The Final Shape has come and gone, but many questions remain about the future of Destiny 2. Will we get another expansion? Are Episodes just longer Seasons? Will we be getting Destiny 3 anytime soon? Today I’d like to have a look into these questions, so we can help answer the question, ‘What comes after The Final Shape’ in Destiny 2.

There was a lot riding on The Final Shape and I think the general concensus is that Bungie delivered. The campaign was very good, the raid was one of the hardest (if not THE hardest) in Destiny history, the post-campaign quests brought something extra to the lore, plus we had the finale mission bringing together thousands of Guardians from all over the world to finish the fight against The Witness.

As far as I am concerned, Bungie delivered with The Final Shape. The player count was impressive during that time too. In the week building to The Final Shape Destiny 2 was hitting 90-100k players consistently, which then jumped up to 314k concurrent players for the launch of The Final Shape. Unfortunately the launch didn’t go very well, it was plagued by technical issues and I imagine that stopped the player count going even higher.

So player sentiment was at an all time high following on from Into The Light then going into The Final Shape. Bungie nailed the landing, then Episode 1 was released. Episodes are the new delivery model for ongoing story inbetween expansions. Previously we had seasons, which had fallen into a familiar structure.

With Seasons we’d have an initial season launch alongside the epxansion. The following seasons would usually be accompanied by a Dungeon, then the season after that would have a reprised raid, followed by another season with a Dungeon, then the final season of the year would ramp up into the new expansion. Seasons were varying degrees of successful. Seasons that came out with the expansion were usually the weakest, which is understadable considering the team is likely focused on the expansion. The Dungeon and reprised raid content would always provide a much needed boost to PVE, and we’ve have sandbox updates and PVP revamps in there somewhere. The final season is arguably the best season all year.

Episodes are Bungie’s new method of delivering content. Instead of four seasons, we have three episodes. Each Episode is broken into three Acts; Act I, Act II and Act III. So far they appear to be following a similar structure to Seasons, given we have a vendor in the H.E.L.M. we have various activities related to the Episode, plus Epiosodic stories. The unique selling point of the Episodes were supposed to be self-contained stories. The idea being that with seasons you needed to be invested in the multi-year back stories to really understand what was going on. Bungie wants Episodes to be more self-contained, so you don’t have to have all that context and back story, which makes sense given many players probably jumped in at The Final Shape, or came back after a long break.

The reception to Episode 1 has been mixed to say the very least. Bungie is timegatng content throughout the Episode so far, which is leading to poor player sentiment, eating into their good will following The Final Shape. Player numbers are down, and quicker than before. One month after The Final Shape we’re seeing player numbers dropping to 70-80k once again.

It’ll be interesting to see what Bungie do for the remaining Episodes. We have Episode 2 Revenant and Episode 3 Heresey coming later this year and 2025. Episode 1 is focused on The Vex, Revenant is focused on The Fallen and Heresey The Hive. I think there’s huge potential in Heresey, and I’m looking forward to continuing that story.

One of the main issues I see is we don’t really know where we’re going. In the history of Destiny 2 we’ve always known about the next major expansion, yearly expansions were a thing under Activision, then when Bungie went independent they increased their expansion release schedule to apporx 1 expansion every 18 months.

Bungie did announce something called Destiny 2 Codename Frontiers coming in 2025. The working theory with this is we leave the solar system and travel to distant worlds. We could be able to steal The Deadnaught, The Hive God Oryx’s warship, and explore distant planets with a select group of characters from our solar system. So far there’s been no confirmation this is an expansion, or more episodes. After Shadowkeep we got the announcement of Beyond Light, Witch Queen and Lightfall, and that gave us something to aim for years out. Right now Destiny 2 players aren’t sure what’s coming, plus add that to the fact Destiny 2 just wrapped up their ten year saga with a great expansion in The Final Shape. This is a natural drop off point for many players who don’t want to continue the grind with Destiny 2.

There are parralels between Final Fantasy 14 and Destiny 2 here. Final Fantasy 14 just released their most recent expansion called Dawntrail, this follows on from their major 10 year wrap up expansion Endwalker. The challenge for the Bungie team is what do you do after you’ve saved the universe in a story that’s been building for 10 years? It’s a tall order.

Personally, I’m looking forward to what’s coming next for Destiny 2. I’m invested, I’ve had some of my best gaming memories inside Destiny and I have every confidence that Bungie will come up with a new saga, and this journey into the unknown with Frontiers sounds pretty exciting. And who knows, maybe Destiny 3 is on the horizon?

Let me know in the comments what you think.