Destiny's beta Guardians are gone forever

In case you were holding out hope you could keep your character from the Destiny beta — it was attached to a Bungie account in the cloud, after all — forget it. Bungie's weekly update has said definitively that Destiny will change too much between now and its release date for this to be feasible.

"This is the last time we'll ask you to part with your hero," Bungie wrote. "On Sept. 9, you can create a Guardian who will keep you company for a good, long time. On a long-enough timeline, you might decide to delete him or her and start over again — but that will be your call to make."

So Destiny beta players will have to go back over the missions they played in reaching level 8, the level cap during the beta. It probably would be more remarkable if one's progress was preserved, but given the size of the beta population, it was probably necessary to make this clarification.

Destiny's beta concluded July 27, with 4.6 million players participating on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Activision declared that the largest open beta test for a console game in history.