Destiny 2 fans are mourning Forsaken, their favourite vanishing expansion
Not every Destiny 2 fan is celebrating the launch of The Witch Queen today
As Destiny 2: The Witch Queen kicks off, some players are disappointed that a fan-favourite expansion is no more.
“Cayde-6 may be dead, but Destiny 2’s heart beats on stronger than ever.” That was GamesRadar’s verdict on Destiny 2: Forsaken, the beloved expansion that has disappeared from the game this week.
Forsaken has been packed away into storage, mothballed in what Bungie call the Content Vault - the same place Destiny 2’s original campaign disappeared to upon the launch of Beyond Light in 2020. The studio says the system helps to keep the game optimised - and, presumably, managable for players with burgeoning questlogs.
“The [Destiny Content Vault] has provided a great deal of technical ‘breathing room’ that the team has devoted to important improvements to the Destiny experience,” the developer wrote last year. “Upgrades such as drastically reducing our patch response times, improving loading times, offering quicker access to UI such as your inventory or the map, and others link directly to the opportunities that the DCV created for the team.”
There’s no doubt, though, that the ‘vaulting’ of old campaigns makes the launch of a new expansion a bittersweet event for longtime fans. Twitter is filling up with tributes to Forsaken, some of which are surprisingly moving.
Forsaken was when I met my partner and one of my closest friends @destiny_thememe and its fitting we said goodbye to it together pic.twitter.com/LTjRIILRo3February 22, 2022
Others are frustrated about the loss of paid content, and Bungie’s apparent inability to cater to new and lapsed players.
rip to destiny 2: forsaken, content that i paid good money for but never got to finish because life/time/the borderline unethical removal of paid contenti love bungie, i just wish its product strategy viewed trailing players with anything but disinterest and disregardFebruary 22, 2022
Still, early word on The Witch Queen is positive. Our Destiny expert Austin reckons it improves on Beyond Light. Perhaps that’s consolation enough for most of Destiny 2’s playerbase.
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Jeremy is a freelance editor and writer with a decade’s experience across publications like GamesRadar, Rock Paper Shotgun, PC Gamer and Edge. He specialises in features and interviews, and gets a special kick out of meeting the word count exactly. He missed the golden age of magazines, so is making up for lost time while maintaining a healthy modern guilt over the paper waste. Jeremy was once told off by the director of Dishonored 2 for not having played Dishonored 2, an error he has since corrected.