The MMO shooter Destiny 2 will push large parts of the base game and the expansions from 2018 into the “Content Vault” on November 10th. Content that players have purchased will no longer be playable. Although the “Beyond Light” expansion is not Destiny 3, it is also no longer a Destiny 2, says our author Schuhmann.
What is happening? Bungie refers to the mechanic as harmlessly the “DIT” – the “Destiny Content Vault.” This ultimately means that older content from Destiny 2 will disappear and cannot be played until Bungie might someday retrieve it from the vault.
Starting November 10th, with the release of “Beyond Light,” five locations will disappear from the game:
- Io
- Titan
- Mars
- Mercury
- and the Year 1 raid Leviathan
With the locations, all PvE activities and the associated rewards will disappear. Bungie has now precisely listed what will go away from Destiny 2 and into the vault (via bungie). They are:
- the 5 locations listed above
- 7 Strikes
- 2 Gambit maps
- 11 PvP maps
- 7 PvP modes
- 5 Raids (4 of which are in Leviathan)
- 11 Exotics Catalysts
Additionally, the “complete entry experience” of Destiny 2 will initially disappear into the vault: What you can currently play for free as “New Light,” is gone: the Red War, Curse of Osiris, and Warmind. Bungie wants to offer players a new “Guardian Origin Story,” essentially a new entry point.
The seasonal content of Season 2, the forges, the reckoning, and the menagerie are completely going into the vault. The story campaign of Forsaken and the 2019 expansion “Season of Dawn” will remain in the game as long as players have purchased them.
In short: Bungie is throwing away almost all content from the first 2 years of Destiny 2 out of the game.
The move to the “Content” vault is not a final goodbye. The content is expected to come back later, at least theoretically.
As a bonus, players have been promised that old content from Destiny 1 will come to Destiny 2, such as some strikes from the Cosmodrome or the cult raid “The Glass “.
Destiny 2 is halved because there is no Destiny 3
Why is Bungie doing this? Destiny 2 was originally planned as a “3-year Game”, just like Destiny 1, which was supported and supplied with new content only from 2014 to 2017.
Apparently, the original plan was: at the end of 2020, a Destiny 3 would be released and start from scratch, while Bungie finishes off Destiny 2 and leaves it the way it was with Destiny 1.
That was probably the plan that publisher Activision Blizzard favored. But Bungie separated from them – probably over this very conflict:
- Activision seemed to want Destiny 3 as a launch title for the PS5
- Bungie preferred to continue with Destiny 2
We don’t know for sure, the internal matters are closed. But it seems likely that “Call of Duty” Activision insisted on having a new title on the shelves every year.
While as early as 2017 it was heard that Destiny lead Luke Smith didn’t see many reasons to start fresh with “Destiny 2.” Smith was certainly very unhappy with Destiny 2 in hindsight.
In any case, Bungie now prefers to develop Destiny 2 for at least 6 more years and has campaigns planned until 2022.
For the new places and content of these campaigns to fit in Destiny 2, old content must disappear, or else the game would burst at the seams.
Therefore, Bungie is now putting two years of paid content into the Content Vault.
This is the problem: These are contents that players purchased and paid for in 2017 and 2018. No one made it clear to them that these contents had an expiration date and that they only had limited access to the content.
No one said: “Play this right away, or it will be gone.”
Normally, it is assumed that “Games as a Service” games will grow larger over time, but Destiny 2 will be significantly smaller on November 10th. This was not communicated to players before. Only in the last few months has it become clear that Bungie will remove content.
Destiny creates an interesting precedent, as the U.S. site Forbes explains in detail. This is a new era of gaming. Destiny 2 is compared to a subscription service like Netflix. Everything is only for a limited time.
Ultimately, it is the ultimate “Fear of Missing Out” content: What you did not play when it was relevant can no longer be played. You missed it.
Beyond Light is not Destiny 3, but a Destiny 2.5
What’s behind this: Stripping half of the game is actually a huge move, but in a way, it feels almost normal for Destiny. Because Destiny 1 and the content players paid for from 2014 to 2016 are currently also not accessible in Destiny 2, making them irrelevant.
Destiny has already become significantly smaller when a new game came out and all “old content” disappeared.
What is really happening here is that Bungie is leaving behind the first 2 years of Destiny 2 and moving on. Just as they did before with Destiny 1.
Only this time it is being packaged and sold differently: But “Beyond Light” is in many ways a Destiny 2.5.
Starting November 2020, things will change a lot in Destiny 2. The game’s director Luke Smith has analyzed the last years, drawn his conclusions, and announced a shift in the fundamental direction of Destiny.
Many aspects of the game will no longer be so easy to miss. Ironically, considering what will happen to the old contents on November 10th:
