Destiny 2: The Final Shape won’t launch until summer 2024, leaving behind a massive gap in the game’s content calendar. With Season of the Wish essentially completed, there’s not much at all planned to keep loyalDestiny 2players engaged. Bungie has promised some content, but what that content is, when it’ll show up, and how substantial it’ll be remains a mystery. As for newcomers, Destiny 2 remains as unfriendly as ever for those not already familiar with the story, lore and general happenings, making The Final Shape a tough sell for new and lapsed players. With such a large lull until The Final Shape, and a difficult task of getting new and lapsed players invested, it might be time for Destiny 2’s vaulted content to finally return.
What is the Destiny Content Vault?
The vault was introduced in 2020 alongsideDestiny 2: Beyond Lightto manage the ballooning size of Destiny 2. The idea was that some older content would be taken out of the game and replaced with new content introduced by each expansion with the promise that vaulted content could return to the game in the future. To highlight that potential, Bungie brought back the Cosmodrome location from Destiny 1 as a free update for all players along with three Strikes from the vault (The Disgraced, The Devil’s Layer and Fallen S.A.B.E.R.).
Since then, little from the vault has returned. The Vault of Glass, Crota’s End and King’s Fall raids all made their glorious returns. Meanwhile, the Destiny 2 Mars and Titan locations were used for seasonal content but were promptly returned to the vault after the season’s conclusions.
Why was the vault so controversial?
The introduction of the Destiny Content Vault saw a substantial amount of paid content automatically disappear from the Destiny 2 experience. All Destiny 2 throughForsakencampaigns, a majority of Strikes, Raids, Crucible maps, Gambit maps, destinations, exotic questlines and more were no longer available, even if you had previously paid for them.
What made the introduction of the vault worse was that Destiny 2: Beyond Light’s content additions did almost nothing to cover what was lost. Beyond Light included only one Strike versus the seven that were lost, and three Crucible maps versus the eleven lost. More content was vaulted a year later when we lost Forsaken. Since then, neitherThe Witch QueenorLightfallhas managed to include enough content to justify the loss of so much, nor has Bungie delivered on their promise to rotate in older content outside of Raids, a few Crucible Maps and the Cosmodrome.
Why is now the right time to un-vault the content?
Destiny 2 is currently in its worst state ever. Destiny 2: Lightfall dropped the ball hard, the seasonal model has grown stale, new players have no good point to jump in and there’s now a huge lull with little to do until The Final Shape launches. Allowing experienced players to relive the story, the Strikes the Raids, and more all over again will provide nostalgia, and hopefully, build up hype as we barrel towards The Final Shape’s launch.
Bungie’s switch to seasonal storytelling and activities over expansions has effectively made it impossible for new or lapsed players to hop in and understand what’s happening. When important story moments like Uldren’s revival as The Crow and the origin of The Witness are tied to seasonal content that disappears, there’s a major problem with how the story is told. Returning all the old content would finally give new and lapsed players a chance to understand and engrain themselves in Destiny before The Final Shape launches.
In the end, everything comes back to Destiny 2: The Final Shape. This is the climactic moment ten years of storytelling has been building to, and all players should be given the chance to live or relive the moments that have gotten our Guardians to this spot.
How should the content be reintroduced?
It’s still important to note that part of the reason that vault was introduced in the first place was to help manage the ballooning size of Destiny 2. With that in mind, it might still be possible to bring back much of the content without creating a major headache. Not every major destination has to return, but each campaign should be streamlined and available to play. Rather than having players go to each planet to start each mission, the process can be streamlined and presented as a series of linear campaigns where missions load into one another. Bungie has already experimented with this approach by bringing back the first mission from the Forsaken expansion as a Timeline Reflection. Rebranding all vaulted campaigns and seasonal stories as Timeline Reflections and allowing players to explore them linearly might be the best way to bring back these campaigns.
No matter what, though, all vaulted Crucible maps, Gambit maps and Strikes need to return. There’s no hiding the fact that the core activities that made Destiny 1 and the early days of Destiny 2 enjoyable have been left to unceremoniously rot with repetitive and unengaging seasonal activities becoming the norm for Destiny 2. It’s time to remind old, lapsed and new players why people fell in love with Destiny in the first place. It’s high time all this content was returned to Destiny 2.
What happens next?
Unfortunately, we must wait for Destiny 2: The Final Shape. Bungie has not provided many details about what to expect from the game as we wait. This time would be best spent giving all players a reminder of why they fell in love with Destiny in the first place. From the moment their Guardian was revived in the Cosmodrome to being able to wield the Darkness, the Destiny franchise has provided plenty of memorable moments that are now forever gone. Bungie can fix that and pave the way to The Final Shape with excitement and renewed enthusiasm from the community rather than the boring lull that seems to await us.
Destiny 2: The Final Shape launches June 4 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, PS4 and Xbox One
