Earlier this summer, Bungie surprisedDestiny 2fans by revealing not just the Fall expansion but plans to continue adding to the game two years into the future. With how secretive Bungie typically is regarding upcoming seasonal content,announcing three expansions in one livestreamwas practically unheard of.Beyond Light, the first expansion coming later this year, promised a new direction for the game as players would finally be able to face off and even wield the Darkness.
AsDestiny 2players planned to travel to Jupiter’s moon Europa in September, Bungie made a very surprising announcement by revealing that it would bedelaying theBeyond Lightexpansion. Originally scheduled for a September 22, it was delayed by almost two months to its new November 10 release date. The announced reason for the delay was the additional challenges that have cropped up with the studio moving to remote work due to the current COVID-19 pandemic. While the news is initially disappointing toDestiny 2players, it may ultimately be for the best.
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As Bungie has said numerous times since the expansions reveal,Beyond Lightis the start of a brand new era for the franchise. Everything that happens in the next few years, from a narrative and gameplay perspective, really starts withBeyond Light. Considering that Bungie is still working on this entirely by itselfafter its split with Activision, that’s a lot of pressure to put on the studio, especially with how erratic the past few seasons have been for fans. Naturally, the studio has a desire to not only hit the ground running but ensure that the game continues to flourish and is set up for the next couple of expansions as well.
On a technical level,Beyond Lightisn’t just a small expansion. It’s removing a lot of content from the game like major player destinations and all of the missions and enemies located there.In addition to gear sunsetting, mechanics and systems are also likely getting overhauled and/or streamlined and the amount of work this has created was likely bigger than Bungie anticipated. The extra time will no doubt benefit the studio in making sure these new systems are working as intended.
It’s also well known that new releases in this franchise have a track record for having issues at launch. In fact, the past few seasons have also seen a rise in bugs which generallyresults in content getting disabledwhile the studio works on a fix. Many fans are hopeful that the delay also means more testing going on to catch and prevent typical issues that the franchise has run into over the years.
While there’s a lot of optimism regarding the delay and what it means for the end product, it has to be said that there’s a chance that this delay could also hurt Bungie financially. Moving the expansion to November puts it within throwing distance ofa number of highly anticipated titleslikeAssassin’s Creed ValhallaandCyberpunk 2077.
While those two games are already competing for player’s attention, the real elephant in the room is the fact that November is very likely the month that the next generation of consoles finally arrive as well as a host of launch games likeSpider-Man: Miles MoralesandHalo: Infinite. If that’s the case,Destiny 2: Beyond Lightmay have even a tougher time standing out as players throw hundreds of dollars at the new hardware and games.
At the end of the day, while the delay hurts from an anticipation standpoint, the end product will no doubt be much better for it.Even while working from home, the extra time allows the developers to fine tune the end product and hopefully eradicate the numerous issues that tend to crop up in the days and weeks that follow aDestinylaunch. As the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto once said, “a delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.” Hopefully, this extra time gives Bungie what it needs to come out of the gate swinging.
Destiny 2: Beyond Lightlaunches on November 10 for PC, PlayStation 4, Stadia, and Xbox One.
