After the announcement of Lightfall, the new DLC of Destiny 2 for 2023, the head of Bungie revealed some new interesting details in an interview. On one hand, he makes it clear that they will continue to take content away from you. On the other hand, he also gives an outlook on the new “cyberpunkiness” of Destiny 2. MeinMMO brings you up to date.
This is what Bungie addressed in the interview: With the outlook on Lightfall, Destiny 2 has piqued the curiosity of many players and awakened a neon-lit cyberpunkiness in their hearts. Other announcements also landed like a bomb, such as the fact that Destiny 2 will no longer take content away from you in the future or the integrated LFG system for finding players as well as the loadout system for saving your builds.
Bungie Game Director Joe Blackburn and Deputy General Manager Dan McAuliffe are now in an interview with Tim Clark from PC Gamer have gone into some details of Destiny 2 again.
In doing so, they answered specific questions about Lightfall, archiving popular content, and the long-term future of the Destiny universe.
- Why is Bungie making such a drastic aesthetic shift towards cyberpunk?
- What has changed that allows them to retain content now when they couldn’t before?
- Will there ever be a “I always have enough space in the vault” solution?
- And when will updates for the boring playlist activities finally come?
The trailer for Lightfall was an initial glimpse into a modern future in Destiny 2:
Is Destiny 2 becoming cyberpunk now?
The similarities to cyberpunk and the new DLC of Bungie’s loot shooter are undeniable. Nevertheless, this modern shift to the Neptun metropolis in Lightfall is not intended to be a cyberpunk knockoff.
The city indeed has modern buildings with colorful neon signs, but the similarities end there.
One of the main reasons for this drastic design direction change was merely the desire to clearly separate Lightfall from the “The Witch Queen” DLC. The Throne World of Savathun was earthy and dirty. Neomuna is the complete opposite.
Instead of providing players with another terrestrial environment, we asked what a truly strong variation would be. Go up. Become modern. Fabricated instead of grown.
as Dan McAuliffe explains
In Destiny 2, there will also be impressive inhabitants with six packs and aluminum armor. All of this awaits players in 2023 in the Lightfall DLC when they can enter the new destination “Neomuna” on Neptune.
Cloudstriders were once humans: Many players, including us at MeinMMO, initially suspected that the inhabitants of Neomuna were a new race. But Bungie has since clarified this.
The Cloudstriders are not aliens, but human colonists who fled from the original collapse of Earth and have since developed in secret. Once they have accepted their calling, they will only live for 10 more years. What exactly this means remains a mystery.
They are powerful, but they are not Light bearers. And they will not teach the Guardians the new ability “Strand”.
Rather, Dan McAuliffe confirms that the Guardians will “find something that has never been touched before.” Like the so-called “Tormentors”.
New enemies will be more powerful than the Shining Brood: With “The Witch Queen”, Bungie introduced the Shining Brood. These were new troops of Savathun that also possessed the Light and thus had Light abilities and a super they could use against the players. They made the Guardians experience what it feels like to be killed with their own abilities. In Lightfall, the Tormentors will be their counterpart.
However, some players found the Shining Brood too tame. After a short time, they figured out how to defeat them with ease. Bungie wants to ramp it up a bit, since the Witness is also more powerful than Savathun.
If you don’t know who or what the Shining Brood is, here you can refresh your knowledge:
Joe Blackburn has revealed that the new Tormentors will be enormous inhabitants of the Pyramid ships. He adds that these are also “some of the oldest, most deeply converted” followers of the Witness and Darkness. Visually, they do resemble the Witch Queen raid boss Rhulk quite a lot.
Dan McAuliffe emphasizes that their task is to present new challenges to the players by requiring “all your attention during a solo or group activity”.
Seasonal content will still be removed from the game
The best announcement during the showcase was considered to be Bungie’s announcement that they will put an end to the content vault in the future.
Since the system went live in June 2020 for Destiny 2, players have been annoyed by its all-consuming property. It cost them some of the best expansions of Destiny 2, such as once with Forsaken or the Red War. That this is now coming to an end has made many players happy.
Bungie wants to ensure that the coherent story of the “Light and Darkness” saga remains in the game. So that there are no more gaps in knowledge for the active players because important content is no longer accessible.
- This would currently include the expansion “Shadowkeep” from 2019.
- The expansion “Beyond Light” on Europa from 2020.
- As well as the current DLC “The Witch Queen” from February 2022.
