Destiny had a rocky road prior to its original release so it should be no surprise to players that the sequel would suffer the same. Destiny 2 which was thought to be announced for September of 2016 has been pushed back to an unknown date with questionable content to be sprinkled in until then.
There hasn’t been an exact flow chart of content drops leading up to Destiny 2 but that may be because Bungie doesn’t have any solid plans laid out to lead up to the release of the sequel. Prior to the initial release, Bungie had content laid out for content releases in the form of code names (Comet 1 became The Taken King) all the way up to the sequel. The game’s nature has always been fluid with updates but changing the DLC model of the game has reconstructed this defined timeline to more of a meandering path.
In a December Bungie Weekly Update, Eric Osborne stated, “There’s a whiteboard in one of our meeting rooms filled with scribblings and sticky notes that represent the developments planned for Destiny’s not-so-distant future.” This could either be seen as there was nothing planned long-term for the pessimists or there are more than enough things they want to try out to bring to future content drops for a more optimistic approach. Either way he also said, “2016 is gonna be great. We’re working on stuff.” Bungie’s messages have gone from cryptic and fun from the Halo 2 “I love Bees” days to vague and full of hope and negative speculation.
Since the release of The Taken King expansion, content drops have been spaced into the game as events including Festival of the Lost and Sparrow Racing League. While quests to collect candy to get masks and racing sparrows on the same two tracks can be fun for a bit, it is not new endgame content like players saw with the expansions of the first year. Introducing time-gated bounties have also artificially stretched out content. Waiting until the weekly reset to get the next step of a quest can be a pain but in the eyes of Bungie it keeps the players coming back.
In the latest Bungie Weekly Update, David Dague (known as DeeJ to the community) released information on the next big content drop in the form of another event called “Crimson Days.” This update will bring a new 2 vs. 2 Crucible mode called “Crimson Doubles” that “features a special twist, born of new gameplay mechanics that only battle-tested star-crossed lovers will appreciate.” While again remaining vague, there may be a new mechanic introduced in this game type.
Many Guardians were expecting more content to be released considering there was already a DLC release three months after the game was released in year one. I, for one, have looked at year two of Destiny as “the year of waiting for news about waiting for news,” and “the year of not worrying about maxing out my alternate characters.” Many are worried about Destiny’s future and as a player from day one, I am not too worried. It will still be around to play during lulls in game releases and I should have plenty of quests to catch up on (hopefully). Without a major update with new endgame content coming in the next month there have already been Guardians planning to move their attention to The Division. I may be making that move as well.
Jason Hadley was a community contributor to ICXM, writing 2 articles in 2016 covering opinion pieces, and Xbox news. ICXM operated as an independent Xbox and Windows gaming outlet through the run-up to Xbox One S and Project Scorpio, plus the broader Windows 10 gaming push, drawing from a rotating bench of editorial volunteers.