As the story of Destiny 2 expanded, the developers at Bungie were forced to make some decisions that were unpopular with players. Because of the increasing amount of locations, armor, and weapons each expansion and season of content brought to the game, the idea of sunsetting items and locations in Destiny 2 was implemented so that the development teams could essentially delete and overwrite assets that were used less often or became less viable.
Locations like Mars, Mercury, activities like the Weapon Forges, Strikes, and even Raids have been sunset in the past to make room in the Destiny 2 game engine for new areas with every new Season since Bungie began the practice with the Forsaken expansion. All weapons and items from a given season or expansion emblems were Light level capped and essentially made useless as newer content was released and began taking up Guardians' vault space. Weapon and armor sunsetting were later removed, but the practice of sunsetting expansion content remained. During the announcement for the newest expansion, Destiny 2: Lightfall, Bungie announced that expansion sunsetting will cease.
Bungie General Manager Justin Truman said during the reveal for Destiny 2: Lightfall that the Bungie team has been working on the game engine in the background and improvements. They can confidently say that there will be no more expansion sunsetting in Destiny 2. There has been no word of if the expansions that already have been sunset will return, but it's assumed for now that content won't be. These engine improvements will allow older expansion content to remain playable for "years to come." This saves the Shadowfall and the Dreaming City from being cut from the game. The Dreaming City would have been an especially tough loss given how integral it has been to the story and evolving Destiny universe.
The story of Destiny 2 has expanded and shaped the view of the game for all players over the years. To not have access or knowledge of a piece of the narrative in this game is like missing the middle volume of a book series. According to Bungie, 5 Million new players have joined the game in the last year alone, who have had to go to the Destiny 2 lore masters for missing story elements, and they will never get to play and feel the emotional impact of some key pieces of content.
Many of the decisions in recent years have been aimed at making Destiny 2 more approachable for new and returning players. Bungie has taken a lot of the criticisms that came with the introduction of sunsetting, and the loss of Forsaken content and worked to find a solution so that no other expansions would be lost to attrition. With how confidently Truman spoke about retaining Destiny 2 content and the studio's vision to keep the game going for years after the Light and Dark saga, fans will no longer have to worry about losing out on the story and precious loot.
Destiny 2 is available for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
