I've had an article in my drafts titled 'All MMOs need a barber shop' for several years now. The likelihood of that piece ever getting finished inched further away this afternoon, with Bungie announcing that—after almost a decade, and countless complaints—it's adding a system to enable players to edit the appearance of their guardians. Here's what the developer had to say in the latest This Week in Destiny blog post:
"No matter the reason, you'll be able to change your Guardian’s look when character customization goes live in an update before the release of The Final Shape. To do so, you'll only need to launch Destiny 2 and you'll notice a new option when you hover over a character at the character selection screen."
Sure enough, here's a picture of a do-over in progress.
Startlingly, for a studio that has the brass neck to sell additional transmog doohickeys, the new system is going to be completely gratis.
"You will be able to modify the appearance of your Guardians anytime, without cost or limit to the number of changes. Just take into consideration that while you can change the body type, face, hair/head, and markings, it won’t be possible to change from one origin to another (i.e., Human, Exo, or Awoken)."
This should placate those players who thought it'd be hilarious to create a robot with ostentatious antennae and more makeup than a toddler left to their own devices in mother's closet, and have been stuck with it ever since.
There isn't an exact date for the new system to go live, but Bungie did also say that it's going to reset the Synthweave bounty cap in March. These are the transmog doohickeys I complained about earlier. Each character can earn 10 per season for free, but after that they have to be bought with real money.
With the current season lasting six months due to The Final Shape delay, the studio clearly thought it made sense to throw fashion-conscious grinders a bone. Bungie has previously said that to mitigate the drawn-out season it will add free content over two months, beginning in April, under the moniker of Destiny 2: Into the Light. There's also a PvP map pack due to drop in May.
Today's post also gives players the chance to vote between two sets of wizard-themed Festival of the Lost armor, the winner of which will be available as part of the game's annual Halloween event in October. You can see those below [left to right: Titan, Hunter Warlock].
I voted good wizard for Warlock, and evil wizard for Titan and Hunter. Which is what you should do too, because my aesthetic taste is impeccable, as evidenced by the fact I've never wanted to redesign any of my toon's faces, much less write a Reddit post about the problem.
Finally, Bungie has kicked off its annual charity push called Game2Give. All manner of emblems and other in-game cosmetic items are available based on how much money you're able to give or raise. The Bungie Foundation has raised a whopping $20M dollars to date, which is heart-warming even if the rest of the mood music around the game has been bleak for some time.
