In November 2020, Destiny 2’s central Red War Campaign was removed from the sequel and placed in Bungie’s metaphorical Content Vault, never to be seen again.
Citing technical concerns – an ever-growing live service game will eventually reach a critical mass in file size – for its removal, the Red War would ultimately become one of several inductees into the Content Vault.
While no definitive yes or no answer had ever been provided regarding any vaulted content’s return, a legal entanglement between Bungie and science fiction writer Matthew Martineau in 2025 removed any doubt about the Red War’s future.
Dated February 24, 2025, court documents pertaining to Bungie and Martineau’s dispute (via TheGamePost), confirmed that, not only is Destiny 2’s vanilla campaign no longer accessible, but that the game it was built for has long since evolved beyond compatibility.
Dominus Ghaul and the Cabal Empire’s war against the Traveler will forever remain a memory, and nothing more, in turn transforming the Red War narrative and its fate into an allegory for Destiny 3 or, more specifically, why a sequel is wholly unnecessary.
Destiny 2 & The Ship of Theseus
In the eight years since its release, Destiny 2 has undergone, to put it lightly, fundamental changes.
While much of its content – namely expansions; considered evergreen content – remains year to year, just as much is presented as an ethereal, temporary experience. Seasons (or Episodes, if one prefers) continue to rotate out of existence on an annual basis, replaced with the Next New Thing.
Barring a handful of areas and legacy content, much of what existed in Destiny 2 before its game-saving 2018 Forsaken expansion no longer persists. The Red War, Curse of Osiris, and Warmind – the three core pillars that constituted Destiny 2 Year 1, are, by Bungie’s admission, extinct. Kaput.
Related
BungieIf none of its original parts remain – or, for that matter, can even be reintegrated – what is Destiny 2 if not a different game under the hood; pulled apart, updated, improved, and reconstituted over almost a decade into something different entirely?
Destiny 3 is already here, and it’s pretty great
The number may not have changed, but what Bungie has achieved in just shy of a decade with its flagship looter shooter is a sequel to a live service game, delivered in real-time.
Destiny 2 is, in essence, a sequel to itself, crammed with foundational mechanical changes – Subclasses 2.0, bespoke weapon archetypes, new foes, everything one would expect of an iterative third entry – that have subtly transformed one game into another before Guardians’ very eyes.
The caveat to all of this, of course, is that Destiny 2’s bones are old. Ancient, even. Bugs and technical issues have become commonplace as Bungie’s ambitions have grown and its workforce has shrunk.
Whether such issues can be resolved without a complete engine rewrite remains to be seen but should that time ever come, Destiny 4 would be a much more accurate reflection of the franchise’s fascinating history.
