The Proving Grounds Strike and Battlegrounds will be combined with existing Strikes and added to a new playlist called Vanguard Operations which will be free for all players. Currency exchange functions will be shifted over to Rahool in the Tower while the Warden of Nothing Strike also remains available. From December 7th onwards, the Forsaken campaign will be free for everyone to play until it’s eventually vaulted.

But that doesn’t mean Bungie isn’t going to monetize other content from the expansion while it’s still available. The Forsaken Pack can be purchased which provides access to The Last Wish raid and Shattered Throne dungeon along with all of the expansion’s Exotics. It also has three Forsaken Ciphers to immediately unlock any Exotics from the expansion that aren’t earned from raids and dungeons. If you’ve already bought Forsaken, then you’ll get the Forsaken Ciphers for free. Those who own all of the expansion’s Exotics will receive Ascendant Shards instead.

Destiny 2: The Witch Queen launches on February 22nd 2022 for PS4, PS5, PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Google Stadia.

For the Moon, Loud Lullaby, One Small Step, Tranquility, Dream Breaker, Arc Logic and several more weapons will be making a return. Each can roll with new perks including Killing Wind on Every Waking Moment and Chain Reaction on Love and Death. The Dreaming City weapon offerings are a bit sparser and include Tigerspite, Twilight Oath and Abide the Return with new perks like Frenzy, Vorpal Weapon and Thresh respectively.

Nevertheless, that’s a healthy number of weapons overall for players to farm even before the next season drops. They’ll all drop from the same respective sources as before. As for what else the next major update could offer, stay tuned for more details in the coming weeks.

Like many before it, this one is looking very promising. First, assistant game director Joe Blackburn confirmed that sunsetting – wherein Legendary weapons would have a Power Infusion cap and remain viable for no more than a year – was being removed. Also, from season 14 onwards, the Power cap will also be increased by 10 instead of 50 (with expansions being the exception), thus allowing players to get into the new content right away instead of replaying old content to level up.

But that’s just the beginning. For PvP, the security team will be doubled; Bungie will take a more aggressive stance against cheat developers; various Light sub-classes will see buffs while Stasis sub-classes will be nerfed; three-peeking in Competitive and Trials of Osiris is going away; and there will even be investigations into Trials for solo players. For good measure, we’ll see Ikora Rey having a bigger role in The Witch Queen, Ada-1 returning as a transmog vendor and shaders finally, finally being permanent unlocks instead of consumables. This is a venerable wish-list of everything that hardcore players have been asking for since last year with some features being requested much before Beyond Light’s reveal.

It’s good that Bungie is addressing all of this and gathering the resources necessary to deliver. The weapons team is being expanded to allow for more diverse choices in the coming days. The Witch Queen has been delayed to early 2022 to ensure that it delivers on its story since it will “light the fire on a strongly interconnected narrative across Lightfall and beyond” in Blackburn’s words. There’s even another unnamed expansion coming after Lightfall to properly conclude this epic tale of Light and Darkness. So far, there’s plenty of reason to celebrate.

The problem is that many of the upcoming quality of life changes are less of a step forward and more akin to corrections on past mistakes. These have come after nigh endless reams of feedback well before their implementation, from why sunsetting is a bad idea, to why Trials of Osiris should have solo queuing, and even pleas to remove the constant Power grind. Just like how the numerous updates and expansions leading up to Forsaken were meant to “address feedback”, which is a nicer way of saying that features lost in the jump from Destiny 1 to 2 were being added back. Or how the seasonal approach in Shadowkeep encouraged FOMO before being sort-of done away with following Beyond Light’s release.

Worst of all is that several key issues remain unaddressed. The Cosmodrome is missing several key areas and features like the Rocketyards or even a reason to visit it. The Destiny Content Vault houses tons of content including seasons and DLC that players put down money for. Yes, Curse of Osiris was terrible and Warmind was below average at best, but their raid lairs were pretty good while also tying into the current story of Season of the Chosen. Also, what about Black Armory and its Forges? Season of Opulence’s Menagerie? Both had worthwhile content and raids that are now “vaulted.”

