Did Bungie accidentally leak one of next season's Destiny 2 exotic weapons?

Okay, who's ready to go down the rabbit hole, via a brief detour to Japan? Last week we talked about what I'm pretty sure were the longest balance change notes PC Gamer has ever encountered in the form of a 9,000 word edition of This Week at Bungie. In amongst all the buffs, nerfs and general nerding out (graphs!) over how in-air accuracy is calculated, there was a bullet pointed list of exotic weapons with their new 'Airborne Effectiveness' stats. The last entry read: [REDACTED] 29.

Bungie likes to use 'redacted' when teasing forthcoming content, but in this case—as spotted by the ever eagle-eyed sleuths at r/raidsecrets—in the Japanese version of the post, the entry was no longer redacted. Instead, the Kanji translated to: 'Trespasser'.  OG Destiny 1 players will know that Trespasser was an exotic sidearm from the Rise of Iron expansion. Intriguingly, that 29 airborne effectiveness stat would line-up with redacted being a primary weapon. So a new exotic sidearm makes sense. But the evidence doesn't stop there.

Obviously errors can happen with localisations, especially lengthy ones, but as noted in the tweet above the kanji used in Bungie's post was a perfect copy of how Trespasser was previously displayed in the Japanese version of Destiny 1. Thickening the plot further, the Japanese blog post has since been corrected to read 編集済み, which I'm assured is the correct translation of redacted with brackets. 

So can we confidently say Trespasser is on its way back in season 17? Probably! Other reasons to think it likely include the fact that the Iron Banner event is getting a revamp next season, and as already noted Trespasser came from the Iron Lord-themed Rise of Iron expansion. Likewise, there are numerous hints in the lore this season that we're going to be dealing with the return of the warmind Rasputin soon, and the opera-loving AI overlord also figured heavily in the Rise of Iron era. Finally, Trespasser was given to the guardian by the hunter scout Shiro-4, who also acted as a vendor in Rise of Iron.

Am I excited to use Trespasser again? Maybe! It's fair to say the gun wasn't remotely meta even when it first arrived, and sidearms remain one of the least-loved weapon archetypes in the game. (Though I maintain that Traveller's Chosen and Rat King are both superb exotics if you build for them.) 

The original version of the gun's exotic trait read: "Reloading after a kill causes the next burst to be a longer, more powerful superburst." That superburst had strong 'Robocop at the gun range' vibes, but in a world where weapons like Gjallarhorn and Ice Breaker existed, it was tough to justify using your exotic slot on a sidearm, however cool.

For that reason I would expect Trespasser to be substantially reworked if it does return, similar to how stuff like Thorn, Hawkmoon and Vex Mythoclast have been given glow ups in the form of substantially more complex functionality. Season 17 of Destiny 2 is due to start on May 23, so we should know more soon enough.

Thanks to Houndish for the tip.