How Destiny 2 Brought Back Its Magic With 'Chesstiny'

Summary

"Chesstiny" introduced a life-sized chessboard puzzle with over 4,000 possibilities in Destiny 2.
Players collaborated in an alternate reality game to decode puzzles and discover hidden lore.
Completing the puzzle rewarded players with in-game items and gave a sneak peek of the upcoming expansion.

Destiny 2 has been on a roller-coaster ride for many years now, despite being one of the best looter shooters currently on the market. It has taken players on some of the highest highs and lowest lows over the last eight years, delivering some excellent content here and some less-than-noteworthy content there. Nevertheless, Destiny 2 has kept on pushing toward the next big thing in repeated attempts to keep its current players invested and offer incentives for those who have left the game to return. Its most recent attempt at that involves what Destiny 2 fans have coined "Chesstiny," an alternate reality game that reignited the community's passion for the MMO.

For all intents and purposes, "Chesstiny" is one of the most ambitious and distinct features ever implemented into Destiny 2. In many ways, it hearkens back to Destiny 2's glory days, when players were regularly treated to surprises like the acclaimed Whisper mission that required them to break out of the mold of its regular gameplay and attempt something unfamiliar and exciting. In the same way, "Chesstiny," introduced in Destiny 2's Heresy episode, has now brought players together in an increasingly rare way and allowed them to experience the magic of the game in a way they haven't been able to in quite some time.

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By Josh Cotts

How Destiny 2's 'Chesstiny' Turned a Puzzle Into a Community Power Play

A Chessboard With 4,096 Possibilities

Destiny 2 has been known to harbor secrets from time to time, with Bungie opting not to tell players about the existence of those secrets in the game and instead allow their discovery to be entirely organic. As far as "Chesstiny" goes, curious players stumbled upon a chessboard beneath Eris Morn's apartment in the Last City social space upon completing the main campaign for Episode: Heresy. Upon interacting with the prompt, "Pick up the King," on the board, players were then transported to a separate location where a massive chess board awaited them, thereby initiating the ARG event known today as "Chesstiny."

"Chesstiny" has now brought players together in an increasingly rare way and allowed them to experience the magic of the game in a way they haven't been able to in quite some time.

The ARG centered around a life-sized chessboard in the Hidden Truth node, where players encountered hourly-shifting puzzles with randomized configurations. With each player assigned a unique "Signal Frequency" buff, over 4,000 board states were in circulation, each presenting a different solution. The challenge, however, didn't just demand that players solve their own board, but that they help the Destiny 2 community catalog every variation using real-world chess notation. Effectively, this turned Destiny 2 into a living, breathing puzzle box.

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As players started piecing together clues from board layouts and solving for in-game rewards, they discovered QR code fragments hidden within specific chess positions. These fragments eventually formed a scannable code that led to an external site containing lore as well as a nod to the 1956 "Game of the Century" between Bobby Fischer and Donald Byrne. This crossover between real-world chess history and Destiny's fiction thus effectively created a meta-narrative that was both immersive and collaborative, with players using custom tools, spreadsheets, and even optical recognition to solve the mystery.

Upon completion of the puzzle, players were directed to the A.I.O.N. Archives website, where they could witness a teaser that not only rewarded the community's efforts but also offered a glimpse into the upcoming Edge of Fate expansion. Additionally, players were granted access to a chest in-game that contained valuable items like the Umbral Rumble shader, the Deinterlace Exotic ship, the Enigmatology emblem, and various currencies. Needless to say, the efforts of the Destiny 2 community paid off, and they paid off in a big way.

In the end, "Chesstiny" brought the magic back to Destiny 2, not just by fostering unity within the fanbase, but also by making the game feel alive again. After going through a severe rough patch following the hugely successful Final Shape expansion, Destiny 2 needed something to reignite the fire it once had, and "Chesstiny" appears to have done that ahead of Edge of Fate.

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