From a "reveal" perspective, it didn't reveal all that much. The main enemy for this one looks to be the Cabal, to start with, and it looks like the Tower is toast. Least they've come up with a reasonably good in-game explanation for why your stuff is no longer available. Even so, this particular trailer wasn't all that good. If anything, it was less well done as "Last Call."
What went right with this trailer? Well, Lance Reddick doing his thing, for one. 'Course, he's always been that good, and the character of Zavala has stayed pretty consistent throughout the lifespan of the game. Yes, we all learned that he has excellent taste in winter wear during The Dawning live event, but for a background character, he doesn't get a lot of opportunity to change. The lines he had for the trailer were completely consistent. Some might argue that Lance Reddick only plays one character, over and over again. Even Lance Reddick would agree with that for the most part (I happen to think that he can do more, as evidenced by his part in John Wick). We at least got the very bare bones of what happens at the start of Destiny 2. Sometime between the end of Age of Triumph and the loading screen for the next game, a Cabal fleet will invade Earth and blast the holy bejeezus out of the Tower. Considering that the Tower contained all the hangars for ships, all the vendors for gear, the Speaker, the Consensus, the faction heads, and the Vanguard leadership, this definitely puts the Guardians back at square one from a logistical standpoint. It also looks like we're going to be seeing at least a couple new enemies as part of the Cabal. One appears to be a variation on the Colossus with big gnarly axes instead of a minigun. The other appears to be some sort of canine analog which is much like the Cabal itself: big, ugly, and bad tempered.
They got a lot more wrong with this trailer than they did right, however. If Destiny 2 is supposed to be Bungie's equivalent to The Empire Strikes Back, they completely shot the tone clean through the head with the switching between Zavala and Cayde-6. Mainly because they made Zavala sound like a confident military leader who understands the value of rallying the troops in the face of a recent defeat while making Cayde sound like a complete fucking moron. For me, "Last Call" made sufficient sense if you figure that Cayde is a little tipsy, that he tends to ramble a little when he's had a shot or two. Otherwise, when he's sober, his humor has always been more sardonic, dry, but always on point. "Self-absorbed" is not his defining personality trait. His character has always had that sense of frustration about being stuck in the Tower when he'd rather be out shooting and looting. He hates being responsible for the Hunters of the Vanguard, but he still does the job anyway, and even manages to live vicariously through them a little bit. Here, however, we don't see that character. We see a petulant, clueless, tone deaf nimrod who basically stumbles on the magic words "there will be loot!" as if that makes all the difference. What makes it particularly frustrating is that we know Nathan Fillion can do better (particularly if he has better writing than this). We needed less Richard Castle and more Malcolm Reynolds for this trailer. Instead of big stirring speeches from Zavala, I think we needed to see a new side of Cayde: the angry side. The side that is not just furious about the destruction of his home and the people he's supposed to protect, but also knows that the gloves need to come off, to educate the Cabal on why he leads "Hunters" instead of "Shepherds." Cayde poking fun and letting loose, the snark should be standard procedure for the day-to-day of the Vanguard. For a first class disaster, Cayde ought to be getting serious. And Cayde getting serious should be a little terrifying. If there was a way to illustrate the differences between Zavala, Cayde, and Ikora, it would probably go something like this:
Zavala: Take that hill, and when you have it, start taking the next one.
Ikora: Find out everything we can about this new threat. And keep an eye out for the threat that comes after this one.
Cayde: Don't come back till you've brought me scalps. Like, all the scalps.Speaking of Ikora, they gave her precisely damn all to do except to make a quip that Cayde was not really succeeding in his efforts to motivate the troops. They could have, and should have, given Ikora her own lines, her own section. The game lore has always portrayed her as a badass who went on to her position in the Vanguard by sheer competence. I've always seen the Vanguard as a three-legged stool of "conventional" forces (represented by Zavala), "special forces" (represented by Cayde), and intelligence services (represented by Ikora). Seeing Ikora address the surviving Hidden and other Guardians who were assisting them would have helped give better balance to the story the trailer was telling. Instead, comic relief to Cayde. The fact Gina Torres worked with Nathan Fillion on Firefly couldn't have helped this godawful script, particularly since she had one word spoken the whole time. Seriously, this was just a completely wasted opportunity. The chance to hear Ikora's version of "the big speech" to the various spies and infiltrators that make up the Hidden would have been awesome.
As a reveal trailer, this may have been Bungie's first effort to get things going for Destiny 2, but it's far from their best effort. In the coming months, we'll see if they can improve, but this trailer does not inspire as much enthusiasm as it should have.
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