Bungie says Destiny 2's future lies in "unusual formats", like "roguelikes or survival shooters"

Following major layoffs and project cancellations at Bungie, the company has since announced their plans for Destiny 2, a game whose future was very much unclear. In their latest blog post, they've announced that they're taking "Destiny to places it has never been before". This means it'll get two expansions per year, alongside four free major updates. As for what's in these updates, they want to make the game more approachable, give you better loot, and are even toying with the idea of roguelikes or survival shooters for future updates.

Destiny 2 game director Tyson Green says that the game's become "too rigid", with expansions that are "formulaic and are over too quickly with little replay value". And in many ways, yes, I agree with him. While I liked new areas or activities being added with say, Shadow Keep, The Witch Queen, and the rest, they were all pretty formulaic. New boss fights against a large moth and/or dribbly guy is it? New weapons is it? New activity to grind to up my power level by +1 every week is it? Everyone would tackle the new stuff in a similar order, then round things off with the inevitable Raid.

The game's last expansion, The Final Shape, was still structured similarly to the rest, but felt like a step forwards. It was a DLC that was a bit weird and spooky and harboured some moments that pushed Destiny into new territory: time attacks where you'd have to outrun dangerous gloop or destroy levitating tablets with laser blasts you'd reflected from enemies. Some scenarios, an absolute nightmare, but hey, I respected the twists.

Green says that they were proud of The Final Shape, but it "dominated all of our development effort". So by releasing two medium-sized expansions every six months, they want to "try new things that challenge your idea of what a Destiny experience can be". Interestingly, he goes on to say that they're actively "prototyping non-linear campaigns, exploration experiences similar to the Dreaming City or Metroidvanias", as well as "roguelikes or survival shooters".

Seasons are changing, too. Instead of three Episodes, Bungie will release 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 to refresh the Core Game with new and reprised content". They'll include new activities, rewards, weekly events, and meta/balance updates - all free.

As evidenced in Liam and I's "Starting Destiny 2 from scratch" video, the game's UI is an absolute trashfire and understanding the game literally requires you to create some dumb spreadsheet. Well, Bungie acknowledges that "you practically need a PhD to decide what to play and how to get the rewards you're looking for", at the very least. From a separate, more in-depth post on the UI, Bungie's exploring the possibility of replacing the Destination map with a new, cleaner Portal screen. And in other rewards related posts, they're looking into quality "tiers" for weapons and greater freedom to customise challenges with modifiers that'll net you more specific stuff.

As for the next DLC, Bungie have named it "Codename: Apollo" for now and it's described as a nonlinear affair. So, rather than a straight shot campaign, you'll get to choose how you want progress from a number of options. Other than that, though, there isn't much more information.

I'm cautiously excited for these changes, but I'm truly glad that Bungie are going to take Destiny in some different directions. I think it's always been best in, for lack of a better term, funky little packages. Most notably when they introduced a horde mode - I miss it! Or when trace rifles were borked for a while, letting players kill each other in seconds with a quick zap, so they released a game mode that exclusively let people loose with their brokenness. So yeah, give us a strange roguelike mode, embrace the game-breaking stuff, make weird decisions (within reason, I suppose).