Last week Bungie unveiled their plans for the future of Destiny 2 including two expansions coming in 2025, plus plans to simplify the player experience and a dramatic increase to the challenge (if you want it). Today I’m going to look further into Bungie’s plans and ask the questions “is this enough” and “will frontiers save destiny 2”?

First of all let’s have a look at the roadmap. We have two expansions in 2025 codenamed Apollo and Behemoth. Apollo comes out in Summer 2025 and Behemoth in the Winter. Expansions include new stories, new locations, missions, weapons, gear plus raids and dungeons. Those worried that Destiny 2 will not longer have the resources to put together endgame PVE content like raids and dungeons should have their fears allayed.

Seasons now appear to last 6 months, and contain 2 major updates 3 months apart. Seasons include new and reprised activities, new gear and artifact mods, new sandbox meta and new events. Plus we’ll get a rewards pass for each of those major updates, which includes all the things you’d expect from a rewards pass.

Bungie went into a lot of detail (and you’re free to check out that detail on Bungie.net), but in summary here’s the highlights:

Bungie will:

• Experiment with different story-telling structures and models, Tyson Green (Game Director) says the game has become stale and they intend to freshen things up with new structures.
• Introduce a new player portal, which gets all players into a variety of activities quicker and easier. The Director and destinations have become bloated and confusing for all players, but especially new players.
• New challenge modes will be added to the game in an effort to provide harder content, but also more rewarding content for veteran players.
• Add tiers to gear, plus clearly label new gear.
• Focus on core actvities. Seasons in the past have focused on too narrow a set of activities, at the detriment of the rest of the activities. Bungie wants us playing a wider variety of activities labelled Solo Ops, Fireteam Ops, Flashpoint Ops, Pinnacle Ops and Crucible. This is a mixture of PVE and PVP.

So far the feedback I have seen on the changes has been luke warm. I think we have to wait and see to get the game in our hands before passing judgement. We’ve heard Bungie talk about freshening things up before, with Episodes supposed to do that, however, they feel like longer seasons and not much else changing other than introducing more timegates. However, I am willing to give Bungie a chance and wait and see.

Bungie is looking to address a couple of player problems here with this strategy. The new player experience is tough in the game right now. It’s difficult to know what to do and what your goals are, so new players drop off quickly. Long time players are so powerful that content becomes boring a repetitive, so Bungie hope that introducing new challenge tiers to the game will help this. Destiny 2 has become formulaic, which means it’s predictable and the model is stale.

For a couple of years now we’ve had an expansion, seasons, reprised raids, new dungeons, and we’ve been in that pattern, and it’s just run it’s course. We need something new and Bungie are finally talking about that in public. Admitting you have a problem is the first step. Finally, Bungie have talked about setting up a new multi-year saga. Having long term goals in a live service game is very important to players and fans, because they need reassurance their effort it working towards something. Bungie nailed The Final Shape, there’s no reason why they can’t claw back player sentiment and do it all over again.

The Portal aims to help solve the new player problem. We have a mock up in the articles shared which highlights what you need to do and where to go. The Director is still available, but if you are new having explicit instructions on what you can to is a good move. The new player experience was revamped in 2020 with Beyond Light, and it entered the game as a replacement to the Red War campaign, which was Destiny 2’s origin story. I am hopeful this is going to help with new players. Retaining new players and getting them into meaningful activities quickly is key to getting players to come back time and time again, plus tell their friends that Destiny 2 is worth playing. There are a lot of high quality free to play games out there, and I imagine you don’t have much time to hook players, and right now Destiny 2 is failing new players.

The introduction of new challenge and loot tiers is looking at the other end of the spectrum with long-term players. These are players like you – most probably have hundreds of hours in the game, a full vault and a quest tab full of years old quests you always say you’ll go back to and never do. You’ve collected mostly everything you want, you’ve tried out some builds, and you’ve got loads of titles and seals. What’s left to do? I have a feeling Bungie is aiming to retain long term players by widening the net of activities that contribute towards a season or episode.

For example, let’s have a look at Episode Echoes. We have Battlegrounds, and the Vex inspired weapon set. We have the Exotic mission, plus the patrol zone activity. Perhaps you’ve gotten into the Nightfall grind and maybe even complete the Salvation’s Edge raid once or twice. There is a whole loads of other content available; dungeons, raids, exotic missions, strikes, onslaught, but you have to know about these things. Destiny 2 has a weekly reset, but unless you’re tuned into online guides or creators channels, then how are you suppposed to know about these weekly rotating updates? Yes we have icons on the Director, but all that is lost in a sea of information, and clearly players aren’t playing, playing are dropping off and playing other things.

Alison Luhrs mentioned non-linear story-telling, and switching up the models of deliverying the narrative based on the expansion. I think breaking the formula is going to be very important for the future, and adding back in the surprise. It feels like Bungie got into a content production model that worked for them, and it worked for us… until it didn’t. We had Shadowkeep which was OK, Beyond Light arugably better, then Witch Queen was a banger. Lightfall was a disaster, and then Final Shape was another banger, but Destiny 2 was wounded by Lightfall. I’m interested in non-linear story-telling and new models, but Bungie have to accept the risk that poses too. Zelda moved from a linear story to non-linear, and while Breath of the Wild is one of the defining games of the generation, it’s story is probably the weakest part. It sounds good breaking up the story and being able to experience it in a non-linear way, but more often that not the impact of the story is lost. At this point, I am willing to try anything, so again, we’ll have to see how it goes for the narrative team at Bungie.

The final point I wanted to get into was the importance of setting out a long term plan. All the way back in Shadowkeep in 2019, Bungie unveiled plans for Beyond Light, Witch Queen and Lightfall, with Lightfall morphing into The Final Shape, and then Lightfall turning into a stop-gap expansion. Hvaing that long term plan kept players invested and having something to work towards. Bungie have stated they intend to kick off a new multi-ytear saga, and they are not short of options especially if they decide to leave the solar system and explore new locations. I am definitely for this, especially when combined with new story-telling methods and new gameplay experiences like taking inspiration from Metroidvanias, survival games and rouge-lites. Onslaught has probably been their most sucessful experience in the last 2 years, and that was a free update for beleaguered players. Producing more Into the Light style releases is going to be tough, given the amount of nostalgia Into the Light relied upon.

All-in-all, my position with Frontiers hasn’t changed. I think we’ll have to wait and see and get the game, in it’s new state, into players hands to see if Bungie can save Destiny 2. I am hopeful as always, because Bungie has proved time and time again they can do it, we’re only a few months out from The Final Shape, which was a banger. But can they do it again, especially against the backdrop of the gaming landscape they find themselves in? Only time will tell.

Let me know what you think in the comments.