Forsaken, touted as the best possible time to play Destiny 2, will also see its content vaulted at some point. That means incredible locations like the Dreaming City and The Last Wish raid will be going away. For that matter, so will all the compelling story missions to hunt down the Barons or the post-campaign content surrounding Riven and the curse, never mind the death of Cayde-6 and the tale to avenge him. What’s especially strange is that the expansion plays a key role in setting up The Witch Queen and its main antagonist Savathun. This isn’t to say that Bungie will vault Forsaken before its next expansion arrives, but it didn’t say it wouldn’t either.

Ultimately, this all leads back to the same problem – Bungie pushes out a huge revamp for Destiny 2, one that sees push-back from a lot of fans. It explains away the reasons why and while it acknowledges feedback, these wholesale changes are pushed out regardless. Then when these changes are have backfired, it backtracks and attempts to correct them. While I don’t doubt that the developer had the best possible intentions for sunsetting, many can and have argued otherwise. Some could simply point at Bungie’s reputation for recycling content mercilessly, especially when it comes to loot or seasonal events, and that sunsetting was just another step to accomplish this.

It also doesn’t help that it takes time and resources, from programming to quality assurance, to go back from certain revamps. From a development point of view, it can’t be all that exciting to revert such big changes after putting so much time into them already. From a consumer’s point of view, the end result of months of complaining won’t even be felt right away. It feels like the vaulting process will also come under fire at some point, simply because one is “renting” content instead of owning it.

Why this pattern keeps repeating is hard to really explain. Is it really all that different from titles like Path of Exile, Warframe or even The Division 2 that introduce massive changes every now and then to sway new players (who may be tempted to stay and spend some money)? Maybe not but in Destiny’s case, it goes back to its identity as a whole.  Since the very beginning, Bungie didn’t have a cut-and-dry approach to developing the first game, as evidenced by problems with its story-telling, progression and loot systems.

Over the years, it’s experimented with all kinds of mechanics, from armor mods and Masterworks to battle passes and free-to-play. Granted, it’s also a one of a kind game – a first person shooter with shared world elements, co-op, end-game dungeons and raids, competitive and non-competitive PvP, PvEvP, a long-running story, extensive lore, limited time events, and much much more. It’s even incorporated concepts like the Infinite Forest and its procedural generation; the near-endlessness of the Corridors of Time; the extensive puzzle-solving of Niobe Labs; and dungeons like Whisper of the Worm and Zero Hour. Many of these were subsequently removed or “vaulted” if you will but I digress.

With how many different things it’s managing, it’s tough trying to balance the demands and desires of so many different audiences. The new innovations and systems are partly to draw in new players while also appealing to long-time current ones – a constant struggle for live-service games to be sure. It’s just amazing how one moment, Destiny is a shared world looter shooter while the next, it’s a narrative-heavy game with dark lore. Then it’s a sci-fi action comedy with a barren end-game before reverting back to its dark lore and dabbling with Fortnite’s monetization model. Next thing you know, it’s a free-to-play looter shooter where the loot has an expiry date.

Perhaps Destiny‘s future is to keep going with the flow, molding and shifting in ways that none of us may expect or even enjoy while new content continues to be pushed out. Perhaps its the robust community that’s still going strong and adamantly vocal about everything, both good and bad, that will secure its future. With Bungie touting plans to open its first international office and expand its current Bellevue headquarters while growing the Destiny universe further, there’s no doubt that the franchise is here to stay.

However, few people could look back on the franchise and remember any feature more defining than its gameplay, art design and music (the lore also, but that’s even fewer). If it’s going to keep changing to constantly try and appeal to new players or solve existing problems or just for the sake of change, then so be it. But will the constantly repeating pattern of overhauling and backtracking be Destiny’s defining legacy? Will the focus really be on the epic saga of Light and Darkness or The Witch Queen, Lightfall and beyond? Or will it become a bizarre Ship of Theseus, equal parts new and old that are swapped in and out for years to come without seemingly any rhyme or reason?

