Bungie revealed a whopping four Destiny 2 expansions at its latest info explosion, with The Edge of Fate kicking off the "multiyear" Fate Saga on July 15. The second expansion in line, Renegades, due December 2, 2025, ended up dominating a lot of the conversation around the event for one simple reason: it's a Star Wars-inspired expansion with LucasFilm Games involved in some way.
Star Wars fans among Destiny 2's audience were understandably thrilled by the news, but others (like my clanmate and PC Gamer colleague Tim) were concerned that Bungie may be compromising the game's identity to make some unseen number go up with a licensing deal.
We've had Baldur's Gate and Star Wars and even sillier cosmetic collabs before, but has the Fortnite-ification of Destiny 2 finally begun? This all notably follows the release of Darth Vader, General Grievous, and Kylo Ren armor sets in Destiny 2, included in the Year of Prophecy Ultimate Edition, joining three previous cosmetics including a straight-up Storm Trooper.
Addressing some of these concerns on Twitter, assistant game director Robbie Stevens said:
"Rest assured, Guardians - everything in Renegades is in-canon for the Destiny universe, but we're leaning into the aesthetic, tone and vibe of Star Wars to tell a Destiny story with Destiny characters."
This repeats some of the verbiage from the Renegades reveal: "A Destiny story at heart, but with a Star Wars-inspired take that's been a dream for us to explore," Bungie said.
Stevens, however, is directly responding to worries like, "I don't mind inspiration/vibe but if Boba Fett shows up as an NPC I think I'd eat my hat," as Twitter user Matthew Rehwoldt put it.
That said, for the people who are a little worried that Destiny 2 risks leaning too hard on another IP's identity and undermining its own at a time when it's said to be blazing a new trail 11 years in, I don't know if anything short of the full-fat Renegades reveal, currently set for September, will fully assuage concerns.
There's every chance this is just down to semantics and the September show will calm everyone down. That said, Darth Vader is walking around the Tower. I have to wonder if some of this shakiness could've been avoided if Renegades was less of a Star Wars-inspired expansion and more of an original space Western that can feel like Star Wars, but I suppose that loses the LucasFilm buzz.
When Destiny 2 "weekly active users dropped lower and faster than we'd seen since 2018," Bungie assembled an A-Team to put out some fires: "We needed to do something."
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