Destiny 2: Beyond Light is an upcoming major expansion for Destiny 2, a first-person shooter video game by Bungie. It is scheduled to be released on November 24, 2020, as the fifth expansion of Destiny 2. Players will travel to Jupiter's icy moonEuropa to confront the Darkness, which will become a new power for the player. The expansion will also see the return of the Exo Stranger from the original Destinys campaign. Beyond Light will add content across the game, including missions, player versus environment locations, player versus player maps, player gear, weaponry, and a raid. Some of the less played locations and activities from Destiny 2 will be cycled out of the game, while locations and activities previously explored in the original Destiny, such as Earth's Cosmodrome, will return. Beyond Light will be the first expansion of Destiny 2 to be released on newer platforms, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Bungie has described this expansion as beginning a new era for the Destiny franchise.
Gameplay
Throughout the series, the Guardians, the players' characters, have utilized a power called Light to give them special abilities using different elemental damage types. Since the original Destiny launched in September 2014, the series has featured three elemental damage types: Arc, which causes electric-based damage, Solar, which causes fire-based damage, and Void, which uses gravity and dark energy to cause damage. Each Guardian class has three sub-classes, each based around these elemental types. For the first time since the original game launched, Beyond Light will introduce a new elemental damage type: Stasis, which uses the power of the Darkness to cause ice-based damage. While the other three sub-classes offer an ability tree of limiting options, the ability tree for Stasis will be highly customizable, allowing for more player choice and flexibility. Game director Luke Smith said that these new customization options are an "experiment...to see how this goes" and that they may later add these options to the existing sub-classes. From the gameplay trailers, the new Warlock super for Stasis will have them using an icy staff that shoots a projectile that freezes enemies in ice casings, Hunters will utilize ice picks that they can throw and cause an icy explosion, while Titans appear to have frozen gauntlets to allow for melee destruction.
Plot
Following the events of Season of Arrivals, in which multiple Pyramid ships began invading the Solar System, a new power is born out of the ancient Pyramid ship above Jupiter's icy moon Europa, and a dark empire has risen beneath, united under the banner of the Fallen Kell of Darkness, Eramis, the Shipstealer. The Exo Stranger, last seen at the end of the original Destinys campaign, calls Eris Morn and the Drifter to the Jovian moon to investigate the ship. The Exo Stranger explains that she comes from a different timeline where the Darkness won. Just as she had provided aid to the Guardian against the Vex six years ago, she has returned to the present time to help prevent the Darkness from claiming victory and causing a second Collapse.
Release
Unveiled on June 9, 2020, Beyond Light was originally scheduled for release on September 22, 2020; however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, its launch was delayed to November 10. In addition to beginning Year 4 of Destiny 2s life cycle, Bungie has described this release as the start of a new era for the franchise, as Beyond Light begins a trilogy of expansions where players "will explore the true nature of Light and Dark"—Beyond Light will be followed up by ' in 2021 and ' in 2022. The expansion will be available as paid downloadable content and there will also be a collector's edition and a digital deluxe edition. Seasonal content for Year 4 will also change. During Year 3, seasonal content was only accessible during the season it was active. While season passes will still be available à la carte as they were during Year 3, the content of previous seasons in Year 4 can be experienced all year, regardless of when a player begins playing, much like the seasons during Year 2 of s Annual Pass, though the player must still purchase each season's seasonal pass to access the content. The narrative across each season will also be more interconnected instead of being cut into individual seasonal arcs.
Core client changes
Due to the size of the Destiny 2 game client, the game and all of its content has become too large for Bungie to efficiently update and maintain. This large size has also contributed to more software bugs appearing in the game. Bungie said that instead of developing a Destiny 3, which would require them to stop working on Destiny 2 and start over, they are instead going to introduce what the developer calls the Destiny Content Vault, where they will cycle older, less actively played content out of the live game and place it into the DCV, allowing Bungie to more adequately support Destiny 2 "for years." The DCV includes all areas and activities of the original Destiny and any area and activity vaulted from Destiny 2. Bungie said that with the original Destiny, they solved their "ever expanding, exponential complexity" issue by making a full sequel and leaving all of the content of the original game behind, which also meant that players' progress was reset and they had to start over. They felt that creating a direct sequel was a mistake and that the DCV will allow them to make Destiny 2 a "single evolving world." Through the DCV, Bungie may unvault areas and activities each year, which may be altered to fit the current state of the in-game universe. This unvaulting will begin in Year 4 with the return of the original Destinys Cosmodrome location on Earth, as well as that game's Vault of Glass raid. The areas of Destiny 2 that will be vaulted upon the release of Beyond Light are Mars, Io, Titan, Mercury, and the Leviathan ship and all of their associated activities ; any exotic gear tied to these locations will have new ways to earn that gear. Although a PvE activity on Earth, the "Scourge of the Past" raid introduced during Year 2's Season of the Forge will also be vaulted. Bungie said that this first cycling of content into the DCV will be the largest than what will occur in the future. Upon release of Beyond Light, the destinations tab of the Director will have Earth's European Dead Zone and the unvaulted Cosmodrome, Earth's Moon, the Tangled Shore, the Dreaming City, Nessus, and Europa.
