Sorry, I'm at work and can't watch, but I'm curious based on some quick scrubbing. Do brand new players get to play the opening mission of original Destiny? And there's a cut from the "taking off on the jumpship for the first time" to "arriving on the jumpship at the start of Destiny 2"?

Yup. Khvostov and everything (Although your Makeshift armor set has been replaced with the Refugee armor, boo!). You get the original cutscene of the Arcadia-class arriving at the Tower, but the Traveler is awake, and you're dropped into the post-Red War Tower, and from there you got meet Devrim and do his Adventures.

Plus, new players get to keep the Arcadia-class Jumpship, which is totally unfair.

For a bit there, I thought i'd misunderstood what was coming in New Light... I thought they'd somehow ported all of D1 to D2, and I missed it.

Now I'm just sad. :(

I'll take an optimistic view; if they can port part of the Cosmodrome and one mission from D1 to D2, then they can port more/all of D1 in the future.

She's no longer watching the Guardian fly off.
Ghost does get a bit of new Tutorial dialogue, though, and the game brings back the E3 public event, so fair trade?

hmmmm, I'm debating whether it's worth it to delete one of my characters for this (I got all the latest solstice armor on each one for reference..)

I feel that it’s worth it. I got the Solstice set for my Titan, shoved it into the Vault, then deleted him. Within three days of playing I was back in the armor set at 750, without too much frustration (I only had to restart the Forge quests, and do the annoying Dreaming City unlock beforehand to even start that.)

Hitting 50 isn’t too tough if you just play Crucible. It’s almost a 1:1 leveling, or at least it felt like it. But even that won’t be an issue with New Light bumping you up to 750 from the get-go.

She's no longer watching the Guardian fly off.
Ghost does get a bit of new Tutorial dialogue, though, and the game brings back the E3 public event, so fair trade?

hmmmm, I'm debating whether it's worth it to delete one of my characters for this (I got all the latest solstice armor on each one for reference..)

Your armor isn't deleted when you delete a character, as far as I know.

FWIW, I do love that ship. I've been rocking the ship you could get from Zavala during the Warmind season because it's the closest thing you can get to the Arcadia currently in D2.

Also, my Warlock never gets used anyway. And with the way New Light works, you won't have to do any of the campaigns to unlock Destinations anymore. She hasn't unlocked any Forges or anything like that. I'm losing almost literally nothing by deleting her and starting fresh.

We're Weird. In this thread the largest topic is "Oh I should delete my Character for Ship and Weapon" that... lets be honest folks, unless you've always loved that first ship, it's a flavor of the week. We don't even know what Shadowkeep has in store for us yet, but Oh... gotta get that ship.

That was my initial response. Then... I got thinking. I tell ya, it's really hard to see my keyboard right now. I busted my ass ragged for that "Void" Sparrow that, granted is only the second sparrow with the perk that gives you less aggro while riding, doesn't even have a purple contrail! Also I considered that ya'll might not have "stories" of your Destiny Avatars, such as how my Titan was VERY displeased that I replaced his ship temporarily. Or how psyched my hunter is that its been approved to go back to the moon (due to finding the Hive interesting. Real edge close to the dark that one). So.

TL;DR...

Just another feather in our cap. We're Weird. :P

I've got stories about my characters, but I'm still considering deleting my titan, who has been asleep since D1. Why, because she's a rebellious, foolhardy teenager (her mom calls her hellion), and I can easily imagine her trapping her ghost somewhere so she can be unsupervised, subsequently getting herself killed, and I mean, how commonplace is it for exos get reset and rebooted? I just haven't decided: is she in the single digit resets like Cayde or double-digits like Banshee. I imagine the number is low. You'd think some residual subroutine of caution would show up after a number of deaths.