· Updated 5 November 2026 · 4 min read · Build 56578 · Commit 726d0609c7
The cinematic that follows A Guardian Rises, the jumpship and then the Traveler over the Last City, now plays from start to finish in the project's test runs. It is the first of the game's story cinematics to play from the project's local stand-in services. The game's own settings screen also gains a Display section, and the first mission now runs to the Tower as a brand-new Guardian.
What's new
• The story cinematic after the first mission plays in full: on 5 November it showed the jumpship and then the Traveler over the Last City, and ended by itself about 31 seconds later.
• A brand-new Guardian plays the first mission to the end: on 3 November a test run started straight at the Ghost, without the old announcement screens, and carried on to Tower North.
• The first mission also ran to Tower North at the game's own level 1, in 96 minutes with eight deaths along the way.
• The settings screen has a Display section: alongside the original Helmet choice, it offers a frame-rate target and a resolution, and the choice is saved.
• A fresh start at 3840 by 2160 drew the whole picture of the Cosmodrome, experimental and not yet tested in busier scenes.
• In frame-rate tests, a fully held jump now reaches the same height at every setting tried, to within a centimetre, and walking speed matches too.
How it works
A cinematic in the original game isn't just a video file. The game waits for its server to move the scene through a series of stages before it plays, and reports back when it starts and stops. The project's services now send those stages in order: the game started the cinematic 1.4 seconds after being told to play, reported its end, and then closed the activity. With nothing yet telling it where to go next, it went to orbit.
The Display section reuses a group the original settings screen already had, so the game draws it with its own menus. A new resolution needs the game to set aside more memory for its picture, which can only happen as it starts, so it takes effect at the next start. Frame-rate targets are saved straight away, but the game still runs busy scenes at about 34 to 38 frames a second, so higher rates remain experimental and a long way off.
A brand-new Guardian's run had stopped in orbit, because the first screens after start-up expected an older save. Keeping only the markers for those screens lets the game start at the Ghost as it did for a new player. The level-1 run used the game's own starting numbers, and fights at a junction in the mine before the Divide caused most of its deaths.
Still in progress
• The second cinematic reports that it has started but shows a loading screen; a fix is waiting for its next test.
• After the cinematic the game goes to orbit, where the original took a new Guardian on to Tower North.
• The cinematic has only played on its own so far; a run that tried to reach it through the whole mission stopped in the mine before the Divide.
• Since 3 November, unattended test runs have frozen for 5 to 24 seconds and then dropped; the cause is still being tested.
• Light, experience and rewards after a level-1 run aren't confirmed yet, because the later level-1 retries didn't get past the mine.
• 60 frames a second is experimental and a long way off: busy scenes run at about 34 to 38.
What's next
• Play the second cinematic and carry on into Tower North.
• Find the cause of the test-run freezes.
• Reach the cinematic straight from a full run of A Guardian Rises.
• Check Light, experience and rewards after a level-1 run.
Changes in this update
• The story cinematic after the first mission: its stages served in order, the end of the scene and the wait for the Tower's area (c169a2e, 7a816e6, 9865d32, 2fa7c25, 6918287, 35f6067, 55a36ab, 726d060, 416bc46, b53073f).
• Frame rate: preset targets, switching while playing, and rate of fire, jump height and walking speed held across rates (da3c34f, cb78863, 5966037, ffef551, 2a564e4, fc4eced).
• Resolution and the Display section: the whole picture at 2560 by 1440 and 3840 by 2160, one setting for both, and the in-game choices (83b6088, 6c6ce2b, bd189d2, 1d948c1, 90f3042, 7670269, c617673).
• The first mission as a brand-new Guardian and at level 1, through to the Tower, and the fights at the mine's junction (1f0489c, 9648a85, bf98224, adb4a83, ebbf789, c8e1e5c, a41471e, 8e50a51, 87df9b2, 3d55b7a).
• Server work, not yet run in the game: shared public areas, matchmaking, how an area hands over to the next, and the game's own message format (f730059, 2ddb0e0, a2fda54, f72da8b, 1f885aa, 95b495f, 77d2843, 9999cad, eed6eb2, a9f6c12, 6acd851, cb5775d, 33b6589, 1c8099f, 37d89ce).
• Early groundwork, none of it run in the game yet: The Speaker and The Awoken, other activity types, fireteams, a lasting player record and rewards (341ad55, 8c80887, 90cf301, fff3471, df42cc5, 834525f, 0d70fdf, aba3985, 53824fe, fd8415a, f5adb76).
• The licences stated exactly: GPL-2.0-or-later for the PS4 work and GPL-2.0-only for the retained PS3 parts (15e3f90). Status pages, research notes, tools and steadier tests are in the repository history.
About this update
The screenshots show the Cosmodrome rendered at 4K and shown at 1080p, a Dreg in the Wall's tunnels, and the new Display section. No footage of the cinematic is shown yet; that result, the run times and the measurements come from the project's test reports and public commits. The PS4 work is built on aknumbers' Destiny 1 Preservation Project and runs in shadPS4.
