Destiny developers Bungie have also launched a sub-section called Owl Sector on its official website.
Sci-fi shooter "Destiny" appears to be living up to its heritage as a Bungie studio title, as a new aspect to the multiplayer game emerges in the lead up to a new expansion's launch.
It's a great way to generate additional interest in a video game that first launched two years ago.
"Destiny," at its debut, didn't quite live up to the pre-release hype, but free updates and paid add-ons have helped craft it into an even more robust experience.
Developed by the studio that had built the blockbuster "Halo" series for Microsoft and its Xbox consoles, "Destiny" represented an effort to create a new action franchise that would last 10 years and more.
Since its launch, September 2014's "Destiny" has received two additional slices of content in The Dark Below (December) and House of Wolves (May 2015.)
A significant expansion, "The Taken King," arrives September 2015, and heralded the arrival of various collections that offered an opportunity for new players to get on board or for existing fans to upgrade to one of the newer, more powerful consoles.
In the same manner, "Rise of Iron" is dated for September 20, 2016, and offers new environments to explore, new missions tied together in a new campaign, new items and weapons to collect, and so on.
As that date approaches, players have found that an unexpected aspect of the "Destiny" experience has been revealing itself since Thursday, September 15.
During the normal course of a game, players can customise their characters with enhanced abilities and an unannounced twist on these perks has started spreading among them.
The perks appear to be viral in nature, transmitted between players accordingly, though the means by which this apparently beneficial infection occurs is not yet fully understood, Eurogamer reports. Nonetheless, the tweak has thematic links to the "Rise of Iron" plague-oriented storyline.
At the same time, a sub-section of the Bungie website called Owl Sector has been quietly launched.
On an hourly schedule, it is being populated with new details about the "Destiny" backstory and, so far, connections have been made between its content and some other unexplained updates to the game. The hourly schedule appears to double as a countdown timer for "Rise of Iron."
By May 2016, "Destiny" had accumulated 30 million registered players; assuming lifetime trends continued, that figure should be nearer 35m by now. After PS4 and XBO release "Rise of Iron," attention turns to a fully-fledged sequel expected 2017.
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 "Destiny Rise of Iron, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Bungie, Activision")
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