?", they say "you can’t until you spend another ten hours playing missions"—it can be disheartening. So what we’ve tried to do is break down those barriers. It’s mostly you experiencing history, but we want you to live in the present.

Are there plans to expand the pool of universal ornaments beyond the old Eververse gear? And if so, what would be a reasonable time to expect that to happen?

I don't know that I can say anything about that, other than we are carefully monitoring the success of the universal ornaments that are available now. And there can always be technical hurdles to showing everything at once. So, you know, the team understands that there is a need, which is why they started with that small subset of ornaments to start with, and then the system can definitely be expanded.

Now that Xur only sells the same rolls on exotics as are found in the collection he seems irrelevant, despite being one of the game's cult characters. Are there any thoughts about how Xur could become valuable again, or is he only intended for new players?

I think with Xur, the current moment is intended as kind of catch up for players who are returning or new, not so much for the bleeding edge players who have everything and are looking for special rolls and things like that. It could be that Xur at some point is re-purposed, but that just depends on: is there a need? Are those people who are on the bleeding edge and have all the things... is there a need for them to have more of that? Or is it that Xur’s role is the thing to catch players up who don’t have exotics?

With character appearance, will it ever be possible to respec your gender, race, appearance? Is that something that Bungie has considered?

It is something that everybody wants, right? Like, I've been locked into the same appearance for years now. 

We all make mistakes.

Yeah, it's not really mistakes, but sometimes you just want something fresh, right? Like you change your hair colour in real life whenever you want to. So we understand that it's something players are asking for. It's something that they want, but it's also a very large system. So we have to look at where it falls into the roadmap of things that we are trying to do for the game.

In year three How is Bungie intending to absorb the loss of the work from Vicarious Visions and High Moon Studios, given that those studios contributed large chunks of content in year two?

I think we are planning further out for the things that we want to happen, and then making sure that each team is staffed appropriately to do those things. But we also tend to know that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and we have a very high bar for what we do. And so we know that it is better to do fewer things at a very high bar, than it is to do a tonne of things and have them not well received by the community. So while you may see us do a little less, that means we're trying to do the high quality version of what we're doing.

The design space of the current weapon sandbox seems to have been explored fairly thoroughly. Beyond creating new perks, which can't be done infinitely, it's hard to imagine how the sandbox team keeps making, say, a new 150 rpm hand cannon that people will lust over. What's going to be the key to keeping weapon loot exciting long-term?

So I can’t actually speak to the sandbox part of it, but—this may not even answer the question—but my team really deals with the story and the journey for how you arrive at getting your item, and then the journey that you can take afterwards. So we can possibly see more interesting acquisition stories, longer journeys—so things like Whisper—and interesting ways to get things where, maybe the whole point is not specifically the actual item you're getting, but the stories that you can tell and share with other people. Or items that you get and then go on a journey with, like “Hey I have this weapon and it’s actually counting how many hunters I've killed, so right now I'm the leaderboard person who has the most hunter kills in the world”, things like that.

You can think of things outside of just what its effectiveness is in the sandbox, like how you represent this item in the community and things like that. So the sandbox side I can’t actually answer, but we are always looking at interesting ways for you to acquire things, specifically in the seasonal content. We like to focus on player agency and making the ways that you get these things cool.

When Destiny first released it was mostly alone in the living world, loot shooter space. But there are other games out there nowadays vying for attention, like the Division 2, Anthem, and Warframe has been there for a long time. Is there anything about those other games that you admire from a professional point of view? Do you monitor those games? 

Sometimes the customization options that they have, like how in The Division you kind of capture points. We don't have anything like that in destinations, but if you had to go and claim points, and maybe you had to last for some amount of time, that would be pretty cool. I do like The Division. But I think Destiny is very unique, I think the fantasy of it is very unique, and just the gunplay... there’s nothing else out there that feels exactly like Destiny. And it's also very satisfying to me that I'm a Space Wizard. 

When you're working on a game that is living and, in theory, permanently evolving, is there ever a point where you just want to do something entirely different? Or does Destiny keep you utterly engrossed all the time?