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Bungie is preparing to walk back several changes made to Destiny 2, including the controversial sunsetting of Legendaries. However, the Destiny Content Vault is still a thing going forward and Forsaken, the acclaimed 2018 expansion, will be entering at some point. Speaking to Eurogamer, Bungie general manager Justin Truman discussed the company’s approach to vaulting content.

When asked if Forsaken would be also be vaulted at some point and how the developer would approach that, Truman said, “Forsaken content will be vaulted at some point. I think in the same way we don’t want eight raids, it’s the same thing with storylines – we don’t want when a new player enters into Destiny, there’s five different competing storylines that they could start playing and in some of them, Uldren’s a good guy, and in some of them he’s a bad guy, and it’s not clear if you’re playing them out of order.

“We want to curate that experience. We’re probably not going to go in strict chronological order – like, oh, the next Destiny 2 destination that came in the launch Destiny would be the next one to vault. Instead, we’re thinking about it in terms of – which one of these destinations or experiences is doing the least to the overall healthy ecosystem? And that can range from – which ones have the most exciting experiences that we want to stick around, it could be to do with combatant usage – like, hey, if we get rid of this, there just aren’t that many places where Cabal are in Destiny 2 anymore…”

As for unvaulting content, Bungie won’t necessarily look at bringing back all of the old content from either game. Instead, it’s about what experiences fans favor the most and the current stories. “It’s a mix for us of – what are our experiences that we think are really, really cool. We’ll tend to approach the Content Vault from a ‘best of’ approach – what are people’s favourite experiences from the past of Destiny? Then the other part is – what are the stories that we’re trying to tell now? Because sometimes we’ll start trying to tell a story, and then all of a sudden, it’ll really make sense for that story to be paired with this piece of vaulted content, or this experience, that we had from the past.”

This doesn’t necessarily mean that Forsaken will be removed this year or the next. The Witch Queen is slated for early 2022 and is a pivotal moment towards the conclusion of the current saga. With how much Savathun factors into the Dreaming City, it would be strange to see the location vaulted. That is, unless she suddenly erases it, much like how the Darkness “erased” several of the older locations in Beyond Light. Stay tuned for more details in the meantime.

The sunsetting of select Destiny 2 loot and armor has been a sore subject for many players since Beyond Light launched. This is all the more so when looking at Forsaken and Shadowkeep, which are still available to purchase but whose rewards don’t drop at the new Infusion cap. Bungie is looking to rectify this when Season 13 starts in the near future.

In a new weekly post, the developer confirmed that Reverie Dawn armor from the Dreaming City and Dreambane armor from the Moon will be reissued. Earning these from the Shattered Throne or Pit of Heresy dungeons will also provide higher stats. You’ll no longer earn a fully Masterworked piece of Dreambane armor from the Pit but it will drop with 7 armor energy and “at least a +16 in two different stats and higher stats overall. ”

Four weapons each from the Dreaming City and Moon are also being reissued with new perk pools. Acquiring them from their destinations’ respective dungeons will also net perks that can’t be obtained from other places. Interestingly, if you already have one of these weapons at its Infusion cap, then it won’t drop again. The focus is to weight rewards towards receiving re-issued gear that the player doesn’t have instead of capped gear.

Stay tuned for more details on what Season 13 has to offer, especially with changes being made to Stasis classes like Revenant.

Last year, the company parted with Activision and made Destiny 2 free to play, adopting a seasonal battle pass approach starting with Shadowkeep (though the concept of seasons only really got rolling after the launch of Forsaken). Of course, this year is no different with Destiny 2: Beyond Light but the shared world shooter is undergoing its most radical shift yet. With the expansion’s launch in November, more than half of the current game’s content will be going into the Destiny Content Vault.

