Funny enough, if you go watch footage from the DRE and E3 gameplay they even changed the dying screens to say "Your Light ran out"

Still no idea what they'll call darkness zones though, I don't recall seeing any indicators in the missions or strikes.

I was under the understanding the move away was as a focal point, not that they were trying to retcon The Darkness. It still exists, it just isn't what Des2ny is focused on? So no reason not to still treat zones without Light different.

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or will we just get more Darkness Zones, but with a different name?

I would bet anything on this. I seriously doubt that the narrative change of wanting to not use "The Darkness" as a concept would drive them as far as changing a basic mechanic like that. The alternative is that free-respawn exists all the time (at least, based on our current understanding of how a Destiny game works) - doesn't seem terribly likely.

With the talk from Luke Smith about how Des2ny's narrative will be moving away from "The Darkness" as a specific foe and perhaps even a concept, it occurred to me today that "the Darkness" is somewhat baked into Destiny 1 on a mechanical level. The respawn mechanics are all based around the concept of Darkness Zones. If "The darkness" is basically gone from the game in Destiny 2, does that mean there will be no darkness zones? And if that is true, does that mean we'll see a fundamental change to the respawn mechanics, or will we just get more Darkness Zones, but with a different name?

There are two things happening at once:

1. Destiny 2's story is focused on the Cabal's attack on The City. All the other story threads are on hold for now as we take back our home. Like, who cares what the few remaining members of the House of Devils is doing on Mars when we just lost our connection to the Traveler? Likewise, who cares that there's a mysterious force of ultimate evil... somewhere... but not here at the moment... when we've got immediate Cabal problems to deal with.

2. Destiny 1's development was rushed enough that for simplicity's sake all enemies were called minions of the Darkness. Luke has even said that they didn't have a good grasp on what the Darkness even was. I think they fixed the story side of that post House of Wolves. We see the result of a big story brainstorming session in The Taken King and the more specifically in the Books of Sorrow which do a good bit to define what the Darkness is and isn't.

Because of these two things, (1. The Darkness is not D2's immediate threat. 2. Bungie now has a real plan for what the Darkness is and isn't), Bungie is being more specific in things like tool tips and death screens. They can't just label all Humanity's enemies as "minions of the darkness" anymore because only the Vex and to a lesser extent the Hive are truly minions of the Darkness as far as we know.

Pessimistically, this is a story retcon. Optimistically, this could be thought of as The City working out who, specifically, its various enemies are and realizing that they aren't all one force of ultimate evil. Personally, I think the story is mostly intact and that it was the actual Darkness that hit us during the Collapse and that the Traveler drove away. I can't wait to see if I'm right. :)

Making the Darkness a mysterious cosmic threat but then labeling every other bubble as a 'Darkness Zone' was a huge ~ludonarrative~ misstep. If it's a mysterious force whose return we dread, why am I wading through it everywhere I go?