Hello everyone! Yesterday I outlined some of the struggles that have been going on in Destiny 2 over the past 9 months. I also highlighted the recent reveal trailers for the upcoming fall expansion Destiny 2: Beyond Light. If you would like to catch up on those, you can read up on them here. Today I will be going over some of the finer details that were discussed and released after the reveal stream Bungie had.

Destiny 2: Beyond Light will be taking place across the system, with a focus on Europa. A brand-new patrol space with new areas to discover, new enemies to fight, and new alliances to be made. Europa is the main stage to the narrative this time as we battle with both the Darkness and the first awakened ship and the Fallen, led by Eramis, who is wielding the Darkness for revenge against the Traveler and Guardians for the state of her people. The Exo Stranger is making a reappearance in Beyond Light explaining how she intends to stop the Darkness from destroying our system as she has already witnessed it where she came from. Europa also is the birthplace of the Exo housing the Deep Stone Crypt, one of Destiny’s greatest secrets.

It would not be a fall expansion without the usual slew of new and interesting goodies such as: armor, weapons, ghosts and the like. New exotics as well as a brand-new subclass; Stasis. Stasis is our first foray into wielding the Darkness like how we wield the Light. Stasis will not have the limitations of the current subclass system and was explained to allow more freedom in customization as it was in Destiny 2. During an interview between Dr. Lupo, a prominent Twitch streamer and Luke Smith, Game Director for Destiny 2, Luke added that the level of customization Stasis will be shipping with, they hope to add to current subclasses. In addition, there will be a new Raid shipping with Beyond Light hinted at exploring more of what lies within the Deep Stone Crypt. Check out the fall expansion page.

During the livestream yesterday, Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy, General Manager for Destiny 2, discussed the more long-term future of Destiny 2. This has been hinted at over the past few years and more recently over the past few months, as players have felt the increased frustrations over the game and its’ direction. This fall, Beyond Light will ship for the year of 2020, in the fall of 2021 The Witch Queen ships revolving around Savathun, the Taken Queen who has replaced her brother Oryx whom we killed in The Taken King Expansion. In Fall of 2022, LightFall (working title) will ship, described to bring things to a moment. Destiny 2 has a problem that simply cannot or will not be solved easily. That problem is size. Destiny 2 is only growing larger with each added bit of content. Destiny 2 is currently at 115 GB just to allow it to play, not counting the patches, and content updates. Currently on my PS4, Destiny 2 is over 165 GB.

To mitigate the growing issue of space, which was later revealed to be a larger contributor to many of Destiny 2’s current issues including bugs, increased error codes, and lack of innovation. Bungie will be introducing the Destiny Content Vault, or DCV for short. This means that Bungie will be removing parts of the game that do not see much use or are simply too old to work with more modern additions of content. There is only so much optimization that can happen to older programming code, before it is simply easier to remove it and move forward. Which appears to be what Bungie has planned. With the DCV, Bungie plans to remove older content, revitalize it and reintroduce the important, or highlight parts of it at later points. The first will be the Cosmodrome from Destiny 1 along with a revamped New Light introduction. The Vault of Glass raid will also be making a comeback in the fall with Beyond Light. With the introduction of the Cosmodrome, the content that will be entering the DCV is Io, Titan, Mercury, Mars, and the Leviathan and all related story and PvE activities. For more information you can visit Bungie’s article here.

There you have it, as there was a lot of information released yesterday. Bungie seems to have a plan for Destiny 2 and its’ long-term future. Only time will tell if their plans turn out the way they intend them. I am cautiously optimistic as over the past few months during their weekly community correspondence, This Week at Bungie, or TWAB for short, Bungie has outlined things they plan to change to better cater to players and remove the unfavorable and predatory practices they’ve had over the last year. I look forward what entails for the future of this game.