This means that Strikes, Crucible maps, Exotic quests, campaigns and entire planets are being effectively retired. Some Exotics, like Whisper of the Worm and Outbreak Perfected, can only be obtained through missions like The Whisper and Zero Hour. With those missions being removed, there won’t be any way to obtain them until Bungie introduces a new mechanic down the line (which it’s currently working on).

The justification for this approach is that the current game has become too bloated and requires some excessive trimming not to only make way for new content but ensure better performance. Of course, Bungie is also using the vault as a means to not only reintroduce this content down the line but to bring back old Destiny 1 content. Say hello to the Cosmodrome in Destiny 2 in November, though it’s not going to be the full size version from the first game. The Vault of Glass is also coming back sometime post-expansion launch.

However, some interesting bits of information surrounding the Destiny Content Vault have been going around in the past few weeks. It all started with YouTuber Aztecross making a video stating that Beyond Light was essentially Destiny 3. This is due to a meeting that took place last year with Bungie director Luke Smith meeting with content creators about the current state of the game. Apparently, Smith said that the vault was for the purpose of rotating out planets and activities to improve them. This “rebuilding” process was also necessary given the number of bugs in the game.

Even more interesting is that Smith apparently asked why these content creators wanted Destiny 3 at all and noted that delivering larger new play spaces, more RPG elements and so on was feasible with the current game. Of course, I say “apparently” because Bungie hasn’t confirmed any of this when explaining the Destiny Content Vault. Furthermore, Aztecross indicated that he may breaking some kind of non-disclosure agreement by airing all of this but felt it was necessary because it reflected well on the developer’s overall goal. Again, Bungie neither confirmed nor denied all of this.

Regardless of what the current plan is, it’s already obvious that Bungie isn’t making a Destiny 3. On top of Beyond Light and the Destiny Content Vault, it also unveiled the next two major expansions coming to the franchise – The Witch Queen and LightFall – in 2021 and 2022. Furthermore, the game’s current state as a free to play title and pseudo-MMO doesn’t serve as incentive to pump out a new sequel. There’s a reason why you haven’t seen sequels to League of Legends or Dota 2, much less World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 14 or even Phantasy Star Online 2. Along with cultivating communities on a certain base, the sheer amount of in-game purchases and the like would be difficult to carry over into a new game.

Bungie would know – it faced similar kinds of backlash with Destiny 2. While many were intrigued by the new story and overhauled mechanics (before mercilessly tearing down both after launch), there were plenty annoyed about having to leave behind several years worth of progress. Removing everyone’s favourite loot, only to reintroduce and resell it to them down the line didn’t help matters either. Some of these mistakes are being avoided while others aren’t.

However, it’s important to point out what purpose the Destiny Content Vault really is. Much like the various seasons that Bungie has released and the timed content it’s put out, this is a means to get people playing via FOMO or Fear of Missing Out. With Destiny 1 expansions, players were encouraged to line up from launch and get themselves raid ready. If you didn’t or perhaps fell behind on the grind, there was no guarantee that you’d be able to participate in the shiny new end-game content. And the more you delayed this process, the less likely you were to find other players for raids.

With Destiny 2 post-Shadowkeep, the application of FOMO has been a lot more obvious. Experience this limited time seasonal content now because it’s going to be gone when the season ends! Grind out this battle pass and get all of that loot because it’ll be gone when the season ends (despite a lot of the armor being reintroduced in later seasons). Even now, you should probably hop into Destiny 2 and get as many Exotics and Catalysts as you can, or maybe even enjoy all of the content that’s there while it lasts. Because in due time, it’s all going to be gone.

Such an approach isn’t really new. In fact, Fortnite started the whole vaulting process way before, throwing guns, items and other crazy mechanics away, only to sometimes bring them back later (which was more of a way to keep the game fresh but still). The same could be said of Battle Passes, limited time events, cosmetics, special DLC tied to real-world events (whether it’s Street Fighter 5 tournament skins or Overwatch League All-Stars skins). You could even go further into the real world when it comes to limited time collectible figures, special editions, fancy console variants and so on. For better or worse, FOMO is an inherent part of commercialism so it only makes sense to see video games adopt it.