I think every person who works in the industry kinda has ideas and pet projects that they're working on in their head. And I kind of do that sometimes, but I think Destiny is really interesting because our idea of what Destiny is—if you look at the history of Bungie’s relationship with Destiny—the definition of what Destiny is has constantly evolved. It's always changing and shifting, and so there's a lot of design challenges in a game that is carving its own identity that is not exactly like everything else. So there's a lot of interesting challenges that the teams face, which I find really interesting. I do enjoy working on Destiny, I won't say we all don't have internal projects going on in our heads, or ideas for things we want to do. But yeah, Destiny is very engrossing. I love the challenging spaces within it.

Do you imagine Destiny becoming more modular? It's primarily a first person shooter, and there's been elements of racing before. But can you imagine the universe expanding to take in other sub genres, or other components that vary from the FPS mold?

It could. I would really love to do Destiny arcade games but I don't know what that looks like yet. I'm thinking like, you could ride big sparrows, you know, motorcycle rides and race against your friends.

Halloween is approaching, and so too is the Festival of the Lost, the Destiny 2 seasonal event dedicated to dressing up and celebrating the memories of fallen comrades. This year will see the return of Eva Levante as the herald of the event, which will feature spooky decorations all over the Tower, the return of the Haunted Forest activity, and the Braytech Werewolf, a 950 power Halloween-themed version of the Braytech Winter Wolf Legendary auto rifle.

Eva, who's taken up residence on the Tower for the event, will connect Guardians with a Masquerader Helmet to kick things off. The helmet can be upgraded with Festival-themed ornaments that are purchasable with Chocolate Strange coins, earned through bounties and activities. Players will also collect Candy during their festive adventures that can be spent on Mystery Grab Bags and the Werewolf.

The Infinite Forest has once again become the Haunted Forest—Guardians will have 15 minutes to explore as deeply as they can, taking on the "fiends, ghouls, and terrors that lie within," and maybe something even worse at the end. And of course there will be plenty of seasonally-appropriate cosmetics available in the Eververse Store.

Unfortunately, while the Eververse Store is getting new stock, there's no word of an update to the world drop loot pool, something the community has been grousing about since the launch of Shadowkeep. That sort of thing doesn't usually happen in an event like this, but it's been a long time since the last refresh and it's fair to say that players are getting impatient.

The Festival of the Lost gets underway on October 29 and runs until November 19. A closer look at what's involved and how to collect the goodies is available on Bungie's help page.

To the delight of Destiny veterans, The Last Word Exotic hand cannon is now available in Destiny 2 for players who own the annual pass. The Black Armory expansion is all about crafting the finest weapons of humanity's Golden Age, so it only makes sense that this iconic revolver would return. The Last Word is the fastest-firing hand cannon in the game, and you can even fan-fire it like friggin' McCree. It's a cool, powerful, beloved weapon, designed to dominate shotgun rushers in PvP, and it's well worth owning. In this guide we'll explain how to acquire the weapon, offering tips to take the pain out of some of the steps required to complete its Exotic quest, which is called 'The Draw'.  

Step one 

Visit the Tower and talk to the Drifter. He'll give you a Hive artifact which you'll need to upgrade multiple times by feeding it energy and materials, starting with the life force of lots of Hive. For the first step, you need to kill 75 Hive enemies plus three Hive bosses, and you'll need to kill a boatload of Hive with solar damage. Between Escalation Protocol and the Northern Lost Sector, Mars is the best place to kill Hive, so head to the Red Planet and pop some heads. 

The solar kills take the longest, so equip your strongest solar guns and abilities at the start. The Avalanche LMG that was handed out during The Dawning event is a good choice. Blade Barrage, bottom tree Dawnblade, and top tree Hammer of Sol are all good Supers, and any solar energy weapon will do the job. For exotics, try Sunshot, Prometheus Lens, Hard Light, Skyburner's Oath, or Polaris Lance. Helpful exotics include Ophidia Spathe for extra fiery knives, Hallowfire Heart for fast-recharging Titan abilities, and Sunbracers for Warlock solar 'nade spam. 

Step two 

You knew this was coming: it's time for the Crucible part of the quest. The first Crucible part, actually. Yes, there's more. But it's really not that bad. For this step, you need to fill a progress bar by getting kills in the Crucible. The kicker is that dying will set you back, so you have to go positive. Happily, assists help, so be sure to travel in a pack and tag as many opponents with your primary as possible. 

•  1 kill = 2% 
•  1 assist = 1% 
•  1 death = -1% 

You can get kills with anything, so as long as you keep your KDA above water, you'll finish this step eventually. Just group up, pick your mode of choice (not Rumble as you won't get many assists), and play relatively passive. Godspeed. 

