Bungie Talks About Vault Of Glass Returning In Destiny 2

Update: Vault of Glass launches May 22nd!

Destiny 2's big Beyond Light update may have started the process of retiring much of the game's old content, but Bungie is also bringing back some old favorites--starting with the original Destiny raid, Vault of Glass. In a new interview with Polygon, assistant game director Joe Blackburn has explained how he's working to make sure the new version of Vault of Glass plays just how you remember, despite the differences between Destiny and the current version of Destiny 2.

Blackburn said that the goal of the re-release is to make running Vault of Glass in Destiny 2 feel the same as it did when players got into it for the very first time. He explains why this means that some tweaks are necessary, rather than including the original version of the raid as a straight port.

"The guardians have become significantly stronger in this amount of time," Blackburn explains, saying that the raid team went back into the original raid to see how it played, before deciding that "we would smoke this with Destiny 2 weapons and armor mods."

With so many new weapons, Exotics, Supers, and gameplay changes implemented in the three years the Destiny sequel has been out--not to mention three years of the original Destiny before that--a vanilla Destiny raid would be likely to bore current Destiny 2 players.

"We definitely are going to make changes to make it feel challenging, like it felt before," Blackburn promised. "But we don't want to go too far, and make it feel like it's a different raid."

Vault of Glass has previously been given a facelift for the penultimate Destiny patch, though Blackburn says that players should expect more dramatic changes from this update. "There were some slight mechanical tweaks, there were some slight sandbox tweaks, but it was like, 'Oh, yeah, this is still the Oracles encounter, this is still the Templar encounter.'"

The challenge for Blackburn's team lies in changing the raid enough to keep it exciting, while still having it feel like the original Vault of Glass in the end--but players can rest assured that Bungie intends to do right by the original raid. Blackburn also confirmed that original Vault of Glass loot will be available from the raid, with those weapons being redesigned according to a similar ethos. But again, Bungie wants to ensure those guns still feel similar to how they used to.

Vault of Glass will be added to Destiny 2 at some point in 2021, though Bungie hasn't specified when. Players can also look forward to transmog, which will finally be added to the game along with Season 14.