Bungie put a lot of work into making Cayde-6 the outward face of Destiny 2. Voice by Nathan Fillion, the Hunter Vanguard has been offering players helpful advice and (mostly) witty one-liners since the original Destiny. Unfortunately, Bungie is killing him off. In the E3 2018 cinematic trailer for the Destiny 2: Forsaken expansion, viewers saw what appeared to be the death of Cayde-6, and dammit we want answers! Thankfully, Bungie project lead Scott Taylor sat down with the folks over at the PlayStation Blog and revealed the thought process behind retiring Cayde-6 for good.

“There wasn’t a single lightning moment where someone unveiled a grand design about killing Cayde,” said Taylor.”It was much more organic than that and developed from a series of ideas we were trying to explore. We wanted to tell a story with huge stakes, but have those stakes be really personal to the player. We’ve done aliens trying to destroy the universe with the consequences of failure resulting in catastrophe. What if we could get that feeling with something closer to home, and more relatable? That was appealing.”

Taylor then describes how the though process moved to exactly how to hit the Guardians where it hurts, and how the obvious choice was Cayde. “We started discussing what we cared about as Guardians, and it became clear that the Vanguard had really come alive as characters for our fans,” he said. “So each of the expansions over the last year have focused on them: Ikora in Curse of Osiris, Zavala in Warmind and now Cayde in Forsaken.”

We haven’t taken a player off the board like this before, and we realized that the loss of Cayde would mean more to the player than any other possible external threat we could think of. All the ideas came together and formed what became Forsaken.”

Scott Taylor finished by stating that the fan reaction to Cayde’s death was exactly what Bungie was expecting. “Reaction to this has been all over the place across the studio. Some people are mad, sad, frustrated, excited. We think that’s appropriate. It’s a big deal, and we’re taking it seriously.” Cayde’s fate likely won’t be drawn out, either. According to Bungie, his death is “what sets everything into motion,” so it will likely occur towards the beginning parts of Forsaken.

Destiny 2 is now available for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Destiny 2: Forsaken releases on September 4, 2018.

So, thoughts on the death of Cayde-6? Looking forward to Destiny 2: Forsaken? Let us know in the comments section below, and as always, stay tuned to Don’t Feed the Gamers for all the latest gaming and entertainment news! Don’t forget to follow DFTG on Twitter for our 24/7 news feed!