My main qualm with Bungie’s approach isn’t necessarily to do with the removal or return of content. I’ve long since abandoned any pretense of the game being a looter shooter where I create the most powerful character, much less participate in a collection game to gather every item available. But the one thing that’s hard to abandon is that sense of wanting for greater things. Of following a story and ultimately see the world grow, if not being influenced by my actions. Which only seems fair given how many cosmic shifts are taking place with each new Hive pantheon death but isn’t really happening.

And while the story seems like it’s on some kind of track, it doesn’t feel wholly organic. Instead, events happen as more of a consequence of Bungie’s live-service practices as opposed any actual plot development. Beyond Light sees players traveling to Europa to deal with a new Kell of Darkness. In-game, Europa hasn’t been mentioned (and if it has, it’s inconsequential to the point of not existing) but suddenly becomes important because, well, Darkness and that’s where the new expansion is. It’s a shame because the House of Darkness is composed of former House of Devils, Wolves and Dusk members, all who have had interesting stories in the universe.

Even crazier is the fact that Eramis and her pre-House of Darkness crew actually had a role in the Zero Hour Exotic quest. However, that didn’t serve to plant the seeds for what would happen next. No, instead, Eramis is just on Europa now and has the House of Darkness.

Maybe Beyond Light will explain what she was up to in the Grimoire but all this lore feels like an after-thought as opposed to actual story-telling that’s playing out before us. Look no further than the current goings-on during Season of Arrivals. The Traveler’s Chosen Exotic quest finally dropped and it saw players helping various vendors like Asher Mir and Sloane evacuate their planets. But did you know that vendors like Asher Mir, Sloane and Brother Vance have been killed during the evacuation of various planets against the Pyramids of the Darkness?

It’s all according to the lore that players have collected recently but there’s a problem: The vendors are still very much alive on these planets. So what gives?

Well, Beyond Light was delayed from its launch in September 10^th, which also meant that old destinations have been delayed in their vaulting. This was meant to be a send-off of sorts for these characters, explaining their absence for the future. Due to the expansion being delayed and Bungie not wanting to hold back on content, this weird mix of story-telling has happened. It’s not something that you can really blame the developer for but it does highlight the problems of trying to pursue an evolving story like this.

Destiny has never really known what kind of story it’s trying to tell. Blame the live-service model and shifting creative decisions throughout the years but it’s just been one big mess since day one. The first game took a dark sci-fi fantasy route that was completely lost when it came to explaining what players were doing, who the enemy was and what exactly they were trying to accomplish. Things improved with subsequent expansions but the core story never really advanced forward.

Cue Destiny 2 and Bungie seemed keen on turning the game into a Marvel Cinematic Universe wannabe, desperately trying to retcon several key elements of the lore while pretending it was a brand new beginning. Several key characters like Lord Saladin, who had players helped in Rise of Iron, didn’t even recognize them – and that was just the tip of the immersion-breaking for players. Brother Vance was retconned to be a fanboy for Osiris. Cayde-6 became the venerable court jester. Even with some interesting lore bits here and there, the story being told in-game was just a mess.

One can find many interesting tales in the lore but that overarching narrative isn’t translated to actual gameplay. For all the neat stories told about Oryx’s origin in The Taken King, the Books of Sorrow were interesting lore that had nothing to do with the game. Perhaps the one great instance of lore tying seamlessly into the gameplay was with Forsaken where Oryx’s actions, the Ahamkara, Riven’s fate the Dreaming City curse all culminated in an amazing way. And that’s been tossed aside and forgotten without even needing to remove it from the game.

That’s why it’s hard to really take assumptions like Beyond Light being Destiny 3 even the least bit seriously. It’s a new starting point, again, with which to introduce some new gameplay mechanics and hooks that players will engross themselves in before the next big expansion that overhauls everything. All the seasons and content in between is fluff. It’s time-wasting, sometimes entertaining fluff but fluff in the grand scheme of things. Osiris’s Sundial, the Leviathan, characters like Asher Mir, Failsafe and Hawthorne, Uldren Sov, the Vex Invasions and Vex Offensive – none of this feels like it’s part of an actual living universe, which makes their disappearance all the less significant from a story-telling perspective. And it’s not like they don’t have interesting stories – they do, just not in the actual gameplay being presented.

