Destiny 2’s planned Cosmodrome expansion will not take place, the studio told fans Thursday in its weekly blog post. Instead, Bungie will focus on new projects.
Last year, Bungie said that the new Destiny 2 Season of the Chosen would bring back two old Strikes from the original Destiny and expand the Cosmodrome location to “roughly the parity of Destiny 1’s Year 1.” But when players logged in Tuesday morning for the new season, they found Old Russia unchanged.
Devil’s Lair Strike returned to the game, although it is currently not selectable on the map, it is only available through Nightfall, but Fallen SABER Strike was not available and the Cosmodrome was still the same size as last season. Bungie clarified that The Devil’s Lair will be a regular Strike playlist next week, and that Fallen SABER is currently disabled due to a bug.
But even with the Strikes in place, that doesn’t explain the missing parts of the Cosmodrome. Bungie’s promise to expand the destination dates back to June 2020, in its first post describing Destiny Vault Content, a new system that allows the studio to change content in and out of the game. Two days after the release of Season of the Chosen, the studio finally said why the Cosmodrome hadn’t changed.
“When we first shared our plans, we were still in an early stage of development and weren’t sure how far we would go with the removal of the cosmodrome,” Bungie said, referring to the initial announcement in June. The studio went on to say that as the November release of the Beyond the Light expansion approached, it had to decide whether to continue spending time and resources to return the Cosmodrome to its original Destiny splendor or switch to developing new content for it. future of Destiny 2.
With the Strikes returning and the new player experience in place, the team decided to move on.
“Because we believed we had achieved our original goals and we were aware of the community and team’s desire for new content, we chose the last option,” said Bungie. “But when we made that decision, we couldn’t adequately update their expectations about how far the Cosmodrome experience was going to extend and that was a mistake.”
With Destiny Vault Contents, there’s a chance that Bungie could expand the Cosmodrome at some point in the future by adding the missing locations or Plaguelands area, introduced in the original Destiny Rise of Iron expansion, but the studio said it has nothing else planned for the location at this time.
The Cosmodrome was the first place players set foot when Bungie released the original Destiny in 2014. The studio brought roughly half of the original location map to Destiny 2 last fall with Beyond the Light, and placed a new one. Player quest line there to help acclimatize the new Guardians to the sequel.
