The Most Promising Part Of Destiny 2’s ‘Frontiers’ Bone-Breaking Reveal

Destiny 2 is being broken into bits and pieces and reshaped into something new. The game has to change, both because of fans being tired of the same, endless format, and because Bungie simply does not have the resources they once did, thanks to mass layoffs, voluntary departures and large chunks of the studio working on non-Destiny projects.

As such, a grand list of changes to the entire structure of Destiny 2 yearly content was announced yesterday, which is called the “Frontiers” era of the game. The headline is that this will consist of two smaller expansions a year instead of one huge one, and four “Major Updates” that will have some aspects of seasons, but they will not actually be “real” seasons the way things used to be.

I have many, many questions about all this, and I have significant doubts this new format will draw in many new players or retain loads of old ones here in year 11, but I do think one aspect sounds promising.

I like the idea of two smaller expansions, namely because of the different formats they’re supposed to take, breaking up the traditional model we’ve experienced for well, a decade now. Current expansions follow the same exact format, a series of linear missions you will almost certainly never play again more than a handful of times, and then usually some sort of post-campaign mini quests for exotics or what have you.

This is both massively expensive and has grown increasingly tiresome. Yes, this format can still be good. The Final Shape and Witch Queen were excellent, but understanding that Bungie has to change, I think this may be a good way to do it.

Here’s what narrative director Alison Lührs said about the first expansion, Apollo, in the blog post:

“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.”

The idea is that this will still tell a coherent story but will not be as relentlessly linear as past campaigns. And after this, it’s not as if all expansions are going to follow this format, as there will be a lot of experimentation. Such as:

“We are excited to try new things that challenge your idea of what a Destiny experience can be. We are actively prototyping non-linear campaigns, exploration experiences similar to the Dreaming City or Metroidvanias, and even more unusual formats like roguelikes or survival shooters. Each expansion will present a new opportunity to try something different.”

Destiny 2 as Hades? Destiny 2 as Rust? Destiny 2 as Metroid? I mean, that sounds like it could be cool. I think the idea of playing around with new formats for each expansion and bringing something new to a series that desperately needs new things is a good idea. Combine that with the not-stated-but-definitely-happening concept that we are leaving our solar system and heading to totally uncharted planets, and that’s a recipe for potentially great content, even if it is smaller in scale than past expansions. We can see with say, Lightfall that size doesn’t always matter. It’s delivering a memorable story and experience which should still be able to happen in these different formats.

Again, many, many questions about Frontiers including how much things are scaling down and how much old content will be reused. But the expansion idea? In theory, at least, I can get behind it.

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