Instead, the game will feature two expansions annually, supplemented by four “major updates” throughout the year.
As part of its plans to celebrate Destiny’s 10-year anniversary, Bungie has shared details about the future of Destiny 2 in a series of new blog posts, outlining the next phase of the game, titled Destiny 2: Frontiers. With The Final Shape expansion and its three subsequent Episodes concluding the current storyline, Bungie is preparing for what’s next. Game director Tyson Green revealed that, starting in 2025, Destiny 2 will shift to two “medium” expansions per year, moving away from the single large expansion format the studio has followed since the release of Forsaken in 2018.
This roadmap lays out our plan for Year 11 and beyond, with some exciting changes to our annual model:
Over the next few months, we will be sharing more info with you on Codename: Frontiers, which is how we are describing major innovations coming to Destiny over the next few years starting with our next expansion, Codename: Apollo. We have several Dev Insight deep dives going live today and will continue to add more to this list over the weeks and months to come.
Today, we also have Tyson Green, the Game Director for Destiny 2 and Alison Lührs, the Destiny 2 Narrative Director, diving through some of our future plans for Destiny 2. Our goal is to be more transparent in our communications with you. This means sharing our work more frequently, even if you see our mistakes and false starts along the way. So, please remember that our roadmap and plans are subject to change as we get deeper into development.
Ultimately, this is your game too. We want you to see more of how it is made, and why.
If you take away nothing else, it should be this:
We’re excited for Destiny to change and improve in ways that allow it to keep evolving in the future.
Alison Lührs: Hello! I’m Alison, and I’m the D2 Narrative Director. I’m a fresh face at Bungie; I started doing narrative direction for seasons in Fall 2022, and my first D2 expansion was The Final Shape.
We’re proud of The Final Shape and the ending we created for the Light and Darkness Saga. And we knew that the episodes that follow would act as an epilogue, tying up Light and Dark’s hanging threads… but also setting us up for what’s next. The Episodes close doors and open new ones, purposeful ones, storylines that are set in place to prepare us for what comes next.
And what is next is our new saga.
You’ll see teases of it in the later two Episodes, and then fully kick off with Codename: Apollo. This next saga is also based around a core theme, much like Light and Darkness did. It will introduce plenty of new characters, factions, twists, and more. There’s a lot more here we will say eventually, but we don’t want to spoil the journey for you. This will be a multiyear journey, one we can’t wait to take you on.
Our first expansion, Codename: Apollo, is a nonlinear character-driven adventure.
Previously, in stories like The Final Shape, you experienced the story as A to B to C to D in a nice straight line. In Codename: Apollo, our story takes place over dozens of threads you’ll explore and discover. So, when you land on our brand new location, the story starts at A, and then you can choose if you want to explore C first, or try and get into B, or maybe investigate D.
And the options you didn’t choose? Don’t worry, those other options are still open for you to go back and play through. You’ll need to!
Because the more you play and discover, the more the story progresses, so experiencing a certain number of threads opens up the next part of the story. The order in which you explore will be something you choose, but we have built Codename: Apollo in a way the story always makes sense and flows from beginning to middle to end. There’s no time gating, no waiting for the next drop, Codename: Apollo’s story unfolds based on player progression.
Destiny is at its best when it’s mysterious, weird, and not afraid to try new things. This shift to nonlinear stories isn’t something we’re locking ourselves into, but it is the structure that fits Codename: Apollo best. The narrative structure of the releases that follow will be quite different, a structure to suit that game’s experience, and we want to continue to innovate with each expansion across both gameplay and narrative.
This all sounds like a big change, and it is! Because when the rhythm of our story becomes predictable, or when characters and our world fail to change — that’s how we create a situation, not a story. So how can we innovate? By telling a story that keeps up with our innovation, not one that slows it down.
That means an evolving world; giving space for new characters, growing and evolving factions, making sure the story we tell is in a world we have nurtured, and with characters who grow in turn. We believe in rewarding the player for paying attention without punishing someone for not knowing something, that way everyone gets to come along for the ride no matter how deep in the lore they are. You’ll see that approach starting with Episodes and continuing into the new multiyear story.
So when we think about a multiyear arc, what does that look like? Think of it as a constellation of stories united by a single theme. We will show you what that theme is later but suffice to say; we believe in it. Think of this multiyear arc as a web, not a line. Each release fits into the larger saga. We can’t wait to take you on that journey.
Story is easy to spoil so I won’t ruin the details for what the theme in Codename: Apollo is or what it’s about, but I will give you something to look forward to:
Apollo ends with the narrative gasoline that will propel us into the next few years with a clear theme, goal, and a destination that won’t come at you as a straight line but will be well-worth the trip. It’ll reward you, it’ll surprise you, and it’ll take us places Destiny has never seen before.
See you when the time is right…
