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Bungie will host a Destiny 2 showcase on August 24, seemingly to unveil seasonal content still to come in Year 4 in the leadup to The Witch Queen expansion in early 2022.
pic.twitter.com/MJatd9B1VkJuly 7, 2021
The studio announced the showcase on Twitter earlier today. It didn't specify a time, but historically these shows air at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm BST.
With nothing more than a date and teaser image to go on, we can only speculate as to what will be shown. That said, the promo art leaves little room for doubt that we'll get our first real look at The Witch Queen and the workings of the Hive witch Savathun, whose schemes have come to the forefront in the ongoing Season of the Splicer.
Sure, we've seen a few screenshots from the expansion already – with one hinting at a long-promised location – but never the big picture. It looks like that will change soon, with assistant game director Joe Blackburn teasing a moment from a new cutscene that touches on Savathun's plans.
Bungie also has another big question to answer: what are we going to do until The Witch Queen? With the new expansion now coming in early 2022, the game's annual release cycle has been shifted, and consequently, Year 4 will technically last another six or seven months at least.
Previously, Year 4 was on track to finish up with the end of Season 15, which will start in seven weeks. Ordinarily, seasons run for around 12 weeks, and that would've pegged the Year 4 finale for sometime in November. However, with a minimum of two to three months now being added to the Year 4 calendar, Season 15 will likely be stretched into early 2022. Bungie took the same approach to compensate for the delay of Destiny 2: Beyond Light, but while that was just six weeks, we're looking at a matter of months for The Witch Queen's extension.
That said, perhaps we'll see a larger Year 5 prologue chapter – a de facto Season 16 – kick off in the tail end of 2021. Here's hoping Bungie outlines its plans for the rest of this calendar year at the August 24 showcase.
We may also hear more about the future of Destiny 2 overall. Earlier this year, Bungie quietly dropped the enormous news that the game's current story arc, Light and Darkness, will continue through 2024 with the release of a fourth, currently unannounced expansion which will follow The Witch Queen and Lightfall.
With Destiny 2 expansions adopting a new release cycle, Bungie positioning itself to support the game for years and years to come – even after the Light and Darkness saga ends, according to assistant game director Joe Blackburn – and the studio hiring to build another game universe which will run parallel to Destiny, there's still a lot up in the air. I don't think all of these questions will be answered on August 24, but a solid understanding of what The Witch Queen means and details on the content leading up to it would be a good place to start.
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