Yesterday, Destiny fans were busy dissecting a new “leak” about a coming fall expansion for Destiny 2, allegedly called “Collapse.” While I don’t believe this specific person has inside knowledge, but rather may get some things right through pure extrapolation alone, it did get me thinking about what may or may not be coming this fall, especially considering how relatively dead the game has been lately.
The way I see it there are two ways forward. Both could be good content, but one would prove to be significantly more substantive than the other. Here are the two options I see for a potential fall 2020 expansion for Destiny 2.
The Worst Case:
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So, a trend has been clear in Destiny 2 for a while now. Things are getting…smaller. Shadowkeep was a smaller expansion than Forsaken. Seasons of Dawn and Worthy are smaller than Forge, Drifter and Opulence before them. So if that trend continues, we could be in for a new fall expansion that is around Shadowkeep size, or scaled down a bit yet again.
It also would likely prove to be “recycled.” Like reprising the moon, there’s a way this could work if you bring back a beloved area. In this case, I keep thinking of the Dreadnought as the next area to be remade for Destiny 2, long abandoned since we killed Oryx, but something that could easily feed into present day storylines.
While we have been building up the Pyramids as an adversary for ages, we have also been building up Savathun. I could easily see a final conflict with Savathun taking place on the Dreadnought that she tries to reclaim in the wake of Oryx’s death, and we meet and fight her there. The Taken Queen, as it were.
This could be “smaller” in the sense that Bungie may not really even need to add new areas to the zone like they did with the moon, other than perhaps a new raid that I suppose could use some old King’s Fall stuff, but with new mechanics. In theory, this could bridge a gap to a much, much larger release in fall 2021, while hitting all the right nostalgia notes with the return of the Dreadnought and wrapping up the Savathun storyline at last. That said, another Hive-focused expansion after Shadowkeep may be a bit much, but I suppose it’s Hive slash Taken, which is a little different.
The Best Case:
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This is something akin to the “leak” from yesterday. There are a few reasons I am starting to get my hopes up about a decently sizable expansion for the fall.
The first is that we can look at past trends in an opposite way. The next release after Rise of Iron was Destiny 2. And while I don’t think anyone expects Destiny 3 to be hitting this fall, I can see Bungie potentially releasing something Forsaken sized, or even between Forsaken and a full sequel. One aspect of the “leak” that rang true was the potential of a new expansion to use cut Destiny 3 content if Bungie had been developing a sequel, but then after their split from Activision, decided to just use that as chunky expansion content. We’ve seen this many, many times before, so it’s not out of the question.
As for what it would be about? Yes, I can also believe that this could be the actual showdown with the Pyramids at last. Why? Well, they’ve been teased since quite literally the end of the D2 vanilla campaign. More teases appeared in last year’s seasons between Drifter visions and Mara Sov stuff.
This past year though? Things are different. Shadowkeep was about finding and interacting with a literal Pyramid ship under the moon. In the lore, we have seen both Osiris and Calus actually see/visit these ships in the outer reaches of space. We even had a damn cutscene last week showing the encroaching Pyramid invasion, and there’s now a countdown timer inside the Rasputin bunkers that show the Pyramids moving our way. This does not seem like a plot development that is going to be delayed another full year and a half, even if Bungie usually moves painfully slow.
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So, if this is Forsaken plus size, what could that mean? Forsaken gave us two new destinations, and I would not be surprised if the Europa idea was true, as it’s somewhere the Pyramids would hit first, given the layout of our solar system. We have also seen “frozen Europa” art in the past, and Destiny 2 has never had a true full-on ice planet (snow weather in the Cosmodrome and Mars, but this is different).
Forsaken gave us a new enemy race in the form of the Scorn, and the rumored “Veil” could serve that purpose for a Pyramid expansion. Forsaken gave us a new subclass tree, and The Taken King gave us fully new subclasses altogether. It may be too much to hope for that the rumored “Darkness” subclasses could finally arrive, but who knows.
In short, the idea here is that current content is so paltry because Bungie is doing something massive for this year, not next year.
I don’t know which of these I believe more. It’s a coinflip. History has taught me to always underestimate as to not be disappointed. And Shadowkeep worked well enough where I could see Bungie porting in yet another D1 zone. Yet I cannot shake the feeling that Bungie is setting up the Pyramids’ arrival to be imminent, not another 1.5 years from now, which would have to lead to a large fall expansion. But we’ll see, and my guess is that barring any (actual) leaks, we will know for sure in about two months when June hits.