Will Shadowkeep continue with Destiny 2 or will there be a Destiny 3? Bungie is currently adeptly avoiding this question in all interviews. However, the developer has stated that the game cannot be infinitely expanded – the current hardware limitations of PS4 and Xbox One are in the way.
What’s next for Destiny 2? In an interview, Destiny’s Franchise Director, Luke Smith, and General Manager, Mark Noseworthy, talked about the upcoming expansion Shadowkeep. This brings the Moon from the predecessor to Destiny 2, but in a revised form.
When asked if in the future more planets from Destiny 1 would find their way into the current game, Bungie responded that they would not rule anything out. However, they are subject to technical limitations.
This is why Destiny 2 can’t go on forever: Noseworthy further stated that Destiny 2 is a massive game. This refers to the scope of the game and its complexity, but also to the space it occupies on the players’ hard drives.
Destiny 2 simply cannot be allowed to grow infinitely forever.
Like other developers, Bungie is also subject to the current hardware limitations.
At the launch of Forsaken, Destiny 2 took up 104 GB on the PlayStation 4. Players with only a 500 GB hard drive could thus only store four games of Destiny 2 size on their hard drives at once. As the game size is likely to increase again with Shadowkeep, players have even less space for other games.
What do the players say? The interview with Smith and Noseworthy was also discussed by the Guardians in the Destiny subreddit. Some players joked that Bungie could easily delete the planet Mercury from the DLC Curse of Osiris from their hard drives if they needed space. The planet is not only unpopular among the Guardians due to the lack of Sparrow-riding, even though Bungie recently provided a good explanation for this still existing limitation.
Other Guardians got a bit more technical and looked at the data of Destiny 2 on their PC more closely. One player stated that the game folder comprises around 87.5 GB, of which 25.6 GB alone is for audio data. Destiny 2 installs all languages by default; there is no option to select the appropriate one. The player further explained that if he were to select only the English language now, the size of the audio folder would shrink to 12.6 GB.
Another major factor is the cinematics, which take up a whole 17.9 GB. In comparison, the planet Mercury with its 31 folders only weighs a measly 634 MB.
How’s the situation with the PS5? Sony has been working on the next-gen PlayStation for some time and has already disclosed some details about the supposed PS5. This is supposed to have a special SSD that will certainly hold quite a bit of data.
Whether this will eliminate the storage limitations of the past is questionable. With each console generation, the games also get bigger.
It is also questionable whether Bungie will simply continue Destiny 2 on PS5 and Xbox Scarlett. The players would then inevitably have to switch to the new consoles.
However, this cannot be completely ruled out: While many contents of Destiny 1 could still be played on Xbox 360 and PS3 at the time, the last expansion Rise of Iron was only released for Xbox One and PS4. Players who did not want to miss this content were forced to switch to the newer consoles.
