Destiny 2 has undergone a major expansion every year since its release, but 2021 will be different. Bungie announced today that The Witch Queen, originally planned to launch in the second half of this year, will be delayed until 2022 due to the scale and ongoing problems surrounding the work of the home during the covid-19 pandemic.
“When we started scaling up production of the Witch Queen last year, we made the difficult but important decision to move its release to early 2022,” the studio wrote. ‘[W]I also realized that after Lightfall we had to add another unannounced chapter to complete our first saga of full Destiny. ”
In addition to the follow-up to the previously planned expansion for 2022, which is expected to be pushed to 2023 now, Bungie Assistant Game Director Joe Blackburn Discusses the Causes of the Delays in more detail:
- The Witch Queen represents a major evolution in the ongoing story of Destiny 2. Beyond Light built the foundation and allowed us to weave the world building of Destiny and Destiny 2 together, but The Witch Queen will light the fire on a strong mutual connected story about Fall of Light and beyond, unlike anything we’ve ever tried, with characters, bows, heroes and villains continuing over several future releases. More importantly, the conclusion of these releases will also conclude the “Light and Darkness Saga”, the conflict we first introduced many years ago with Destiny’s launch. While developing The Witch Queen, we realized that we needed this release to be the first of many moments that are crucial to the story of Destiny. Because we were so led up to and dependent on what was happening in The Witch Queen, we wanted to make sure we gave ourselves enough time to expand this journey in the right way, with an exceptional first chapter in The Witch Queen.
- With Destiny now committed to being an ever-evolving world, we want to make sure we still take the time to upgrade the systemic base of Destiny 2 to support everything we want to do in the future. Our ultimate vision for Destiny 2 still stands – a definite MMO action, a unified global community where you can play Destiny anywhere with your friends. For 2021, this means improving our approach to keeping Destiny’s weapons and armor game fresh, refining our vision for PVP, implementing transmog and adding Crossplay. More below.
- Lastly, and the most important reason, we are proud to be uncompromising when it comes to our commitment to the health of our teams. Since COVID-19 kept us away from the office and the sheer amount of work on our boards, we had to move the date to make sure that both this year’s updates and The Witch Queen were both delivered according to the quality we were striving for, and according to a schedule that makes sense to everyone involved.
Basic, The Witch Queen sounds like it will kick Destiny‘s story, which has been an incredible slowburn since the release of the first game, in an exaggerated direction, and to get it right and fix the foundation, Bungie needs more time.
Traditional is Destiny expansions were launched in September. Last few years Out of the light was the first to slip out but arrived in November, the first expansion the studio delivered after divorcing Activision. With the announcement of these latest delays, it looks like the original predictable release cadences of the series will be make room for the more realistic approach of ‘it’s out when it’s done’.
G / O Media can get a commission
Meanwhile, Bungie is focusing on revamping a number of things in the game, including the recently added and much-criticized sunset system whereby new loot gets an annual expiration date.