Destiny 2 Screenshot
Image: Bungie

I honestly never thought it would happen. After years of mismanagement, the cancellation of multiple expansions, and the studio taking some heavy damage (including laying off many of their lead creatives), Destiny 2 might just be righting itself, slightly. Today, Bungie has announced that they're not yet done with Destiny, and one of the first things they're doing to prove that is finally, after years of begging from the community, begin the process of 'un-vaulting' the huge chunks of Destiny 2 that they deleted years ago, although the process may take some time.

While there have been many reasons given for their removal (ranging from the almost-plausible 'it'd take up too much hard-drive space' to the patently absurd 'nobody plays Destiny for the story'), the simple fact is that Destiny 2 as it exists now is missing vast, important chunks of game. Specifically, the entire launch campaign - The Red War - along with the first three expansions: Curse of Osiris, Warmind, and much of Forsaken. That's many dozens of hours of game there, and almost all of the introductory content. It also cost me approximately $150 in total, and I just cannot play any of it anymore. It just ceased to exist.

As Bungie head Poria Torkan says in their announcement to the community, "We lost trust, we lost incredible colleagues, and our ambitions as a studio stalled." The process, they admit, will be a long one. The vaulted content requires updating, re-lighting, and re-tuning to fit the current game engine. Bungie won't have a full road map or any specific details for some time, but they ask players to stay tuned for "more details coming in the months ahead".

Of course, this comes after several massive rounds of layoffs. So that daunting problem of fixing Destiny 2 might be even more of a challenge, given that the studio is running on a skeleton crew compared to their halcyon days, and that manpower is further split between Destiny, Marathon, and any other unannounced projects they might have. On a personal note, beyond the campaigns, I'd love to see them restore the seasonal content in some capacity. Much of Destiny 2's story was told during time-limited chunks of repeatable content between major expansion releases, and all of that stuff is just gone now, leaving some significant gaps in the narrative, plus some fun game modes absent.

It's a tall order. They've got to repay a lot of tech debt, rebuild a lot of lost trust, and restore a lot of content that people paid significant amounts of money for. That said, I'm still wishing them the best, and genuinely hope for their success. Destiny 2 is, as I've said many times, one of the best games I struggle to recommend to people. Without the original campaigns, levelling process, and all the story attached to it, a newcomer's experience with Destiny 2 is a wildly confusing experience and filled with characters they have no context for or background with.

While the 'Collection' version of Destiny 2 (including every expansion available) clocks in at a hefty £59/$69.90, I've noticed that for the next six days, you can pick it up for a very reasonable $19.64 (Roughly £15) over on GamesPlanet. While you're missing out on a good chunk of the story if you're going in fresh, that's a gigantic slab of game, with tens of thousands of players online at most times across multiple platforms. It might not be as popular as it used to be, but reports of its 'death' are greatly exaggerated.