Months after seemingly giving up on Destiny 2, Bungie now says it’s planning to restore vaulted content in the game like campaigns, destinations, and raids. The decision reverses the Destiny Content Vault that Bungie created six years ago, controversially removing older content from Destiny 2 that players had paid to access.
“We understand that removing these experiences had a lasting impact on player trust and enjoyment of Destiny,” admits Bungie. “We cannot change the decision we made, but we can acknowledge its impact and do the work to make it right by restoring these important parts of Destiny’s history.“
All Destiny 2 players will get access to the vaulted content, but it’s not a simple switch of a button for Bungie. The developer made big changes to Destiny 2 with the Beyond Light expansion, meaning it has to go back and update lighting, encounters, combatants, and other underlying systems for this older content. “That work will take time, but it is necessary to ensure returning content meets the stability and gameplay standards of Destiny 2 today,” says Bungie.
The decision to return this content to Destiny 2 comes just weeks after a “Sunrise” Destiny 2 offline preservation mod appeared. The mod lets players access older areas in Destiny 2 that had been vaulted, but not the exact campaigns and missions that players had experienced previously.
Bungie now says its own restoration project is the “first step to lay the foundation for how we reforge into new stories and games that you all deserve.” Could that be a Destiny 3 sequel? There’s no mention of such a project, despite fans desperately pleading for a successor to Destiny 2 in multiple high-profile Twitch streams in recent weeks. Bungie is only committing to building a “stronger long-term future for Destiny” right now.
Alongside the Destiny 2 efforts, Bungie is also admitting that Marathon, its extraction shooter, didn’t “reach as many players as we had hoped, and we also know and understand that the game needs to evolve.” That means Marathon will expand deeper into a survival experience. The changes are a little vague right now, but it sounds like Marathon really needs to change and attract more players if it’s to be a sustainable project for Bungie.