Highlights

  • Destiny 2 in 2023 was plagued by a rocky launch, community morale issues, and layoffs at Bungie, but the upcoming release of The Final Shape in 2024 promises quality and great content.
  • Season of the Wish is still ongoing and will likely have an epilogue, with new Exotic missions and revelations about Riven's eggs. Into The Light and Moments of Triumph will also provide additional content before the expansion.
  • The Final Shape is the highly anticipated conclusion to a 10-year saga, and Bungie is under pressure to deliver. It will launch Episodes as a new live-service model, with possible overlapping content between the expansion and the first Episode. One can expect changes to Destiny 2's Fireteam Finder and the sandbox, new Raids, and more collaborations.

2023 has not been the best of years for Destiny 2, with a rocky launch for the very first moments of Lightfall's launch and throughout the following months, as community morale was at an all-time low. With the layoffs at Bungie making over a hundred developers lose their jobs, including key figures who had been vocal about player sentiment and tried to keep communications going both ways, the announcement that The Final Shape's launch was being delayed to June 2024 was the icing on the cake for many. However, Bungie is making promises about the quality of The Final Shape on launch as well as delivering something great with its S23 and Episode 1 content, so fans should keep an eye on Destiny 2 in 2024.

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Destiny 2's Seasonal Artifact Should Get One Major Change in The Final Shape

Destiny 2's The Final Shape will likely be a revolutionary release, but if and how it will impact the seasonal artifact remains an important question.

Season of the Wish's Final Months and Epilogue

Destiny 2's Season of the Wish is still going strong, as it came with a compelling seasonal activity and launched one of the best Dungeons to date, called Warlord's Ruin. The story is about Queen Mara Sov bargaining with the spirit of the last known Ahamkara, Riven of a Thousand Voices. Riven is a known antagonist thanks to the Last Wish Raid, and she made a point of not granting Mara's wish of chasing The Witness through the portal on The Travel unless all of her remaining hidden eggs are retrieved.

With a new Exotic mission in Destiny 2 called Starcrossed introduced recently, and with more lore bits to be revealed about Riven's eggs and their fate, it's likely players will still have a few weekly missions to look forward to and then possibly an epilogue. Season epilogues are something Destiny 2 has been doing for a while, and with Season of the Wish being the last ever as well as the bridge leading into The Final Shape, it's likely there will be one for it as well.

On top of that, Destiny 2's Into The Light and Moments of Triumph will launch in the months spanning from February to June 2024 in order to provide players with more content before the expansion drops. Into The Light is supposedly tuned for new players and veterans alike, whereas Moments of Triumph grants more Raid loot and gear across the board as well as Triumphs and Seals to cap off the year. Right now, the schedule should be like this:

  • February: Players will be able to complete weekly quests called Wishes, and Moments of Triumph will launch.
  • April:Destiny 2 Into the Light will launch, possibly unvaulting old content.
  • May: The PvP map pack will launch.

The Final Shape on June 4 and New Episodic Model

The biggest draw of Destiny 2 in 2024 is going to be The Final Shape's release. An expansion concluding a 10-year-spanning saga about the perpetual fight between Light and Darkness, The Final Shape has to deliver - no questions asked. After the debacle that was Lightfall, The Final Shape has to be a worthy ending to this saga as well as a great beginning of new stories if Bungie is to retain players, so there's a lot riding on its shoulders.

Between new locations, an epic confrontation with The Witness, and three Supers in The Final Shape, Bungie could have something special in its hands. The way the expansion is marketed, the quality of the narrative, and the new gameplay aspects are all under scrutiny. The Final Shape will also launch Episodes as a new live-service model, which compared to Seasons entails four-month releases with allegedly more Season Pass and content value. The first Episode is going to be Destiny 2's Echoes, possibly revolving around the Vex and Osiris.

It's unclear at this stage if Destiny 2's first Episode will indeed launch alongside The Final Shape or shortly after, considering that the expansion is the conclusion of the current saga and Echoes will be the beginning of a new one. Having them overlap could lead to strange outcomes, and it's possible that Bungie will release episodic content after a week or two, considering that The Final Shape's Raid will end the story.

Changes to Destiny 2's PvE and PvP Sandboxes and Content

Destiny 2's Fireteam Finder feature is currently under observation from both Bungie and the community to see how it performs, with it being in an open beta state in December 2023. However, the Fireteam Finder is targeted for a full launch in late January 2024, possibly with improved functions. So far, Bungie's shared data shows that the feature is seemingly working well and it's allowing many players to complete activities with respectable success rates.

Alongside all the balance changes that are almost guaranteed to come with The Final Shape, including both PvE and PvP sandboxes, players could get a mid-season patch to shake up the meta in Season of the Wish, so that the second half is more enticing for gamers to come back to even without a huge amount of content.

On top of that, The Final Shape will come with a new Raid, and there will most likely be new Dungeons and/or Raids following it in the remainder of 2024 - each with new loot ranging from weapons to Exotics. On the PvP side of things, players can also expect the highly-anticipated Destiny 2 map pack to drop, possibly in May 2024. This will include three maps:

  • One on Europa
  • One on Neumona
  • One on the Terraformed Pyramid

Collaborations and Seasonal Events

Players should also be looking forward to more collaborations like the recent Destiny 2 x The Witcher crossover, including several cosmetic items available in the Eververse store, ranging from emotes and weapon Ornaments to character armor sets. It's also likely that players will be able to dive into old seasonal events, like Guardian Games and Solstice in 2024, and there is also a chance the long-lost Crimson Days will return, as some datamined items seem to point toward this.