After major layoffs and project cancellations at Bungie, the company has announced its plans for Destiny 2, a game with a very uncertain future. In their latest blog post , they announced that they will be “taking Destiny to places it's never been before.” That means it will be getting two expansions and four free major updates per year. As for what's included in those updates, they want to make the game more approachable, give you better loot, and are even toying with the idea of a roguelike or survival shooter for future updates.
Destiny 2 game director Tyson Green says the game has become “too rigid,” with expansions that are “formulaic and over too quickly, with little replayability.” And in many ways, yes, I agree. While I liked the new areas or activities added with Shadow Keep, The Witch Queen, and the rest, they were all pretty formulaic. New boss fights against a big moth and/or a dribble-y guy? New weapons? New activities to grind out to increase my power level by +1 every week? Everyone would tackle the new stuff in a similar order, then wrap it all up with the inevitable Raid.
The game's final expansion, The Final Shape, was still structured similarly to the rest, but it felt like a step forward. It was a DLC that was a little weird and creepy, and featured some moments that pushed Destiny into new territory: time attacks that required you to dodge dangerous slime, or destroy floating tablets by reflecting laser blasts off enemies. Some scenarios were a nightmare, but hey, I respected the twists and turns.
Green says they're proud of The Final Shape, but that it “dominates all of our development efforts.” As such, they want to “try new things that challenge your idea of what a Destiny experience can be” by releasing two medium-sized expansions every six months. Interestingly, he says they're actively prototyping “non-linear campaigns, exploration experiences similar to Dreaming City or Metroidvanias” and “roguelikes or survival shooters.”
Seasons are also changing. Instead of three Episodes, Bungie will release four Major Updates per year, one every three months. “Each Expansion will release with a Major Update at the start of a Season, followed by a second Major Update three months later to refresh the Base Game with new and recurring content.” These will include new activities, rewards, weekly events, and meta/balance updates — all for free.
As Liam and I proved in our “Starting Destiny 2 from scratch” video , the game's UI is complete garbage, and you literally have to create a stupid spreadsheet to understand the game. Bungie at least admits that “you almost need a PhD to figure out what to play and how to get the rewards you're looking for.” In a separate, more in-depth post about the UI, Bungie explores the possibility of replacing the Objective map with a new, cleaner Portal screen. And in other rewards-related posts, they're looking at more freedom to customize difficulty with quality “tiers” for weapons and modifiers that give you more specific things.
As for the next DLC, Bungie has named it “Codename: Apollo” for now, and it's described as a non-linear affair. So, instead of a straight-up shooting campaign, you'll be able to choose how you want to progress from a series of options. But other than that, there's not much information available.
I'm cautiously excited about these changes, but I'm really glad Bungie is taking Destiny in different directions. I think it's always been best in, for lack of a better term, crazy small packages. Most notably, when they introduced a bunch of modes – I miss it! Or when trace rifles were broken for a while, allowing players to kill each other in seconds with a quick zap, so they released a game mode that was just people's frustration. So yeah, give us a weird roguelike mode, embrace game-breaking stuff, make weird decisions (within reason, I guess).