As Bungie continues to keep the massive Destiny 2 trimmed with carefully curated content, much of Destiny 2 Forsaken, as well as the Year 4 seasonal updates, is going into the Destiny Content Vault (DCV). The Destiny 2 Forsaken campaign will be vaulted on February 22, 2022 when The Witch Queen launches, but it will be made free for all players in December preceding that.
The DCV allows Bungie to cycle content in and out of the game in a natural way to keep things curated, not only with regards to the file size of the game, but also accounting for patches, updates, and developing future content. Having an endless list of activities and destinations creates an impossible challenge for balancing the game, economies, and diluting the pools of players among too many different things. Previously, Destiny 2’s launch campaign and Year 1 expansions entered the DCV, along with a number of the game’s destinations. Bungie says the DCV offers “technical breathing room” they would not otherwise have, and the Year 4 activities were a direct result of it. It also allows things as simple as how quickly your inventory pulls up.
Now a big portion of Forsaken is headed for the Vault to make room for The Witch Queen and Year 5 content. Forsaken, originally launched in 2018, was considered to be one of Destiny’s best-ever expansions, in which the popular Cayde-6, voiced by Nathan Fillion, was killed off as the inciting event.
What’s Being Vaulted in 2022?
Here’s the main content entering the DCV on February 22, 2022, as well as a few exceptions:
- Forsaken campaign
- Tangled Shore destination
- The Dreaming City destination, also introduced in Forsaken, will remain in the game
- This includes the Last Wish Raid, which will not be vaulted at this time
- The Warden of Nothing Strike is remaining in the game
- Spider’s currency exchange is going to Master Rahool in the Tower
- Year 4 Seasonal Content
- Seasonal Activities introduced in Season of the Hunt, Season of the Chosen, Season of the Splicer, and Season of the Lost will all be going away.
- The exception is Battlegrounds, which will be rolled into Strikes with a new “Vanguard Operations” playlist.
- The Presage and Harbinger Exotic missions are going into the vault
Bungie says that vaulting all of this content will allow a lot of room to bring a whole year of new content and changes into the game, starting with The Witch Queen and its currently unnamed launch season:
Vaulting this content will allow us the space to launch The Witch Queen expansion and its new Throne World destination, as well as new features like weapon crafting, the new Legendary difficulty campaign option, the new Glaive weapon archetype, plus all the additional content we have planned for the four new Seasons to come starting in February.
Bungie notes that in addition to the brand new content coming with The Witch Queen and the Year 5 seasonal updates, “a carefully curated selection of content out of the DCV, including a classic raid, two PVP maps from Destiny 2, and one classic PVP map from the original Destiny.”
Prior to the Forsaken content getting vaulted, Bungie is making the campaign free for all players, starting on December 7th, 2021. It will remain free for everyone, even free-to-play players, until such time that it is vaulted in February 2022.
However, players will still need to pay for the Last Wish Raid, which is remaining in the game as part of the paid “Forsaken Pack.” This pack “include[s] access to the Last Wish raid and the Shattered Throne dungeon, as well as access to all of the Forsaken Exotics.” If you already own Forsaken, you will automatically be granted Forsaken Pack when this transition occurs on December 7th.
Bungie will reveal additional details in the coming months, but if you haven’t yet played Forsaken, you’ll want to make your way through that campaign when it becomes free later this year. The DCV has been met with some controversy and pushback, but Bungie has noted before that decisions about the DCV are made based on the numbers and what’s in the best interest for the overall health of the game. With more and more live aspects of the game actively moving the story and state of the world forward, few people are returning to play the older campaigns or revisit old destinations. The one area Bungie arguably needs to work on is a better story recap for onboarding new players into the current world state.
The Forsaken campaign will be free for all players starting on December 7th 2021. It leaves Destiny 2 and heads to the content vault with additional content being rotated out when The Witch Queen releases on February 22, 2022.
[Source: Bungie]
