A delay from Destiny 2 Witch Queen has pushed the game’s next expansion into early 2022, and Bungie is also adding another annual release to the game’s long-term roadmap.
Originally slated for release this fall, The Witch Queen was positioned as the second expansion in a trilogy started last year by Destiny 2: Beyond Light. Bungie has chosen to move it to early 2022 to give it more time in the oven, to establish a new release schedule for future Destiny 2 expansions, and to give the team more time this year to focus on the live game through features such as crossplay and transmog. The studio is also prioritizing the health of its developers with this change, especially in the shadow of COVID-19.
“We’ve been thinking a long time about moving Destiny’s annual release to the start of the year, mainly for the health of the team, but the Witch Queen, not bound by old expectations, allowed us to make this choice make early, ” writes assistant game director Joe Blackburn.
“The Witch Queen represents a major evolution in the ongoing Destiny 2 story,” he explains. “Beyond Light laid the foundation and allowed us to weave the world buildup of Destiny and Destiny 2 together, but The Witch Queen will ignite a deeply interconnected story about Lightfall and beyond, unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. have tried, with characters, arcs, heroes and villains surviving through multiple future releases. More importantly, the conclusion of these releases will also conclude the ‘Light and Darkness Saga’, the conflict we have for the first introduced with the launch of Destiny many years ago. ”
Light and Darkness is just the “first” saga in Destiny history, Blackburn says, but Bungie is limping to keep working on Destiny “for years to come.” For starters, the Beyond Light trilogy has now grown to four expansions, with “an additional unannounced chapter” planned for Lightfall.
With the game’s updated release schedule, we can expect The Witch Queen in early 2022, Lightfall in early 2023, and the final chapter of Light and Darkness in early 2024. The exact timing of all three remains to be seen, and while we know that Bungie is targeting Q1 / Q2, Lightfall and the saga finale aren’t necessarily coming in the same month as The Witch Queen or each other. For now, we’ll have to make do with the Witch Queen armor teaser above, which Bungie brutally released today.
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