What Is The Destiny Content Vault And Why Is It Important?

Today, during Bungie’s Destiny 2 Reveal Livestream, players got a brief look into the future plans for Destiny 2. Not only did Bungie announce the next three years worth of major expansions: Beyond Light, Witch Queen, and Lightfall (Working Title), they also announced the Destiny Content Vault. Bungie feels, rightly so, that the game is growing larger than they can realistically keep up with. To prevent the game from spiraling out of control, Bungie plans to remove and reintroduce content through the Destiny Content Vault.

Bungie’s plan started with the desire to maintain Destiny 2 rather than abandoning all of it to move on to Destiny 3, much like the jump between Destiny and Destiny 2. To avoid facing similar backlash as they did when players had to effectively start over in Destiny 2, they are maintaining one game. What does this mean, however? Well, Bungie explains it best in their blogpost (), but here is a synopsis of what they’re looking at.

The Destiny Content Vault is essentially an archive of all past Destiny and Destiny 2 content. Starting with Year 4 and the release of Beyond Light, certain content will be placed into the Vault and other content will be “unvaulted.” The first content to be unvaulted will be Destiny’s Cosmodrome location and Destiny’s Vault of Glass Raid. However, content is also being Vaulted. This includes: Io, Titan, Mercury, Mars, and The Leviathan. These locations will, until they are unvaulted, become unavailable to players.
 

As previously mentioned, The Cosmodrome and the Vault of Glass will be the first pieces of content to be unvaulted, but they will not initially appear in the same capacity as fans remember from Destiny. The Cosmodrome will initially launch as an explorable destination featuring the Will of Crota strike, and throughout the course of Season 12 and Season 13, it will be updated into full parity with the original Cosmodrome from Destiny, including the Fallen S.A.B.E.R and Devil’s Lair strikes. The Vault of Glass, on the other hand, is set to arrive at an undisclosed point throughout Year 4.

Some players were immediately concerned that content tied to these destinations will be locked until those destinations are unvaulted, but Bungie also announced that items such as Exotics will have new ways to be unlocked. This means that weapons and armor, such as Legend of Acrius, Rat King, the Aeon series of exotic armors, Polaris Lance, and many more, which would be otherwise unobtainable will still be accessible.

As for activities, things are staying mostly the same. Crucible Maps will continue to be a “curated” mixture of Destiny and Destiny 2 maps. Strikes will be tied to what content is available at the time; any strikes attached to a vaulted destination will go with it until it is unvaulted. Gambit and Gambit Prime are also being combined into a single game mode, with the cosmetic options for the original armor from each mode being available from the Drifter.

This new additional will change a lot for Destiny 2. When Bungie initially announced the shift from Destiny to Destiny 2, many fans were upset to learn that the content they’d been working on for three years was all going away. Destiny 2’s release was important, because it allowed Bungie to update their engine to run exclusively on what were at the time Next-Gen consoles, but the decision was likely influenced by Activision, Destiny and Destiny 2’s original publisher. Activision has a history of constant game releases, and has manned the Call of Duty franchise for years, a franchise which is infamous for its yearly release schedule. Now that Bungie has been separated from Activision, they are focusing on making a single unified game, one that features content from Destiny and Destiny 2. This is instead of making a Destiny 3, which I imagine is only a good thing in the eyes of the community.

With what seem like the final opponents of the Destiny franchise arriving in the Sol System today with Season of the Arrival, it seems like Bungie is finally ramping up to turn Destiny 2 into the game it was always meant to be.
 

Tyler Krasnai.
Editor, NoobFeed
Twitter