It’s time for Destiny 2’s Black Armory gear to come back

Even though sunsetting has technically stopped being a thing in Destiny 2 in 2022, the concept is still looming over the game’s proverbial head thanks to its long-term effects. Notably, the community still wishes for some of Destiny 2‘s vaulted content to return, with Black Armory spearheading the list.

Destiny 2‘s Black Armory is a unique piece of kinda-sorta seasonal content that came out before Bungie settled on the game’s current, transient seasons. Whereas modern seasons (e.g. The Season of the Wish) get entirely removed from the game upon the release of a new DLC (The Final Shape, in this case), pre-Shadowkeep seasons stuck around for years at a time, and Black Armory was one of them.

Infamous for its ridiculously hard Niobe Labs puzzle and beloved for its loot design and variety, Black Armory often gets brought up by nostalgic community members as an example of content that Bungie ought to bring back. Yet, so far, Bungie’s done little more than to pay lip service to the idea.

Destiny 2 players want Black Armory back

More specifically, it was back in November of 2022 that Bungie’s weapon designers spoke on the topic of Black Armory content coming back. “The moment there’s a Black Armory story beat or an Ada story beat or something, you can expect Black Armory weapons to come back,” they said, as caught by Paul Tassi. Indeed, as we wrap up the troublesome year of Lightfall, the tale of the head of Black Armory, Ada-1, has been almost entirely sidelined.

As problematic as it might be to pivot entire narrative beats to serve a “simple” community request, it’s hard to ignore the fact that people have been asking for Black Armory gear to return for years now. Case in point:

• “Bungie needs to bring back the Black Armory weapons,” said Wynah 4 months ago.
• “Bring Black Armory weapons back into the fold,” said MNneck 10 months ago.
• “I’d love to see the Black Armory weapons back,” said Revan_IV a year ago.
• “Please bring back Black Armory weapons as craftable weapons,” said Robotic_Hoodini a year ago.
• “Having [Black Armory weapons] sunset and removed from the game still to this day makes no sense and IMO is the biggest travesty,” said h34vier 2 years ago.

All of these Reddit threads are highly upvoted, with users often commenting how they’re still keeping around sunset, out-of-date versions of Black Armory weapons just for nostalgia’s sake. In the case of Reddit user Renolber, funnily enough, they got hate mail for using the sunset Black Armory pulse rifle in Quickplay PvP.

This list of threads discussing the (possible) return of Black Armory weapons to Destiny 2 is exhaustive at a glance, but it just scratches the surface of the broader discussions surrounding the topic.

Is Black Armory coming back in The Final Shape?

The Season of the Wish, interesting though it may be, hasn’t been the strongest send-off for Destiny 2‘s established seasonal model. After The Final Shape DLC releases in June, Bungie will be switching gears and changing how it approaches seasonal content with the introduction of Episodes. Three Episodes have been revealed so far: Echoes, Revenant, and Heresy, and it’s entirely possible that Black Armory gear might appear in one of them.

With Tyson Green taking over as the new Destiny 2 Game Director, it’ll be interesting to see how different his take on the game’s live-service progression might be, compared to what Joe Blackburn was doing. It’s no secret that the game has had a very rough year, with problems popping up almost everywhere one might look. Bungie suffered serious layoffs in October 2023, for one, and the company ended up losing a lot of community goodwill over its staccato of stumbles.

Reintroducing Black Armory gear on its own, in an improper context of a wholly unrelated seasonal release, would be a misstep in and of itself, though admittedly a minor one at that. If handled correctly, however, and bundled in with something sensible and satisfying to the community, Bungie could use Black Armory weapons to underline a greater success after The Final Shape comes out.

Who knows: maybe Bungie is aiming to reprise the legendary Scourge of the Past raid and reintroduce Black Armory gear that way. With the majority of Destiny 1 raids having already been brought back into the limelight, bundling Scourge and Black Armory items with one of the upcoming Episodes would almost certainly thrill players. Yet, at this time, months ahead of The Final Shape‘s release, we can only cross our fingers and see what Bungie has in store for us.