Everyone has their own idea of what a sequel should be, especially when it comes to RPGs. Having played The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky and Cold Steel series, I feel that each new game is a venerable new story with memorable characters and adventures just waiting to be told while expanding on the overall series as a whole. If I think of a game with a continuous story in the MMO space, one that continues building on its content rather than arbitrarily retiring or ripping it out for later, then titles like Final Fantasy 14 come to mind. These are games that treat their characters and events with respect, building up interesting settings and locations that are actually alive as opposed to pretty movie sets that you have no interaction with.

Even with all the loot changes, nerfs, bugs, Bounties, uninspired content and arbitrary grinds, Destiny 2 is a fun shooter. However, it’s also the epitome of the live-service model – chugging along, trying new tactics and gimmicks to say afloat, and drip-feeding content to its most loyal players. All pretense of telling a compelling story, much less one that will have a satisfying beginning, middle and end while being supported by consistent world-building and lore, was tossed out the window a long time ago. All that’s left is that next dopamine hit, that sensation of being part of something greater with the next expansion launch before inevitably waiting for next year’s offering to maybe, hopefully, finally move things forward.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

There aren’t many deals as good as Xbox Game Pass right now. Extending to the Xbox One, PC and now even to mobile via Xbox Cloud Gaming, it offers a pretty unprecedented amount of games for you to play. September has already seen quite a few games added, but Microsoft isn’t done yet, as a lot more is still slated to come.

The company announced a new slate of September titles to look forward to starting this week. First and foremost, on the 17th, you can get the RTS title Company of Heroes 2 on the PC version of Game Pass. On the 22nd is a double whammy of the shooter kind as you’ll be able to get access to Destiny 2: Shadowkeep and Forsaken on Xbox One and Android as well as Halo 3: ODST on PC and Android. On the 24th, you’ll get access to the indie sensation Night in the Woods across all three versions of Game Pass as well as the 4-player co-op action title Warhammer: Vermintide 2 for Xbox One and Android.

You’ll be able to have access to those title listed above soon, and you can read more about them as well as a list of most recent additions as well as soon to leave titles through the official website here.

It’s a new month, which means new Game Pass offerings for its subscribers. Microsoft has released details on new and upcoming titles for the service.

On September 3rd, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Tell Me Why: Chapter Two and Touhou Luna Nights will be available for both console and PC subscribers. Console players will get access to The Jackbox Party Pack 4 which contains serial different games like Fibbage: Enough About You, Survive the Internet and much more. With support for up to 16 players, it’s the perfect game for friends that’s not called Among Us or Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout.

On September 8, strategy RPG Star Renegades becomes available while Disgaea 4 Complete+ lands on September 10th, both available to PC subscribers. Hotshot Racing will be available on the latter date for console players while Tell Me Why: Chapter Three will be available to subscribers on both platforms.

Destiny 2: Shadowkeep and Forsaken will be available for console users later this month though a specific date has yet to be mentioned.

Batman: Arkham City – Mister Freeze

Mister Freeze is easily the best boss fight in the Batman: Arkham series. Using a method to whittle his health down only for him to develop a counter-measure to that on the fly is awesome. However, in New Game Plus, you need to use not one, not two but 11 different methods to ultimately take him down. In that sense, having sources that outline each and every method is just perfect, if for nothing else than saving time from trial and error.

Spoilers abound so be warned.

Queen Reyna – Gears 5

We knew going into Gears 5 that Kait would be trying to exorcise her inner Locust. What we didn’t know is that she would succeed and that Reyna, her mother, presumed dead at the end of Gears of War 4, would re-emerge. Sure enough, Queen Reyna took control of the Locust, raged against the COG and even took Del or JD away to cement her evilness.