A delay in Destiny 2 Witch Queen pushed the game’s next expansion into early 2022, and Bungie is also adding yet another annual release to the game’s long-term roadmap.
Originally planned for this fall, The Witch Queen was positioned as the second expansion of a trilogy started by Destiny 2: Beyond Light last year. Bungie chose to move it to the beginning of 2022 to give more time in the oven, to establish a new launch schedule for future Destiny 2 expansions and to give the team more time to focus on the live game this year through of features like crossplay and transmog. The studio is also prioritizing the health of its developers with this change, especially in the shadow of COVID-19.
“We have long thought about moving the annual release of Destiny to the first half of the year, mainly for the health of the team, but the Witch Queen and not being tied to the expectations of the legacy allowed us to make that choice early on,” he writes assistant to game director Joe Blackburn.
“The Witch Queen represents an important evolution in the ongoing history of Destiny 2,” he explains. “Beyond Light built the base and allowed us to weave the construction of the world of Destiny and Destiny 2 together, but the Witch Queen will light the fire in a strongly interconnected narrative in Lightfall and beyond, unlike anything we’ve tried before, with characters, arcs , heroes and villains that persist in several future releases. Even more importantly, the completion of these releases will also end the ‘Saga Luz e Trevas’, the conflict that we first introduced with the launch of Destiny many years ago. ”
Light and Darkness is just the “first” saga in Destiny’s history, says Blackburn, but Bungie is preparing to continue working on Destiny for the “years to come”. To begin with, the Beyond Light trilogy has now grown to four expansions, with “an additional unannounced chapter” scheduled to follow 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 is yet to be seen, and while we know that Bungie is targeting the 1st / 2nd quarter, Lightfall and the end of the saga will not necessarily arrive in the same month as The Witch Queen or each other. For now, we will have to make the maturity with the Witch Queen armor teaser above, which Bungie brazenly launched today.
Bungie wants to take Destiny to “additional media”, so that we could even watch a TV show.