After announcing the end of Destiny 2 development and laying off almost the game’s entire team, Bungie surprised fans earlier this week with news that it’s working on “unvaulting” Destiny 2 campaigns, raids and destinations – bringing them back to the game after they were removed. The developer offered few specifics at the time, but new information has now emerged about what we can expect.
The information comes from a Forbes report where reporter Paul Tassi attempted to answer those lingering questions using their sources inside Bungie. According to Tassi, all unvaulted game additions are going to be free for everyone, including those who did not own them originally. Indeed, as Tassie pointed out, much of the stuff had already been made free-to-play before it went away.
But though the campaigns, raids and destinations are coming back, the live service seasons that ran alongside them are not, which is partially to be expected, seeing as seasons are transient in nature. In Destiny 2‘s case, however, some of those seasons included story additions that set up future expansions, so there may be some gaps in storytelling.
Seasonal events are likewise not included in the unvaulting, partly because the weapons they introduced are already in the game. As Tassi noted, many players would prefer it if the game cycled through seasonal events, but that would require a Destiny 2 live-ops team that no longer exists.
There’s also the matter of activities some of those seasons introduced to the game. According to the report, there’s no indication they will return, but Tassi didn’t rule out the possibility of some of them returning as standalone activities at some point. They further pointed out that you probably shouldn’t expect every Strike, Crucible or Gambit map to return, though the chances are higher for Strikes that have narrative hooks, as they’d be considered part of the story.
Nevertheless, the report confirmed what many had suspected reading Bungie’s announcement: this unvaulting doesn’t mean the studio is returning to regular Destiny 2 development. No more patches are to be released between now and the unvaulting, save for any that address major bugs – as originally planned.
“Monument of Triumph really was end-of-service for the live part of Destiny 2,” Tassi wrote. “As you may recall, almost everyone managing Destiny was laid off.”
As for when the unvaulting is expected to arrive, Tassi couldn’t say for certain, though their guess is “sometime next year”. Until then, expect things to go quiet again on the Destiny 2 front, though a big Marathon update is expected in December.
