After teasing what’s next for Destiny 2 last week, Bungie has revealed the future of Destiny 2 which starts with Beyond Light, the new expansion for Destiny 2 coming in the fall. In addition, the developers revealed two other expansions, The Witch Queen and Lightfall. The Destiny dev team said that they are committed to investing more in Destiny 2 for years to come. “A future where we maintain your characters, accounts, and continuity with our game systems and build on each of them for years,” said the Destiny dev team. “This fall ushers in a new era in Destiny‘s journey, launching off a trilogy of expansions where your Guardians will explore the true nature of Light and Dark.”
Destiny 2: Beyond Light takes place in a new destination called Europa where the Stranger from the first game has discovered a newly active pyramid ship. In addition to the new destination, the next expansion for Destiny 2 introduces a new power and damage type that is tied to The Darkness, Stasis.
Another thing that comes with these new expansions is the Destiny Content Vault which was created as a way to update the game more quickly by cycling content away to make room for new content. Speaking about the future of the game and how the DCV came to be, the dev team said: “With Destiny 1, we solved the ‘ever-expanding, exponential complexity’ problem by making a sequel in Destiny 2. We left behind all of Destiny 1’s content and many of the features players grew to love. We believe now that it was a mistake to create a situation that fractured the community, reset player progress, and set the player experience back in ways that took us a full year to recover from and repair. It’s a mistake we don’t want to repeat by making a Destiny 3. We don’t believe a sequel is the right direction for the game and for the past two years we have been investing all of our development effort into new content, gameplay, and new engine features that directly support a single evolving world in Destiny 2.”
The way the Destiny Content Vault will work is that each year, during the expansion boundaries, destinations and activity content will be cycled out of the game to make room for the new content. The first cycle will begin with Beyond Light. Content that goes into the Vault may return if it fits what’s happening in the game at that time including content from the first game. “Going forward, our explicit goal will be to try to keep the scope and scale of Destiny 2 at a relatively consistent size in order to increase our agility and to be able to properly support and maintain the game,” the Destiny dev team said. “Over the course of each year, the game’s content scope will grow as we add new destinations and activities in our expansions and Seasons. As we approach the next expansion, another cycle of content will go into the DCV to make way for a new influx of destinations and activities.”
The livestream also revealed some information about Destiny 2 coming to the next-generation consoles. The game will run at 60 fps with 4k resolution. All expansions and content that players own or will own will be available to play on both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X with Smart Delivery for free. Destiny 2 will also support inter-generational crossplay so players will be able to play with their friends if one owns Xbox Series X and the other owns an Xbox One, or PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. Next year, Bungie hopes that they can extend this to crossplay across platforms.
Lastly, Season of Arrivals, the next season of Destiny 2 is now available. Bungie also announced a new dungeon called Prophecy available later today at 5 pm PST.
Destiny 2: Beyond Light launches on September 22, 2020.