While many Destiny 2 fans figured that the new expansion was going to be revealed today, what was shocking is that they also announced the next two expansions after Beyond Light releases this September. Destiny 2: The Witch Queen will release in 2021 and Destiny 2: Lightfall will be the expansion for 2022.
Notice how there’s no Destiny 3 in front of any of those. Luke Smith, director of Destiny 2 today confirmed that they have no desire to release Destiny 3. They want to continue to evolve and grow the current product rather than start over from scratch again.
It acknowledged, though, that there a couple of challenges: the amount of stuff that’s in Destiny 2 right now and how much space that takes up, and the upcoming next generation of consoles that are on the way. Bungie addressed both these issues.
Vaulting Content in Destiny 2
Let’s start with the issue of adding content to an already large game. Bungie revealed that there is to be a new “vaulting” policy going forward. Bungie will be looking at rarely used Destiny 2 content that is “long in the tooth” and move them out of the game and into a vault of sorts.
Older content which not only includes things that were removed but also potentially old Destiny 1 content could then be fixed up, modernized, and reintroduced into the game as features in a future add-on. Specifically, Bungie mentioned the Septiks Prime strike and Vault of Glass raid from Destiny 1 as something that could be reintroduced into Destiny 2.
Next Generation of Consoles
Bungie also addressed the next generation of consoles in some detail. The next-gen consoles will support 60 FPS and 4K resolution on the new hardware. It was not clear whether that means both at that same time.
There will be free upgrades from current to next-gen. In other words, any content you currently own or will own will be able to be transferred over to next-gen consoles at no additional cost.
Inter-generational crossplay will also be supported in Destiny 2 going forward. Meaning, PS5 players can play with PS4 players, and the same goes with the Xbox Series X and Xbox One. Bungie is hoping that by next year they will be able to have full crossplay across all platforms but that was not promised.
The main takeaway of all this is that Destiny 2 appears to be fully supported through 2022 and beyond. Luke Smith said in the stream that the 2022 expansion, Lightfall, will “drive” it all to a “moment.” To me, that sounds as though that will be the moment where the Destiny story finally comes to some sort of conclusion. But that’s speculation for another day.
Beyond Light releases on Sept. 22, while the final content for Year 3, Season of the Arrivals, is available now.
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