Bungie Is Changing Destiny 2's Approach To Content As It Begins A New "Multi-Year Saga"

After 10 years, Destiny 2 will no longer see one big expansion per year, nor the seasonal or episodic content drops in between--in 2025, it'll get two expansions, with four "major updates" per year.

Alongside some of its plays to celebrate Destiny's 10-year annivesary, Bungie laid out some of the details for Destiny 2's future in a series of new blog posts outlining plans for Destiny 2: Frontiers, the next phase of the game now that its current story is being wrapped up in The Final Shape expansion and the three Episodes that follow. As game director Tyson Green wrote, in 2025, Destiny 2 will see two "medium" expansions instead of one big one, which was the approach Bungie has stuck with ever since the release of the Forsaken expansion in 2018.

"We’ve loved creating annual Expansions and are especially proud of The Final Shape. But the truth is that they dominate almost all our development effort," Green wrote. "We need to free ourselves up to explore and innovate with how we deliver Destiny 2 content so we can invest in areas of the game that will feel more impactful to players."

The blog post also included a roadmap that gives an idea of what we can expect from Destiny 2 as it moves forward into Frontiers. The first of the two expansions, Codename: Apollo, is slated for Summer 2025. Codename: Behemoth, the second, will launch in Winter 2025.

Alongside each expansion will come a "season," though not as we previously knew it. That season will last the six months between one expansion and the next, although Bungie shared no details about how the season might go about including additional stories to tell beyond the expansions--so don't take this to mean that Bungie is returning to the old model of four seasons year, each with its own linear story.

Instead, the seasons will include two major updates--one with the launch of the expansion, and one three months later. It sounds like the idea here is that the first major update with an expansion will introduce new content that goes with that expansion, while the second three months later will "refresh the Core Game with new and reprised content." That content could be activities like Strikes or Exotic missions, new activities, weekly events, meta and balance changes, and rewards. Seems like the plan here is for Bungie to hit Destiny 2 with some kind of significant refresh every three months. Each major expansion is also slated to come with a new reward pass, which is likely to be fairly similar to what's in the game now.

Bungie's roadmap details that all four major updates will be content that is free to everyone, and that leaves the implication that expansions, on the other hand, will be paid content, as usual.

As for the expansions, they may be very different from what we've seen in the past as well. The expansions are also looking to move away from the previous "one-shot" campaign structure that Destiny 2 is known for; instead of a new expansion telling a new story, Bungie is looking for the expansions to provide different experiences, and maybe to even explore different game genres within Destiny 2.

"We are excited to try new things that challenge your idea of what a Destiny experience can be," Green wrote. "We are actively prototyping non-linear campaigns, exploration experiences similar to the Dreaming City or Metroidvanias, and even more unusual formats like roguelikes or survival shooters. Each expansion will present a new opportunity to try something different."

"Non-linear campaign" is another buzz phrase that Bungie describes as a big departure for Destiny 2. As narrative director Alison Lührs details, Codename: Apollo is a "nonlinear character-driven adventure." In it, you'll see a campaign that includes multiple available story threads, which you'll then pick your way through, rather than just going from mission to story beat to mission to story beat.

"And the options you didn’t choose? Don’t worry, those other options are still open for you to go back and play through. You’ll need to!" Lührs wrote.

Lührs says Codename: Apollo will also kick off a new "multi-year saga" for Destiny 2, similar to the Light and Darkness Saga that just wrapped up with The Final Shape, although that story won't be quite so linear as "the Darkness is coming and we have to fight it." Instead, Lührs describes a series of stories that are thematically wedded together, and that will have a core concept similar in simplicity and expansiveness to Light vs. Dark.

Bungie was very light on details about what that new story will look like, though, or what we can expect for the future of Destiny 2 in terms of where the game will take players and what it'll actually feel like. Bungie also has plans to make major adjustments to how players approach Destiny 2's content and how they earn rewards, with additional blog posts running down all the changes that are coming to the game in the future. If nothing else, Codename: Frontiers sounds like it'll be a major departure for Destiny 2 from what players are used to, and with the developer struggling through major layoffs over the last two years, those may be necessary to keep the game alive.

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