Bungie announces Destiny 2 expansion trilogy running through 2022

(Image credit: Bungie)

The fall 2020 expansion Destiny 2: Beyond Light is the start of a trilogy of content drops which will carry Bungie's action-MMO into 2022 and beyond.

Bungie announced the trilogy during this morning's reveal stream. After Beyond Light this fall, we'll see The Witch Queen expansion in fall 2021, and finally Lightfall in fall 2022. All of these expansions will add new destinations, Bungie confirmed. As the (working) names suggest, the emergence of the Darkness is a central theme for the trilogy. 

As general manager Mark Noseworthy told our sister site PC Gamer, "these three titles usher in a new era in Destiny - an era of Darkness. And we think of them almost like a trilogy of expansions telling a larger, overarching story arc together."

Destiny 2 director Luke Smith previously suggested that the game would receive new expansions for multiple years to come, but only as a brief hypothetical. This is the first time in the series' history that Bungie has officially revealed multiple expansions ahead of time. It's also the first time that expansions have been explicitly linked. Beyond Light seems to pick up after the events of Shadowkeep, but this trilogy has its own self-contained storyline, which should go a long way to making Destiny 2 feel more like an MMO. 

We still have a million questions about Beyond Light alone, and Bungie's keeping The Witch Queen and Lightfall close to its chest for now. Apart from in-game events, we probably won't hear much more about future expansions until 2021. 

Destiny 2: Beyond Light is coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X as a free upgrade, Bungie announced. 

Austin Wood

Austin freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and he's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a senior writer is just a cover up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.