Step three 

Made it through? Good. Now it's time for a much easier mission. Once you finish your Crucible kills, head to the Rig landing zone on Titan. You'll see a mission marker on the map; select it and follow it to a Lost Sector on the north side of the Rig. The mission power level starts at 500 and scales to your level, so you'll be fine. Make your way to the heart of the Lost Sector and you'll find a souped-up Hive Acolyte guarded by two Wizards. To drop the Acolyte's shield, you'll have to kill the Wizards first. So, you know, shoot everyone. Once everyone's been shot, it's back to the Drifter. 

Step four  

This is the longest part of the quest, so buckle up. You need to: 

• Get 15 Etched Crystals by killing Lost Sector bosses 
• Get 50 Hive Larvae by killing Hive with headshots
• Get 25 Blood for Blood and Best Served Cold medals in the Crucible (25 total, not 25 of each)  
• Complete three Heroic Hive Ritual public events  

The good news is that you can get the Hive Larvae and Etched Crystals by spamming the normal version of the Lost Sector you did in step three. Seriously, just do it 15 times and spawn back on the Rig after each attempt. Once you get enough Larvae, you can ignore the little dudes and just melt the boss to speed things up. 

The bad news is that the Hive Ritual public event only spawns on Titan in the Rig and the southern sector of Mars,where it's a pretty rare event due to people firing up Escalation Protocol. So, while you're farming Larvae and Crystals, keep checking the map in those locations to see if the Hive Ritual event is incoming. This event spawns near the Rig landing zone on Titan and in the top part of the Southern sector on Mars. If you finish the Larvae and Crystals before you finish the Hive Rituals—which you probably will—go ahead and move onto the Crucible medals and periodically check the map for events.

(As a quick note: to trigger the heroic version of the Hive Ritual, stand on the two plates and kill the Wizards that spawn once their shields drop. Stay on the plates and the shields around the crystals will drop, so kill them too.) 

Back in PvP, you get Blood for Blood medals by killing players right after they kill one or more of your teammates, and you get Best Served Cold medals by killing the player who killed you last. In other words, both of these medals are contingent on someone dying, so there's no purely proactive way to farm them. That said, you can increase your odds of getting these medals by staying close to your teammates, keeping track of who kills you, and by using one-shot supers like Nova Bomb and Blade Barrage to counter roaming supers like Nova Warp and Golden Gun. Quickplay is generally the playlist to run here, but if it's available, Mayhem is ideal since it gives you so many supers. Once again, it's just a matter of patience and time 

Step five 

Almost done. Head back to the Drifter and he'll give you a new artifact called The Conversation. This unlocks a new mission in the Tangled Shore, in which you'll have a very loud chat with a Hive gunsmith named Enkaar. Set down at Thieves' Landing and head south until you reach the mission marker. Most of the mission needs no explanation. If you've killed Hive before, you'll know how to proceed: kill dudes, insert Worm A into Wall A, kill wizards, kill crystal. Standard stuff. 

It's after you kill that crystal that things pick up. You'll find yourself in the Broodhold and you'll see a runic plate. Standing on the plate fills a progress bar, and when the bar is full, The Last Word appears. But it's not yours yet; you've got to kill Enkaar first. Enkaar will spawn in front of the plate around the time you grab The Last Word, and shortly afterward, he'll draw his gun. You guessed it: you've got to shoot his gun out of his hand using The Last Word, and you've got to do it before he blasts you. How cool is that? It's high noon!  

There are three plates in the Broodhold, and each plate comes with an extra clone of Enkaar for you to duel. The first plate is unlocked from the get-go, but to use plates two and three, you'll need to clear out the enemies that spawn, taking particular care not to get blown up by the Cursed Thrall. Apart from that, it's standard procedure: stand on the plate, fill the bar, grab The Last Word, and shoot Enkaar's weapon when it glows. Note that the clones fire in the order they spawn, and if you're too slow, you will die, so channel your inner Clint Eastwood. 

Make your way to the third plate, shoot all three Enkaars in the blaster, and claim The Last Word. It's officially yours. Congratulations! You'll find that The Last Word is a joy to use in the Crucible—remember it's intended to be used in close range, fired from the hip rather than ADS— so if you're not sick of PvP, go give it a test run.