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Bungie Celebrates 10 Years Of Destiny, Reveals New Release Model Of Two “Medium” Expansions A Year

Bungie just hit a huge milestone with Destiny reaching its 10 year anniversary.

Guardians have been answering the call for a full decade, and with the major points of the Light and Darkness saga that began 10 years ago now complete in The Final Shape, Bungie is looking to the future.

In this case, the future is a whole lot of change. In a blog post the studio outlines how Destiny 2 will adopt a new release model with future expansions, which means a new release model for seasons and how the game gets updated.

Rather than release one big expansion a year, as has been the model, Bungie will be releasing “two medium-size Expansions, one every six months,” reveals game director Tyson Green.

Seasons will come as “four major updates per year, one every three months. Each Expansion will launch alongside a major update at the start of a Season, and then a second major update will follow three months later.”

Those two major updates will be when a new “Rewards pass” is released as well.

Green also clarifies that there will still be full Seasonal resets, just twice a year now along with the release of Expansions.

Speaking of two Expansions instead of one, we have codenames for the first two, with Codename Apollo arriving by Summer 2025, and Codename Behemoth arriving sometime in Winter 2025.

That means it’ll be about a year, maybe a little more by the next time we get a new expansion with Apollo.

New expansions (or at least the next one) will also play differently than before, because they won’t just be single linear stories for players to make their way through.

Narrative director on Destiny 2 Alison Lührs outlines that the stories for what’s next will, firstly, be part of the game’s “new saga,” and that Apollo wil be a “non-linear character-driven adventure.”

Which means you’ll be choosing which parts of the story you want to experience in whatever order you choose, though to experience the full story you’ll have to eventually play all of them.

Lührs also clarifies that not every new expansion will play like Apollo, but will change based on the needs of the new expansion’s story.

“This shift into non-linear stories isn’t something we’re locking ourselves into, but it s the structure that fits Codename: Apollo best.

The narrative structure of the releases that follow will be quite different, a structure to suit that game’s experience, and we want to continue to innovate with each expansion across both gameplay and narrative.”

Bungie also outlines that new Expansions will include:

  • New stories
  • New locations
  • New missions
  • New weapons
  • New gear
  • New raids and dungeons

While seasonal updates will include:

  • New and reprised activities
  • New gear and artifact mods
  • New modifiers and challenges
  • New sandbox meta
  • New events

And each new rewards pass will include:

  • Exotic weapons and ornaments
  • Legendary weapon and armor ornaments
  • Gear upgrade resources
  • Cosmetics and more

As far as what will change with the core game that is Destiny 2, according to Green the studio will just continue to work on it as they always have, though they are starting the next 10 years by focusing on two areas.

Approachability, and making sure that the “gear and challenge matter.”

The first focus is obvious, and one of the most glaring issues that Destiny has faced for years. “Destiny is too complex,” Green says.

“With literally hundreds of activities, you practically need a PhD to decide what to play and how to get rewards you’re looking for.”

Green says that the studio will tackle this issue by firstly “modernizing our activity UI, the Director, to make it easier for everyone to find and launch into great activities.”

The game’s reward model is also being reworked, “to make sure that all of those activities offer meaningful rewards.”

In regards to making “gear and challenge matter,” Green says the team is “investing in a greatly improved challenge customization system to let players of any skill range find the right challenge level for them, with rewards that improve based on the challenge level you take on.”

He adds “the team is cooking up some great gameplay modifiers that give enemies some exciting tools to mix things up on every run.”

For the rewards, “there will be higher tiers of the Legendary gear – think Adept weapons and Artifice armor – that will be available from these higher challenge ranges in a much wider variety of activities, across both PvE and PvP.”

All together, these are major changes for Destiny. They could be the changes the studio needs, to make sure the game survives another 10 years. We’ll see what the future holds.

Source – [Bungie]