What you need to know
- Destiny 2 will soon receive a “character recustomization” feature that will allow you to change your Guardian’s body type, face, hair, and markings. You won’t be able to change your origin race (Human, Awoken, or Exo), though.
- Destiny players have been asking for this change ever since the first Destiny game came out nearly 10 years ago.
- It’s unclear exactly when this feature is coming, though we know it’ll be added before The Final Shape DLC that’s scheduled to release on June 4, 2024. It will also be free, and without a cap on the number of times you can make modifications.
- Destiny 2’s 250,000 cap on Glimmer is also being raised to 500,000 on January 30, and a March update will reset Season of the Wish’s Synthweave bounty cap so players can earn more currency for armor transmog before it ends.
After nearly a full decade since the launch of the first Destiny game, it will soon finally be possible to change your Guardian’s appearance in Destiny 2. This includes options to modify their body type, face, hairstyle, and markings, essentially giving you all the same choices you had when you first created your character.
“Let’s see if this sounds familiar: You created a very edgy Awoken when you were a teenager. Maybe you chose some regrettable markings on your Human’s face, or you didn’t coordinate the colors of your Exo’s mouth and eyes. Or perhaps your character’s body type no longer represents who you are,” wrote developer Bungie’s Destiny 2 Community Team in a new This Week In Destiny blog post.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.”
Notably, taking advantage of this new feature will be completely free, and there won’t be a cap on the number of times you can make changes, either. The only restriction is that you won’t be able to change your Guardian’s origin (Human, Awoken, or Exo), which is likely due to a technical limitation of some sort.
We don’t have an exact release date for character “recustomization” yet, but it’s confirmed to be coming some time before The Final Shape expansion’s June 4, 2024 launch. We do know that Bungie is pushing an update live in March that will reset the Synthweave bounty cap (Ada-1’s bounties) to celebrate, though. This will allow players to earn 10 additional Synthweave per character to use for armor transmog before the ongoing Season of the Wish ends.
A feature that’s been a long time coming
The ability to redesign your Guardians is something that players have been asking for consistently since Destiny first released in 2014 — and according to the recently laid off former Bungie Community Manager Liana Ruppert, it’s a feature that many within the studio have pushed for, too.
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“The character customization feature is something we pushed HARD for. I did several data breakdowns for leadership and teams from all disciplines fought the good fight on their end to make this a reality,” she wrote in a thread on X (formerly Twitter). She also commented that “VERY proud of the teams and I don’t even mind that it’s a PR move!”
“To clarify here, I had a part in it but I was one of MANY parts. And I promise you the community team post-layoffs worked really hard for this,” she continued. “As mentioned in the original post, teams from ALL disciplines pushed for the resources to make this happen. It’s a dev and player win.”
The ability to change your character’s appearance isn’t the only long-requested improvement coming to the science fantasy looter shooter, by the way. Bungie is also raising its cap on its common Glimmer currency from 250,000 to 500,000 when it releases Update 7.3.4 on January 30, 2024. Players often hit the current cap very easily since Destiny 2 quite literally showers you with Glimmer constantly, so it’s nice that we’re getting a bigger wallet.
Analysis: Why did it take this long?
While it’s obviously awesome that we’ll finally be able to alter the way our Guardians look — as you can see in the image further up the article, I’m the “chose some regrettable markings on your Human’s face” guy Bungie is talking about, so I am hyped — it’s frustrating that it’s taken this long to make the option available. Adjusting your appearance is one of those features that’s been in the majority of games for years now, and Destiny 2 has always stuck out quite a bit for not offering it.
It’s quite emblematic of a larger problem, which is that Bungie’s implementation of beneficial additions and changes generally feel late. We didn’t even have armor transmog until 2021, and before then, it was incredibly difficult to make your Guardian look good while using gear with optimal stats. Savable loadouts weren’t added until last year, and you still can’t pull weapons from your Vault without either loading into the Tower/H.E.L.M. or using an external tool like the Destiny Companion App on mobile devices or Destiny Item Manager in a web browser.
As frustrating as the slow update cadence is, though, I’m largely just glad this feature is finally on the way. Now please, Bungie, I beg you: give us beards in the customization options. My Titan’s face is smoother than clay, and I can’t stand it.
Destiny 2: Lightfall, the looter shooter’s latest expansion, is available on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One consoles, Windows PCs, PS5, and PS4. In it, you’ll take the fight to Emperor Calus, gain access to Strand subclasses and their unique abilities, and more. The Annual Pass edition of the DLC includes access to everything in all four of Year 6’s seasons as well.