However, Bungie has since clarified that the content vault will not die. Seasonal content will still disappear, even if Nessus or the European Dead Zone should remain in the game for now.
However, Dan McAuliffe also cautions against too much enthusiasm:
It’s not as if we just fixed a bug in the engine and now nothing has to go anymore. We will always have to make tough trade-offs between interoperable systems, great content, and the ever-growing file size.
warns Dan McAuliffe in the PC Gamer interview
The removal of content is thus not completely off the table. To make it clearer, we have here a few examples of what may disappear and what not:
- The returned Leviathan with Calus would be seasonal content. Bungie will continue to remove this from the game.
- Destinations could also fall victim to the content vault if they are not directly used as the destination for an expansion.
- However, dungeons like the current “Duality” or the raids will not disappear because they are not seasonal content. Nor will the Starspeed-DLC for Bungie’s 30th anniversary.
What has changed that this is now possible? Bungie has made this improvement possible through an upgrade of the game engine and infrastructure. This now at least allows better resource management and the retention of large, story-relevant content in the game.
However, one must not forget that Destiny 2 cannot grow indefinitely and spread across your hard drives. There will also continue to be a difficult balancing act between content and storage space.
A similar problem also exists with the vault in Destiny 2. With “The Witch Queen”, there were 100 more slots in the vault for all players, but they are already packed full of cool stuff.
The vault is still too small
Alongside the new story content, many new weapons and armor will be added to Destiny 2 with each season and expansion. The cluttered vault is therefore a permanent topic among Guardians, which has been addressed in the interview.
Hardly any Guardian can keep everything they would like to hold on to. Hoarding is popular in Destiny 2 and sorting out is not desired. The meta could change at any time and good or old weapons could become strong again.
Destiny is not like other MMOs: Tim Clark draws a comparison here with World of Warcraft.
A sword in World of Warcraft is basically just a stat stick, but the weapons of Destiny look fantastic and feel like it too, so players form an emotional attachment to them.
explains Tim Clark in the article about his interview on PC Gamer
Craft weapons if you have no space in the vault: Bungie has chosen to go a new route by introducing weapon crafting. Players should keep beloved weapons, but still be able to adapt them flexibly to a changing meta at any time.
This is also what they want to maintain in the future: In the long run, the system can reduce the pressure on players’ vaults. It just needs to be made more attractive, as players do not seem to accept the new system as hoped.
Tim Clark from PC Gamer therefore suggests to Joe Blackburn that they make the system even more attractive. For example, by working on enabling players to quickly switch between two different perk options or receive an additional set of perks at certain levels.
Even though Joe Blackburn does not make any promises, he seems to like the thought that players could be more variable with it.
When will fresh air come to the stale playlists?
Once you are deeply immersed in the Destiny universe after a while, you often repeatedly play the three common playlists in the Vanguard, Crucible, and Gambit.
Especially in the Vanguard, you still encounter such old strikes that include voice lines from deceased NPCs. Some Guardians have been wondering for a long time when fresh air will finally come there.
And indeed, Joe Blackburn and Dan McAuliffe give hope to the Guardians who are running the weekly hamster wheel.
One initial step was, for example, to take the Battleground Mission into the strike rotation. And for Lightfall, Bungie seems to be planning further refreshes.
We will put a lot of work specifically into the Vanguard around Lightfall. We are going back to some strikes and updating them.
Dan McAuliffe mentions
It is certainly not going to be a replacement for every strike. What exactly changes and how good these changes will ultimately be, Guardians will probably only find out with Lightfall 2023.
Here you can find the complete interview with Tim Clark from PC Gamer .
How long will Destiny 2 last?
The end is sealed: Destiny 2 will conclude with the final expansion “The Final Shape”. The new DLC Lightfall essentially marks the beginning of the end. One should be aware that afterwards there will no longer be a grand Light and Darkness saga. This means an essential part that has accompanied many players for years will probably disappear.
Bungie instead wants to open a new chapter and create a large “Destiny universe”. Tim Clark suggests that Joe Blackburn has already mentioned in conversation the next 10 years of Destiny. Perhaps this is the way to a new MMO-FPS hybrid that hardcore players have dreamed of for years.
What do you think of the announcements? Does it sound like a rosy future for Destiny? Or does it not appeal to you at all? Feel free to leave your opinion in the comments.
At least Spider is already having fun in Destiny 2 by rewarding you with armors that even esteemed Guardians wouldn’t touch with a pair of tweezers:
