‘Destiny 2’ seasons will run through 2022, with free next-gen upgrades

Destiny 2 isn’t going anywhere, folks. Bungie’s annual early-summer reveal covered not just the fall, but plans for annual seasons through 2022.

The studio’s annual early-summer reveal of what’s coming focused not just on September’s newly dubbed Beyond Light expansion, but also the ones that will follow in 2021 (The Witch Queen) and 2022 (Lightfall). And while basically all of what was shared focused on September’s update, Bungie’s new commitment to three full years of add-ons effectively changes any conversation around Destiny 2‘s future.

If you’ve spent any amount of time reading Mashable’s gaming looks over the past five years, you know about the Destiny games. It’s like if World of Warcraft was a first-person shooter set in outer space. There are alien threats, scads of different activities, and a truly daunting arsenal of loot to amass, with a heavy focus on community and group play.

The biggest change players will encounter is more about what’s gone than what’s new.

In the time since the first game launched in 2014, the makeup of the overall experience has undergone numerous changes. After years of add-ons including new story content, activities, and high-level raids, Destiny 2 reset everyone’s progress when it launched in 2017 while re-writing an assortment of rules.

Some of those rules stuck. Others were scaled back or modified. A few were cut entirely, in a welcome acknowledgment that even non-workable changes to the game aren’t permanent. If there’s been any true constant in the Destiny universe, it’s the regular push-and-pull that unfolds between Bungie and its incredibly vocal, passionate fanbase. 

That audience widened considerably in 2019 when Destiny 2 officially embraced free-to-play with the launch of Destiny 2: New Light. The game also shifted at that point, delivering new experiences on a seasonal basis and featuring a reward ladder not unlike Fortnite‘s Battle Pass. Free players get to participate in a season’s reward ladder climb, but paying players have access to more activities as well as a second, more loot-filled seasonal reward ladder.

Understanding all of that history is important for really grasping what the next chapter looks like, starting with Beyond Light. That’s because the most dramatic change players will encounter on Sept. 22 is more about what’s gone than what’s new. It’s addition by subtraction.

A new chapter for Destiny 2

When Beyond Light launches, five of the major activity destinations in Destiny 2 are going to disappear. The patrol zones of Mars, Mercury, Titan, and Io are going bye-bye, as is the Leviathan raid destination. That means any cooperative Strike missions tied to those destinations will be gone as well, along with the three raids set aboard the Leviathan.

Bungie will fill the void created by the removed content with two new destinations for Destiny 2: Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, a brand-new story and raid location; and Earth’s Cosmodrome, the very first patrol zone players visited in the original Destiny. It’ll be a smaller version of the Cosmodrome at first, but more will unlock in the weeks after Beyond Light‘s launch.

The additions and subtractions speak directly to the big underlying shift that’s about to happen, in the form of the “Destiny Content Vault.” Starting with Beyond Light, Bungie will lean into its history and treat anything that’s ever been part of either Destiny as fair game for a comeback. The Cosmodrome is first up, but Destiny‘s original (and much-beloved) Vault of Glass raid will also return at some undefined point in the coming year.

When Beyond Light launches, five of the destinations in Destiny 2 will disappear.

The news should delight longtime fans, but it also addresses what’s become a growing problem for Destiny 2: the game has gotten too big. Wherever you play, a typical installation takes up more than 100 GB of storage. In addition to leaving a massive footprint on player’s hard drives, the unwieldy scale of the game has also made it harder for Bungie to keep it running well.

If you’ve spent any time playing in the past year, you’ve noticed an increase in bugs and other issues. The past two content seasons in particular have been awash with reports of poor performance and random disconnects. There was even one point earlier in the year when Bungie had to roll back some player progress because of a major bug.

Yet for all of the playable content that makes Destiny 2 so large, vast portions of it go unplayed. In addition to the locations that are going away, for example, Bungie will also remove older campaign missions, such as the Red War plotline that launched with Destiny 2 in 2017. Stuff like that is a big part of the reason why the game has come to feel at times like a bloated, technically unstable mess.

So Bungie is narrowing the focus with a less is more philosophy. Yes, players will technically have fewer things to do. But those things will be more of a focus, and the smaller bucket of content means that public spaces ought to be more populated. 

On top of that, having a Destiny Content Vault means that favorite destinations, activities, and ways to play from the past can be made fresh again, and for players who never experienced those things before in lots of case. Most importantly, though: having less to maintain means that Bungie can put more effort into expanding the universe instead of patching leaks as they spring up.

It’s an exciting time for Destiny 2 fans.

What is Beyond Light

The Beyond Light expansion, like Shadowkeep before it in Oct. 2019, signals the start of a new year of content for Destiny 2. The year will split up across multiple seasons, with the first one kicking off on Sept. 22. But what does that really entail?

Well, the arrival of Europa as a destination ties into Destiny 2‘s ongoing story. For the better part of the past year, fans have understood that a fleet of mysterious pyramid-shaped ships are headed toward our solar system. The Season of Arrival, which launches on June 9 and marks the final stretch for Shadowkeep‘s year of content, will set the stage for the events of Beyond Light.

Europa will serve as a sort of home base for the new threat that arrives with the Pyramid Ships (also, the site of a new raid). Players will encounter the forces of Eramis, an exiled former leader of the Fallen, one of Destiny’s key alien races. Along with Eramis will be a new army of foes that have mastered what will become another key addition to Destiny 2: “Stasis.”

The next-gen version of Destiny 2 will support 4K resolution at 60 frames-per-second.

We don’t know much about how it works yet in practice, but Stasis is broadly a new kind of elemental power that confers mastery over the flow of time. Functionally, it will join the Solar, Arc, and Void elemental powers that players are already familiar with. It stands to reason that Stasis will also introduce new subclasses for each character, but nothing’s confirmed on that front yet.

It’s also important to remember: Beyond Light is launching what is likely to be just weeks before the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X arrive. As you can probably imagine, Destiny 2 will makes its way to those new consoles as well.

The next-gen version of the game will support 4K resolution at 60 frames-per-second. Cross-generation play will also be supported, so PS4 can play with PS5 and XB1 can play with XSX. And while it won’t be coming in 2020, Bungie is also exploring how to bring cross-platform play into Destiny 2.

Best of all, the next-gen leap will be free. Yes, Destiny 2 is already free, but season pass holders won’t need to have that pass for multiple platforms. Which yes, just makes good sense. But having confirmation never hurts.

And that’s where Destiny 2 is at. It’s a lot. It’s always a lot. Destiny 2 is one of the most extra experiences in modern gaming. It’s definitely not for everyone, but Bungie’s hope is that new content and a greater degree of focus in what people are playing will keep the passionate fan community satisfied while offering a welcoming and far less confusing day one experience to newcomers.